Mortgage CRM

1. Effectively Following Up On Sales Leads - The old adage that the sale is in the follow-up has never been more accurate in today’s marketplace. This article discusses the importance of either setting up systems or responsible parties in your team to ensure your customer follow up happens… no matter what.
2. Web Appeal - It’s the New Curb Appeal - I have actually been finding a lot of really interesting articles over at the Zillow blog lately. As you might have surmised by the title; this article discusses the selling power of Web 2.0 when used to promote your real estate listings.
3. “I’ll Hold Myself Accountable” - The Beginning of the End - There has been a big movement over at the Top of Mind Networks Blog about a code of ethics, or a revolution in this industry. This article is right on target with that; discussing how we can use friends in our industry that we respect and trust to hold us accountable for our actions; both on an ethical level and a production level.
4. Proven Script to Get Realtor Respect - I actually shared this one on Broker Outpost as well. I thought Chad Weber did an amazing job with this script he uses when calling on new realtors.
5. How Do You Measure The True Success Of Innovation? - The infamous Mark Madsen talks about always striving to find better ways of doing things (even if the way you and everyone else is doing is currently working). He is not a firm believer in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” theory.

1. Freeing The Real Estate Market From The Real Estate Industry - Last week I introduced the NASDAQ of the real estate industry post by Brian Brady. This week he did a follow up to that introducing AREBOT.com; which will post real time offers; you can even watch a ‘ticker’ for specific zip codes. Brian is doing a conference call on 6/24 to officially introduce everyone to it; and I will certainly be on that call.
2. Becoming Nordstrom - Yes, odd title. But Dan Kublawi goes into great detail on the importance of differentiating yourself with service in your mortgage marketing; otherwise you will simply blend in with every other originator in your market.
3. Five Ways to Manage Your Reputation Online - Spencer Rascoff gives some really good advice on managing your reputation online. I especially like the one about “if you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t say it online (even if you are anonymous).
4. The Case For Twitter - Chris Johnson gives a couple of real-life samples of folks on Twitter simply begging for the help of a professional in their market. He uses search.twitter.com/ to search for those people who he may be able to help.
5. How to Get Off the Boom-Bust Roller Coaster - This is a great post about modeling your business around referrals to mute the effects of the boom-bust cycle of the mortgage industry. Who wouldn’t want to create a ‘referral tree’ with 72 branches based on a single loan?

1. The NASDAQ of the Real Estate Industry - Brian Brady does a great job of describing the Utopia of the Real Estate market; by having full transparency so buyers and sellers alike can see offers accepted or declined in real time. How cool would that be?
2. Use Reciprocity to Boost Your Business! - Now is the PERFECT time for mortgage professionals to start storing up “favors” from real estate agents by helping them grow their business; Steve Tyler shows you how. There are also many other good mortgage marketing ideas to help earn business from realtors.
3. Wanna Attract REALTORs? Market Like Them - Use their own tactics ‘against’ them. The 33 Touch system described in the Millionaire Real Estate Agent is a great tactic for earning referrals from realtors.
4. Always Have a Contingency! - We aren’t in Kansas anymore and this is not 2005 anymore. Listen up realtors, contracts HAVE to have contingencies this day in age.
5. Facebook Vanity URLs Coming This Weekend - This isn’t really related to mortgage marketing, but it got me really excited for SEO purposes. That is until I realized you had to have 1000 fans to make it work. We don’t even have a page yet, much less 1000 fans.

1. Mortgage Market Update - Tom Vanderwell does a pretty in depth overview of the market today. I love his analogy of slowing the car down before pulling a U-ie.
2. An Unofficial NAMB Regulatory Update - Mark Green describes a very little known meeting between NAMB President Marc Savitt and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo this past week regarding HVCC.
3. Imagining the Future - The age-long question, “What Does Bill Belichick Have to Do With This?” is finally answered. This is a great post using the analogy of professional sports players for top producing agents and loan officers within a brokerage.
4. Mortgage Pricing Report - One man’s (and by one man i mean the great Mortgage Cicerone) opinion on locking rates in the coming days/weeks.
5. Confessions of a Contract Loan Processor - To Lock or Not to Lock, that is the Question. Processing expert  Mary Schaber Eyler describes how the recent rebound in rates could be an opportunity for you to sell more loans.

We all know that our client database ought to represent our #1 source of business.  However, I’m often asked how much one ought to budget toward marketing to existing clients.

My recommendation:

An easy rule of thumb is to allocate $1 per month toward your Mortgage CRM budget.  So if you have 500 clients in your database, you’re monthly CRM spending should be $500.  Looking at this from an ROI perspective, what type of return should you expect?

ROI Analysis:

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, approximately 8.7% of your database will be in the market to refinance each year.  Meanwhile, we learn from the US Census Bureau that 6.8% of the US population will buy a new home each year.  Thus, 15.5% of your database is likely to be in the market for your services each year - a significant number!

Let’s go back to the 500 client database.  According to our assumptions above, approximately 78 of your clients will be in the market for a mortgage in the next 12 months.  I’m going to be optimistic and assume you’ll capture half of these deals doing what you’re doing today.  So a 500 client database yields you 39 closed loans (approximately 3 loans per month).  Not bad.

But what happens when you’re capture rate increases from 50% to 75%?  The same 500 client database yields 58 closed loans this year (approximately 5 loans per month).

In summary, the $500 spent on Mortgage CRM is the least risky, highest return marketing dollars you can ever spend on your business.

The Top of Mind Networks Surefire System

This analysis led us to create the mortgage industry’s most comprehensive CRM solution.  When our clients close a loan, they enroll the borrower into our Surefire System.  For $60, the borrower receives:

• A custom-made closing gift that keeps you “Top of Mind” for years following the transaction
• A monthly email campaign that positions you as a true fiduciary to your client
• 24 letters and greeting cards over the next 5 years (we do the work, pay for the postage, etc.)

Here’s the quick math:  $60 per client covers you for the next 5 years (60 months).  That’s the $1 per month investment we’re talking about.  If you’re looking to increase your production by 2+ loans per month without risking exorbitant marketing dollars, you owe it to yourself to check out Top of Mind Networks.

It’s good to be posting on this blog again!  Thanks to the great folks at Wanna Network for making it possible!

Big shout out to Dustin Dempsey of Playforward Designs and Mark Madsen for creating an easy-to-use and robust site for us.

I’m going to keep this blog alive but if you’re looking for 10x the ideas, execution strategies and straight dope on mortgage CRM, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed at the Top of Mind Blog.

Happy New Year, let’s make 2009 fun and profitable.

Mark Green, Top of Mind Networks

Happy Holidays everyone.

One of the most common objections I face in selling Top of Mind Networks comes from the “do it yourselfer” who prefers keeping CRM activity in-house.  What follows is a brief overview of the main reasons people typically give me for doing it themselves along with my rationale for outsourcing as much Mortgage CRM activity as possible.

Reason 1:  Cost

Of course price is typically the #1 objection we in sales get on a regular basis.  So here, I’m going to break down what it would likely cost someone to do themselves what we do for $50.

Send 24 letters and greeting cards via first class mail:

• 25 stamps @  42 cents per stamp = $10.50 in postage
• 25 letterhead quality envelopes with high quality greeting cards @ .50 apiece = $12.50
• Labor cost of having an assistant print, stuff, stamp and QC 25 letters/cards (let’s assume 1.5 hours of labor cost at $15/hour) = $22.50

Total DIY cost:  $45 (so the do it yourselfer saves $5)

Reason 2:  Control

Lots of do-it-yourselfers are control freaks, and I get that.  When it comes to some things, I’m a control freak too.  Licking stamps and stuffing envelopes is not one of them.  The time sacrificed conducting manual labor for a mortgage professional would be much better spent in the field meeting with new referral sources, networking, etc.

Reason 3:  Quality

Sometimes, people tell me that they like signing everything personally.  I think that’s great - but again, the time spent on this function could be better utilized in the field.  The Top of Mind Networks follow-up program is designed to look and feel as if it came off your desk.  Each letter and greeting card is personalized with your company logo, professional photo, even your digital signature!

So as 2009 nears and you’re wondering how to take your mortgage business to the next level, please consider outsourcing functions like your Mortgage CRM to a specialist.  You might spend an extra few dollars, but the precious time you’ll save will generate huge returns - and you’ll never have to lick a stamp again !

Mark Green - Top of Mind Networks

I don’t think it’s right to just talk about success stories in a blog.  I think there’s just as much, if not more, to be learned with our failures.

Top of Mind Networks’ Surefire System features a component we call our “One to One” email solution.  This solution features three email “Themes”, each with quarterly frequency:

Theme #1:  Quarterly Mortgage Checkup (gives the borrower a snapshot of how their current loan compares with current rates/programs.

Theme #2:  Neighborhood Home Sales Report (gives the borrower a report of which homes sold within a predefined radius within the past 90 days)

Theme #3:  Identity Theft Protection Alert(s) (educates the borrower on the benefits of placing a “Temporary Fraud Alert” with the credit repositories as a way of preventing identity theft.

We executed on Theme #3 last week and found the following:

1)  The subject matter was too long and complex for the reader to digest - The ID Protection theme needed to be explained in detail for the reader’s benefit.  The bad news is that long copy is intimidating for the reader - never a good thing.

2)  For some reason, we saw a much higher unsubscribe rate on the ID Protection theme than anything we’ve ever done.  I think this happened because of #1 above.  If your copy is too long, people are just going to delete or unsubscribe.

3)  Maybe a saving grace here is that we received quite a bit of positive feedback from those who took the time to digest the content and take action.  But I’m never happy when #1 and #2 happpen above.

So it’s back to the drawing board to replace the ID Protection Theme in our campaigns.  Here’s what I’ve re-learned though.

1)  Keep the creative short and simple - preferably the entire content of the email should appear above the fold.

2)  Stay away from highly sensitive topics if possible - ID Theft is an important topic but with all the “phishing” going on out there, you’re better off keeping any messaging on this subject extremely generic. 

3)  Trust your instincts -  If you read an email you’ve written and it takes more than 10 seconds to get the main idea, rewrite it and scale it back.

If you’d like to see a sample of the actual creative I’m discussing above, please visit our website and contact me through our web form or give our main office a call at (866) TOP-MIND.

Mark Green, Top of Mind Networks

Last Tuesday, the Fed announced that they’ll purchase up to $600 billion in mortgage backed securities.  Mortgage rates plummeted dramatically for a short while, but began heading back up later in the day.  You probably got a few refi applications, but not as many as you’d have liked.

I’d like to thank Scott Evans of Family Mortgage of Georgia for this month’s Innovation.  Please click below to see our:

“Rate Lock - Action Plan” Letter

Top of Mind’s Rate Lock Letter

The Idea:

Scott Evans was able to lock 14 loans in a 3.5 hour window because he had established Action Plans with his client database, allowing him to lock loans immediately upon a rate drop.  With precious little time to act, Scott spent less time chasing down client permissions and more time locking loans.

The Execution:

Let Top of Mind send the “Rate Lock – Action Plan” letter to your contact database.  It will get the phone ringing immediately.  You’ll want to review each client’s scenario and determine a target rate/program.  So the next time the market moves dramatically, you’ll be able to act immediately – and lock more loans.

The cost:

$1 per letter – signed, sealed and delivered!

Please call or visit our site if interested.

  (866) TOP-MIND or http://www.topofmind.com

One of my earlier posts discussed the events of Tuesday, November 25th, and how the Top of Mind Networks Surefire System helped our clients identify literally thousands of refinance opportunities - automatically.

I guess we at Top of Mind learned what seems like a funny lesson now - our system is so powerful that the sheer number of “Opportunitiy Alerts” we sent our clients on 11/25 actually caused many of the major ISP’s like Yahoo, Hotmail, Bellsouth, etc. to temporarily blacklist our domain!

You see, when we identify a potential refinance opportunity on our clients’ behalf, we send them an email we call an “Opportunity Alert”.  For example, if you have a borrower on a 30-year fixed mortgage at 6.5% and rates suddenly drop to 5.25%, this triggers our system to notify you via email.

The events of 11/25 set off a frenzy of refinance opportunities in our Surefire System.  We began sending thousands of legitimate refi alerts, and even the ISP’s were overwhelmed by Surefire’s success :).

Obviously, we’ve figured out a way to ensure that we prevent this from happening again in the future.  But I couldn’t help but share the experience.

If for some reason you’ve stumbled upon this blog and would like to view a live web demonstration with me, please contact us by phone (866) TOP-MIND or visit our site at http://www.topofmind.com.

Mark Green, President

Top of Mind Networks