The All-Inclusive Vacation: Mortgage Customer Journeys

Create 5 Essential Marketing Sequences in Journey Builder

Back when travel was an option, planning a trip could get pretty stressful. Dream vacations are expensive and the stakes are high; a few overlooked details can spoil all the fun. Ask anyone who’s ended up stranded in a foreign airport in the middle of the night.

The overwhelming amount of research required is precisely why travel agents, aggregator websites and all-inclusive packages exist. Any tool that streamlines planning is helpful.

The need for simplification holds true for another type of dream: owning a home. The mortgage application process can be a pain, both for customers and providers. The solution isn’t working longer hours, poring over paperwork and spreadsheets.

Salesforce’s Journey Builder is a powerful simplifying force, helping mortgage lenders plan out step-by-step digital interactions to guide customers. These journeys work across channels and devices while sparing sales teams from a lot of manual effort. If you want to learn more, check out our blog on Marketing Cloud here.

Here are five must-have, automated customer journeys for the mortgage industry:

Prospecting

Salespeople work hard, emailing and calling prospects around the clock. Unfortunately, many potential leads don’t respond because they don’t recognize the number or sender address. These missed opportunities are costly and exasperating, like seasonal discounts that kick in only a week after your trip.

Using Journey Builder, a mortgage lender, DreamHomes LLC, can set up passive marketing campaigns. These can be social media ads, automated email sends and SMS messages.
Now, when leads come in from mortgage aggregators like LendingTree, prospects have already heard of DreamHomes. They’re aware this provider has competitive rates and tech-savvy features like an online mortgage calculator. So, the work to convert leads is halved.

Pre-Qualification

Some lucky leads have such good credit that they’re pre-qualified for loans. Converting these promising prospects is a big win.

Sales teams can create specific sequences for pre-qualified leads. Such a message chain might start by congratulating the recipient and letting them know they’re eligible for competitive rates with lower down payments. The goal is to get them to click and start an application (ideally, they can also complete the entire process online).

Just as some people need a little nudge to take time off, pre-qualified leads may not even realize they’re looking for a great mortgage lender. Proactive messaging can help.

Process Notifications

Once a new lead is approved, the real fun begins.

For every step of the way, DreamHomes LLC can guide customers with timely messages and helpful resources like videos and brochures. Customers should receive latest updates on their preferred communications channels, at the times most convenient to them. This kind of in-process notification alleviates the mid-air turbulence in the mortgage trip.  

Loan officers also maintain close relationships with realtors, who value staying informed. Journey Builder can spin up similar process notification journeys specifically for realtors.

Education

Not all interested prospects are eligible. Bad credit can stand in the way – both of the customer owning a home and the loan officer closing a deal. It’s a non-starter in much the same way as lacking a passport when it comes to international travel.

This scenario is perfectly suited for a long-term nurture campaign. For example, someone might need to get their credit score up from a 600 to a 700. DreamHomes can enroll them in an automated educational program: a mix of emails, webinars and even SMS reminders. It might take this person months or even years to fix their credit, but the minute it gets better, the loan process can start.

Journey Builder allows DreamHomes to recycle these previously “bad leads” without additional effort from the sales team.

Refinancing

Once applications are successfully closed, it’s tempting to think the mortgage process ends. Yet lenders have a powerful new option at their fingertips: refinancing. These deals are a win-win; companies get to write more mortgages and customers get better rates.

It’s a lot like returning from a great travel adventure: before long, the urge will strike to go somewhere new.

DreamHomes can compare any given customer’s interest rate with the current market rate. Once they’ve identified potential leads, they can either email them passively or entice them with online ads. Journey Builder can create both kinds of automated campaigns. The particular officer who previously closed a loan can even be assigned to call eligible customers.

Start Packing Today

If you’re not a Salesforce user or you’re new to Journey Builder, the transition can be intimidating. But now that you’ve seen specific journeys for the mortgage industry, you can picture how much time and energy you’ll save in the long run.

Beyond making life easier for salespeople, your customers will be delighted by intuitive digital experiences instead of endless paperwork and games of phone tag. Journey Builder is the equivalent of embarking on a cruise instead of planning the logistics of a lengthy trip; you simply climb aboard and start to have fun.

Don’t forget Accelerize 360 is here to help. If you’re ready to go digital, consider us your friendly travel agent.