We’ve written previously at Empower Funnels about the importance of texting your leads. We even wrote a blog about how to convert more mortgage leads over text.
The ability to present yourself well via text to mortgage leads is still more important than ever. However, we’ve been collecting a lot of data that suggests that you may need to alter your strategy when it comes to engaging your leads with their preferred contact method.
At Empower Funnels, we don’t only set the bar when it comes to online mortgage lead generation. We consider our role as a marketing partner for your business to help you convert leads we generate for you.
We do this through (at least) monthly one on one conversion strategy sessions with our in-house Customer Success Manager.
Our Customer Success Manager is inside of every one of our clients’ CRM accounts on a regular basis. They are monitoring client activities and success rates and identifying trends and best practices. Then help clients who aren’t as successful move the needle with their lead conversion by implementing those best practices directly in their business.
In addition, we regularly conduct account reviews to determine the outcome of particular hypotheses when it comes to lead conversion.
For example, most recently we wanted to identify the percentage of full 1003’s pulled without ever having a phone call. Then compared them to the percentage of 1003s that were received after contact was made on the phone.
The results were alarming.
74.59% of all of the applications that our clients pulled had some sort of 1-on-1 phone conversation prior to the application being submitted.
Now being a company Co-Founded by a former producing loan officer, and having measured the correlation between # of applications and # of funded deals over 2 years of data collection, we stress the indisputable importance of collecting a full 1003 as early in the process with internet leads as possible.
That said, when we saw this alarming statistic, we wanted to dive deeper.
We took a hard look at the top 10% of our clients. (based on conversion rate, and also application rate.) We were able to identify a powerful trend in their conversations.
They all had a very similar strategy. The vast majority of their initial engagements with the leads were coming via text message. However, what they did with the lead from there to get them on the phone ultimately determined their success.
The approach was simple. You take their interest in getting questions answered/getting an estimate and convert that into a phone conversation right away.
They did this in one of two ways:
- Texting back offering to help and subsequently stressing the value of a 5-minute phone call, and asking when a good time to chat would be.
- Picking up the phone and called immediately, never engaging via text other than to try and re-engage down the road.
I should also stress here, that their approach did not always meet success at first pass.
Some successful accounts will frequently re-engage via text then when more rapport was built, stress the value of another call. However, some just called and called until they were able to get the lead on the phone, where they were able to let their sales/relationship building acumen take over.
We’ve measured before the number of contact attempts that should be made before moving a lead out of an actively working status. We typically see the best results with about 6-8 call attempts inside of a 2 week period of time. The psychology and stats behind that are enough for an entirely separate blog altogether, so I’ll digress.
So what’s the bottom line here?
If you want to convert mortgage leads at a high rate, you have to be willing and able to get them on the phone. Then you can build rapport and establish some level of relationship with them prior to collecting an application.
As far as converting that call into an application, the method was consistent across the top 10% of our lead converters:
DO NOT ask if they are interested in completing an application. Casually collect the pertinent details of the 1003 in a discovery conversation. Collect their income, asset, and basic potential property information. Then, let them know that all you need to complete their prequalification is their social and date of birth.
Obviously, make sure you make any necessary disclosures at this point. We’re not trying to trick anyone, more just trying to make the process as easy as possible for our leads.
Based on the data that we’ve collected from loan officers converting internet leads successfully across the country, if you can do these 2 things well, you will be far ahead of the curve as it relates to mortgage lead conversion:
- Convert text conversations into phone conversations.
- Convert phone conversations into full 1003s.
If you’re at all interested in seeing how we apply this knowledge and attention to detail into our fully done-for-you mortgage lead generation system, please don’t hesitate to book your live demo here, or use the calendar below.
As always, thanks for reading, and we’ll see you at the top!