6 Ways Mortgage Companies Can Be More Strategic With Email

Real estate agents, mortgage brokers or lenders, and clients all use email to stay connected throughout the home buying process. It’s the channel mortgage professionals rely on most to communicate efficiently and document important information. It’s also a channel that represents many opportunities to make a positive impression, build trust, establish brand identity, and ultimately enhance the buyer’s experience.

Yet, we still see many teams not controlling a critical piece of digital real estate within these emails - the email signature. Employees may have the wrong use of their company’s logo, no brand consistency, or the wrong representation of certifications. If you think this doesn’t have an impact on your brand, consider the math and volume of emails being sent by you and your coworkers. The average employee sends 40 emails per day, or over 10,000 emails per year. So for every 100 employees, that’s one million impressions every year. That translates to a lot of time and attention focused on your brand - so it’s time to be strategic about it.

The first step is to establish a standardized template for the email signature itself, which you can learn more about in this workshop (jump to 5:30). This post is focused on another component of the email signature that can transform all of the volume, time, and attention email represents into engagement. Meaningful engagement too that leads to more brand awareness, trust, credibility, and relationship building with home buyers or other mortgage professionals. It’s time to get strategic, and creative, with email ad campaigns. Here are six ideas to help you get started.

Brand Awareness and Education

At this stage, buyers may not know about your product, service, or even name yet. So with that first email sent, it’s an exciting opportunity to set the tone and ensure a positive first impression. Do it in a way that captures their attention, all while providing value. Align your brand to their challenges by sharing content that helps solve buyers’ pain points. Offer a helpful guide, insightful ebook, or refinancing calculator tool and promote it in your email signature so you know they won’t miss it when they open your email.

Engagement

There are many channels out there that represent opportunities for engagement. But in an industry where timing is everything, and marketing budgets aren’t endless, choosing the most effective and efficient ways for meaningful engagement is crucial. What’s a channel that has widespread adoption? Cost-effective? Allows direct communication with buyers? Trackable and measurable? Presents opportunities for personalization? That’s right, the emails we (and our hundreds of coworkers) send every day out of platforms like Gmail or Outlook.

So use this channel and email ad campaigns strategically to shift home buyers’ focus from their challenges to your solution. This is where you can differentiate your brand from the competition. Link to special offers, helpful FAQ resources, or giveaways.

Evaluation

In the evaluation stage, your buyers are looking to buy and they need to feel confident knowing you are the best solution for them. But having the best case studies, review ratings, customer testimonials, or credible certifications is only half the battle. You can’t just assume they’ll find this evaluation content on their own. But you can make it easy for them to find, all while promoting it in a fun and eye-catching format within an email signature banner.

Purchase

Make your new customers feel proud and excited about choosing you by sharing content that helps them navigate through their home buying journey. This will help build trust in your relationship, empower them to make informed decisions, and reduce their anxiety. Not only that, providing value-added services like this can also differentiate yourself from the competition. Home buyers appreciate those who go above and beyond to guide them through the process - which translates to retention and referral opportunities in the future.

‍Product and Support

Customers who are well-versed and self-assured in utilizing your product or service tend to be the most satisfied. And happy customers not only contribute to steady revenue growth, but also pave the way for long-term success. So look for easy ways to offer ample support opportunities. Use email ad campaigns to promote educational webinars, fast customer support, or a specific app or tool.

‍Advocacy

Once you have a system for providing a positive experience for your customers, it’s time to turn them into fans and referral machines! Referral programs can be beneficial in so many different ways. First, it rewards your customers’ loyalty and retention, while also providing more ways for their input and feedback. It’s a vehicle to scale word-of-mouth marketing, which some might say is the most cost-effective form of advertising. And when someone receives a recommendation from a friend or family member, they are more likely to trust the referral and feel confident in choosing your business over competitors. But the first step in this process is to create some momentum with sign-ups so eventually it can become a reliable source of revenue. Promoting it in the emails you send every day to your customers is the perfect starting point.

Need a Strategic Partner for Email? We’re Here To Help.

Are you a professional in the mortgage industry looking for more ways to leverage your email volume? This blog post is just one of many resources we offer that includes examples, ideas, and inspiration that can help you get started. Here are a few more:

Email Signature Audit for Mortgage Companies: Do You Pass the Test?

Email signature audit and checklist for mortgage and real estate professionals. Are you (or any of your colleagues) guilty of these mistakes?

Case Study: National Association of REALTORS®

Learn how NAR uses Opensense for scalable, easy email signature management and flexible email banner promotion.

Playbook: Capture the One Massive Brand Opportunity Most Mortgage Companies Miss

Learn detailed and actionable plays that you can start using to reach and engage with your best audience.

Workshop: How Mortgage Companies Can Maximize Everyday Email

Watch this strategy session on meeting the needs of individual brokers (while promoting your brand), led by Opensense Co-Founder, Bobby Narang.