For mortgage brokers, regular engagement with prospects is a great way to stay top of mind. And with property sales and business loans still in demand even during the pandemic-induced lockdown, staying top of mind can help generate sales while everyone is stuck at home.
Here’s 3 tips on what you can do to keep prospects engaged during lockdown:
Stay connected with customers through mailing lists
There are opportunities at every doorstep, in every conversation, the problem is, when you engage with a prospective client for the first time it may not be the right time to have a meaningful conversation about their home loan or finances.
This is where a mailing list can add value to your mortgage brokerage. Not only do the majority of Australians have access to email, over 50% of the population open their emails on their phones which they are always connected with. By having a mailing list of contacts, and regularly using this list to engage with potential customers, you have a direct line of communication to clients.
Building a mailing list can be challenging, but it’s not too late to start. Often we find that most mortgage brokers are not making full use of their website real estate, and by simply placing a subscribe function on select pages of your website, you can easily build a robust list over time.
A subscriber gained every week will become 52 in a year, which may seem small at first, but as a targeted group of individuals can equate to a powerful network which can be accessed on demand.
What information to collect when building your mailing list
Making sure your content is personalised always helps with cut through. For example, emails with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. This means that when you collect data from your website users, capturing additional information beyond the email address always helps.
What content to include in your emails
Once you have a mailing list you can start to send out communication on a regular basis. Often the time interval of your send should be based on the quality of your content – in other words it is better to send less frequently but ensure that the content you make is of higher quality.
Typically, each email you send out should be formatted to capture attention and include a link to a landing page – more on this below. That way, you can translate interest to sales, and track everything in between.
The top email marketing campaigns often have features in common that you can use to inspire your own mortgage broker marketing:
- Quality content that gives a good reason to engage
- A strong call to action to drive actions and objectives
- Information that is relevant and timely to your audience
To get started, look into platforms such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor which are great for electronic mail as they offer the use of customisable templates at a monthly fee. Or speak to one of our MBW experts for assistance.
Constant, regular communication with prospective clients demonstrates how your business can add value to their lives, and more importantly reminds customers that you are around when they need your mortgage broker services.
Use landing pages to boost the performance of your mortgage broker marketing
Part of generating traffic to your website involves deciding which page you want visitors to arrive on – also known as a landing page. A landing page lets you control the user journey from the time they enter, to the time they leave. As the first web page a visitor will see, landing pages are particularly useful for lead generation.
If you look at your marketing funnel, website visitors can find your website through a series of channels including Google search, through to an advertisement on social media, or even a clickthrough from your mailing list. No matter what channel your website visitor uses, as the first point of entry into your digital shopfront, it is imperative that you recognise how landing pages set the tone for your services.
A landing page that is poorly designed may be losing you business in the form of a poor conversion rate. Inversely, a landing page that is well-designed can be used in tandem with your mailing lists to make your customer engagement more effective.
When building a landing page, it is crucial that you consider how you plan to acquire your audience and website visitors. For example, if you are running an ad for refinancing on Facebook, you want to make sure the landing page also focuses on refinancing rather than talk about mortgage broking in a generic sense.
Similarly, by segmenting your mailing list into smaller groups, you can narrowcast content to display only what is relevant to the customers you are targeting, both when you email them, and when they clickthrough to the landing page.
Some ways you can optimise your landing page include:
- Making sure you have a succinct headline message that encapsulates your pitch
- Ensure you have multiple methods of contact including phone numbers, email addresses and forms
- Create a powerful call-to-action to convert visitors into customers
- Optimising your landing page for desktop, tablet and mobile users
By thinking of your landing page as part of a greater funnel, you can boost the performance of your marketing using targeted content.
Improve website conversion rate to make more money
Your website’s conversion rate can be systematically revised over time to progress visitors to leads, and leads to sales. Doing so will mean you can reduce costs while directly improving the bottom line. It is important that you understand the ins and outs of website conversion before you start generating traffic to your website.
Simply put, your website’s conversion rate is the rate in which a visitor to your website interacts towards your desired action.
Most of the time this would be either a lead or a sale – for example, a visitor filling out a form on your website to get in touch with your team could be a conversion. If for every 100 visitors you have 1 person filling out a form on your website or getting in touch, this is equivalent to a 1% conversion rate. Understanding how your conversion rate impacts your bottom line is vital to making sure your website is not hurting your mortgage broker business.
Now examine what the cost of attracting visitors to your website is – this could be in the form of social media advertisements or even hours of your time spent canvassing for leads. If you combine the cost per visitor with the conversion rate of your website you can calculate cost per lead.
Let’s say the cost per visitor is $20. To find your cost per lead you would divide $20 by the conversion rate (1% in this example) to get $2,000.
In addition, if your conversion rate from a lead to a sale is not 100%, the costs begin to add up. A 50% conversion rate from lead to sale (a rate even the best of salespeople would be proud of) would equate to a cost per sale of $4,000.
This is where a great mortgage broker website design can help your business dramatically. A good website will not only look good, but also consider how the user experience can help you improve your website’s conversion rate. By working on the right page design, user flow, content strategy and call-to-action it is possible to turn a 1% conversion rate to a much higher number.
Using the previous scenario with a 5% conversion rate applied instead, could lead to these incremental improvements:
$20 / 5% = $400
Cost per lead = $400
Sale rate = 50%
Cost per sale = $800
Considering the average amount brokers make on a $500,000 loan is approximately $3,000, the example scenario changes from a loss to a guaranteed profit.