This is a great time for mortgage marketers to get their direct mail out the door. We are seeing a resurgence of marketing mail in the insurance and financial sectors. Right now with rates at the lower end of the scale, the mortgage industry is doing a lot of mailing.
Direct mail continues to be a cost-efficient, effective and reliable marketing strategy for mortgage companies. According to the USPS, 98% of Americans check their mail every day. People look forward to receiving their mail. If your mailer stands out, it will be noticed. If you’re mailing to the right target market at the right time, you can bet it will be opened.
Mortgage lenders who want to generate solid leads with direct mail need to be smart about their tactics.
These 6 simple suggestions can make your mortgage direct mail successful.
Targeting
One of the most important steps when it comes to marketing and promoting your company is to target the right audience. When you don’t spend the time to target the right group of people, your efforts will be worthless.
Right now, the mortgage industry is all about refinance offers.
According to Black Knight, a mortgage technology and analytics provider, nearly 19 million or 43% of 30 year mortgage holders are refi-eligible,
That means they have a minimum 720 credit score, at least 20% equity and can reduce their mortgage rate by at least 0.75%. Most of these homeowners could save about $300 each month by refinancing. That monthly savings can be a powerful incentive.
In the wonderful world of data, a good mailing list company can help you select prospects with this criteria.
There are 2 types of data a mortgage marketer can select. Pre-screened credit-based data and marketing-based data. If you want to learn more about the differences between prescreened data and invitation to apply data, click HERE to check out this article.
If you don’t spend the time (and money) to target the right group of people, all your efforts will be worthless.
Lead with Benefits
Every piece of direct mail that you send has a clear and compelling purpose. There needs to be a reason for individuals to call and talk to you. If you are simply sending a mailer with a list of your services, most readers won’t care.
Remember how I mentioned that homeowners who refinance can save about $300 per month? Well, that’s a powerful incentive to want to refinance. Your marketing piece needs to focus on the benefits of those savings. Talk about what they can do with those savings – fix up the house, pay off bills, send the kid to college.
Those benefits become the real motivation to respond to your mailing.
Differentiate Yourself
Your mail piece needs to highlight your competitive advantage. Sure, every lender’s job is to make the loan process go smoothly. You need to show how you differentiate yourself from other lenders.
Can you emphasize your great service? What about your speed, flexibility or easy-to-use-website. Do you have any testimonials you can feature?
Smart Mortgage Marketers will stress the extra savings while offering incentives to cut down on closing costs.
These differentiators can capture your reader’s attention and give them a reason to reach out.
Be Creative
Get rid of the white #10 envelope for your mortgage direct mail. Or, make that envelope work for you. While content is crucial regardless of your marketing campaign, so is the look of your mailer.
Studies show that individuals only retain 10% of the information that they hear and 20% of the information that they read. But, they will retain up to 80% of the information that they see.
This means that you want to keep all of your mailers visual, exciting, and professional. If you aren’t creative or have little design experience, work with professionals to help you create a mailer that will easily capture the attention of your audience.
You’re on a budget? Postcard mailers also work in the mortgage industry. According to both the ANA and USPS, 50.9% of recipients say they find postcards useful.
Personalize
Your mailers should be personalized. Never, never send a piece of mortgage direct mail mailing to current resident. That’s an immediate toss into the trash.
Your targeted list has lots of information you can use in your mailer, including property address, loan type and approximate equity in the home.
Maybe you can offer a couple of options within the body of your letter. For example – If your outstanding loan is A, and your interest rate is B, we can offer you a rate of C and you will save approximately D per month.
This shows you know something about your prospect. It shows you’ve done your homework in contacting them with your offer.
Approximately 69% of people feel that direct mail is more personalized than any email or internet ad. This means you have a great opportunity to connect with your audience.
Test
One of the key components of creating a winning direct mail program is testing. That’s the best way to make sure your mailing works.
Let’s create a simple testing scenario that doesn’t take forever and doesn’t break the bank. If your list and mailing goal is 5,000, pull 10% if the list for your test. That’s the official USPS Certified Direct Mail Professional (CDMP) guideline to receive statistically accurate results.
Take those 500 records and create 2 different letters, using different offers. Maybe one advertises no closing costs and the other features a $200 cash back. See which one performs better. That becomes the one you use.
According to the CDMP, if you get below 1 percent, it indicates that something is off. If you get a response rate higher than 3% – go with it!