Mortgage experts, including mortgage loan officers (MLOs), need to reach out to prospective clients. Multichannel marketing is, as the name implies, marketing yourself and your services across different channels (print, digital, social media, website, etc.) and is an important factor for reaching your target audiences. But one of the most useful channels, and one that you should strongly consider focusing on, is email marketing. 

Email marketing remains a powerful tool to communicate with prospective clients. It offers a consistent point of contact; a client probably checks email more regularly than social media, and they’re less likely to change their address very often. If a potential borrower has shown interest in working with you (which is how you got their email in the first place), you already know they may want to engage with you further. But it can be a nuanced art to turn a list of prospects’ emails into actual business. So how do you do it? 

What You’ll Need 

There are a few things to consider as you build out your email marketing tactics:

  1. It’s helpful to have a marketing plan, so that this work can be part of a larger strategy. Know what you’re aiming to get out of email marketing, and when you might need to switch things up. 
  2. For obvious reasons, you need to have a list of emails. It also helps to have a basic segmentation into categories (former, current, and future clients, for example) so you can personalize your communication. 
  3. You should also have a strong sense of clients’ needs, and how your emails are helping answer a question or solve a problem for them. Do they need to know more about rates? Refinancing? The mortgage process? Usually this need is determined by their segmentation and where they are in the sales funnel (i.e., whether they’re just looking, ready to commit, or somewhere in between).
  4. You need at least some basic content. That could be as simple as automated email templates for recipients in particular stages of their relationship with you, or it could be longer and more complex: social media posts, videos, newsletters, white papers, presentations from webinars, and so on. The choice to make content depends on your expertise and your bandwidth—and the needs of your clients. But it will make email marketing easier if you have something to send them. 

You can also deploy an email marketing strategy for networking connections or commercial real estate pros—but this post is focused specifically on prospective clients who aren’t as well-versed in the process and could benefit the most from email marketing tactics. 

Determine Your Level of Personalization

Marketing automation will be your biggest ally for any kind of email marketing. Without automation, you’d have to conduct your strategy manually. That could mean composing individual emails each time you want to connect with someone. The key to making automation sound less like a robot and more like a human being is through personalization. 

Knowing the person’s name is a first step, and having that name or nickname recorded correctly in your system is another. Someone may use their middle initial, for example, but it looks strange to address an email to “Paul W.” instead of just “Paul.” Having a sentence or two to customize the particulars of your relationship with them is also helpful. Even if it’s just at the beginning, reminding your recipient where you met/how you know each other and indicating that you know what their specific needs are goes a long way. 

Speaking in plain English and without a lot of technical jargon—at least over email—is also a useful strategy. There’s no need to over-complicate your messaging. “Thanks so much for your time the other day. I think I can be a useful resource as you continue looking for a house. Can we schedule a call when you’re farther along in the process?” is all you need to do to help a prospect remember you when they’re ready to start the application process.

Develop an Email Marketing Workflow

You’ll need to identify key moments in your relationship with a prospect to send an email. Timing is key: you’ll want to send a note exactly when they most need your services or exactly when they need to be reminded of your presence. Here are a few key times you can reach out to customers:

  1. After initial contact
  2. After they’ve attended a webinar/downloaded a piece of content from your website
  3. After they’ve asked for rates from you/asked about optimal timing for a loan
  4. After they’ve obtained a pre-approval
  5. When they’ve started filling out a mortgage application, but haven’t completed it
  6. When you have content (social media, video, etc.) that relates to any of the above 
  7. When they just followed you on social media or you just posted something that relates to their situation
  8. When you’ve had a successful transaction and you’re seeing how they’re doing post-closing
  9. When you’re asking for referrals from former clients
  10. When you’ve lost touch and you’re aiming to re-engage with them
  11. When you’d like to wish them a happy holiday, or anniversary of closing on a deal, or some other general messaging

These are the “triggers” that serve as your cue to generate an email or a campaign. Automation will help you reach out immediately without wasting the moment. For example, you can identify exactly which prospects downloaded a resource, then set up follow-up emails right away.

Identify Drip Email Marketing Opportunities

A “drip” email campaign is a series of emails after a specific trigger—one that indicates a prospect is farther down in the sales funnel, and thus more likely to work with you. A particular trigger like this could look like this: a prospect tells you they’re interested in a particular property, they get a pre-approval, or they ask specifically about the loan process. These are usually good candidates for a drip campaign because they’ve indicated interest but haven’t taken definitive action—yet.

So, you schedule a series of emails, spaced close together, to continue to remind them about your presence and offer to help them with what they need. Whether it’s three emails or seven, you get the chance to customize exactly how many emails you send and when. You can also customize your messages so you’re not sending the same email over and over or making the prospect irritated.

Use Data to Assess and Make Changes

One of the best parts of email marketing is the data you can glean from the interactions. Did the prospects open the email? Did they click on any links inside your message (a.k.a. engagement)? Did they click on unsubscribe, indicating they don’t need your services? Did they engage with some content but not others? Have they changed their behavior recently, either opening more or fewer of your emails?

This activity helps you understand which prospects are truly worthwhile, and which ones you can spend less time on. You can also assess what content generally connects with recipients, and which content you can consider doing less of. The key for a successful email marketing strategy is adapting to your clients’ needs and making sure you’re always sending the right message at the right time, to the right person.

Need help getting your email marketing plan off the ground, or optimizing it as an essential part of your business? Click here to start your free trial of Aduvo, the marketing automation software for mortgage pros. You could have a library of marketing emails and status alerts ready to go in no time!