November 13, 2013 | By RGR Marketing Blog

To be heard or seen, it’s important to stand out from the crowd and offer something different than your competitors. As a mortgage broker, you can do this by using direct mail as part of your mortgage lead follow-up process.

 

 

 

 

How To Use Direct Mail

Direct mail is a system used to nurture prospects and mortgage leads by keeping your firm’s logo in plain sight so it's always first in mind. While everyone is busy trying to get a prospects attention online, your company’s name will be first on their mind because your mailings will be right next to him or her on their desk.  This means that when the time is right for the prospect and they are ready to finance their real estate, they will be calling you first.

Converting mortgage leads with direct mail will take innovation and repetitive action. In the same way that most mortgage leads are actually reached after the 5th call attempt, as we spoke about in our “tried and true” principles blog post, sending one postcard out without a follow-up will not yield positive results.

A successful direct mail campaign will see various forms of direct mail items containing relevant information for the prospect being sent out in regular intervals.

The other key aspect to direct mail is to personalize the mail as much as possible. Building trust between yourself and your prospect is essential to converting mortgage leads. By personalizing direct mail, the prospect will come to trust your company brand more.

It’s important to use the right words to project the image and message you would like to send to your prospects. Tweaking the wording, text positioning and even font used on the direct mail items can make an impact on whether or not the mail is read.

What to Send

There are a plethora of choices when it comes to mail items to send out. As a follow-up for mortgage leads, the idea would really be to use direct mail as a way of keeping a lead warm. To do this, their interest must be peaked. Some of the following strategies may help:

  • Newsletters – Newsletters serve three main advantages; prospects are reminded about financing real estate, they are reminded that they were interested in what you had to say on the subject and you can establish your brokerage firm as an authority on the subject with some well-written articles. By including relevant local news that will appeal to your readers, you can keep them engaged on a weekly, bi-monthly or monthly basis.

 

  • Handwritten envelopes – For small specifically targeted campaigns, adding a handwritten envelope to the prospect can create an incredibly powerful connection that is rarely seen within an email campaign. For example, if a prospect had divulged that they would like to finance some real estate in a certain area, a savvy mortgage broker may be able to convert that lead with a simple handwritten envelope containing a list of properties in the area that the prospect specified.

 

  • Postcard – The postcard is one of the most favored forms of direct mail. One of the reasons for this is that the small postcard can yield high impact for a small cost. Postcards don’t require opening so the intended message will definitely be seen no matter what, and many postcards are saved in prominent places within a home -- meaning a lead has the potential to stay warm, longer.

Benefits of Direct Mail

In the digital age, where every company seems to be focusing their efforts on social media marketing, online marketing and telemarketing, direct mail does not appear to be at the forefront of most people’s marketing efforts. For a broker, who wants to convert their mortgage leads, direct mail would mean contacting leads and prospects using avenues that haven’t been saturated by all other mortgage brokers.

While using telemarketing alongside email campaigns is a tried and tested way of converting mortgage leads, there are a large percentage of leads that are lost. Most often those mortgage leads will be lost due to the prospect not being contacted successfully by the broker. Calls can be cancelled if people are too busy and spam filters can ensure that well-crafted follow-up emails never reach the prospect in the first place. With direct mail though, the only filter in place is the person reading the mail and for the most part, even if the mail is cast aside as soon as it has been read, the most important thing to note is that the message was read in the first place.

In the past, the cost of direct mail was off-putting to some businesses compared to that of an email campaign. However, with digital printing and the advancement in technology, the cost per lead for direct mail is actually cheaper than telemarketing costs. Compared to print and PPC options, direct mail is evenly matched. It is the return on investment that is the most impressive for direct mail and makes it far more cost effective and worthwhile than in previous years.

Direct Mail Works

According to DMA’s Fact Book 2013, 65 percent of 16-65 year olds make purchases due to direct mail, and the response rate to direct mail is a huge 4.4 percent; which is impressive compared to the 0.12 percent response rate that email yields. Although it’s always advisable to follow up and nurture leads using a variety of different channels, it’s apparent that there is a real place for direct mail within the mortgage sales process.

How many pieces of direct mail do you send out to nurture a single lead?

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