Mortgage Automation: How To 10X Your Business and Win Back Your Time

Automation has changed the mortgage industry for good. But is it for the better?

As a mortgage originator actively closing business in 2020, you know there are some things on the backend you could probably be handling better—but who really has time to plan, execute and update their existing workflows?

For better or worse, automation does take time… at least, in the beginning. But there is good news, with the right systems in place, you can multiply the number of clients you serve, raise the quality of your services, and close loans faster without hiring additional staff. 

And the best part? Setting up just one effective automation process today, will continue to help grow your business for years to come. 

But there is a catch: the mortgage business is a zero-sum game. If someone closes more loans with automation, someone else closes less.

That’s why it’s paramount to invest in the mortgage automation workflows that are truly the best fit for your business—and it’s critical to do it now, before the competition catches on.

In this article, we’ll cover the main benefits of automating your mortgage processes, as well as the specific workflows you can use to 10X your mortgage business.

Table of Contents

• What Is Mortgage Automation?

• Top 5 Benefits Of Mortgage Automation You Actually Use

• The A to Z of Mortgage Automation: Grow Your Lending Business With A Scalable System

• The Power Of Smart Automation

What Is Mortgage Automation?

In a nutshell, mortgage automation allows you to run parts of your mortgage business on autopilot. Using the right combination of automated tools, workflows and software, you can process more loans in less time.

But the real power of automation is that it can be applied to many different aspects of your mortgage business. 

• Are you struggling to consistently follow up on your clients? Set up automated campaigns so that no lead in your database is left unnurtured. 

• Recipients not opening emails? Automated drip campaigns can boost your open rates by up to 80%

• Loan officers spending too much time on non-selling activities? Automate routine tasks and save up to 55% of the time employers spend on non-selling activities. 

And that’s just the beginning. Let’s take a closer look at some of the core benefits of automating your mortgage business, piece by piece.

Top 5 Benefits Of Mortgage Automation You Actually Use

Benefit #1. Reduce Speed to Lead to Seconds

According to the Harvard Business Review, chances of qualifying a lead when responding within the first five minutes are 21 times higherthan when responding within 30 minutes. Yet only 26% of companies manage to respond within 5 minutes. 

You can easily outpace the competition by setting up simple automated onboarding emails and texts to instantly greet every new lead as soon as they share their contact details. 

If you have a team, automation will also help you distribute incoming leads between your agents so that the ones that are the most qualified are aligned with the right prospects.

Benefit #2. Consistently Nurture Your Leads

The money is in the follow up. In fact, some studies suggest that 80% of sales occur after at least five follow-ups with a prospect.

The good news is, almost every follow-up can be automated. For example, you can send highly-personalized email and text drips to your leads with a predefined cadence. This allows you to nurture relationships and build trust with prospects, even before they decide to do business with you.

Automation helps you easily segment leads based on their location, last action, or areas of interest so with the right system you can follow up with the best offer for a particular client.

Benefit #3. Boost Your Loan Processing Speed

Automation lets you process loans faster. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, lenders reduced loan processing time by around 10 days with a little help from technology. And with the rise of online loan applications, borrowers expect loan processing times to decrease even more.

To supercharge your loan processing speed, you can integrate your CRM system with loan origination software and automatically trigger actions and notifications whenever loan status updates.

Additionally, automation allows you to reduce room for error when processing loans and potentially save thousands of dollars in compliance fines and penalties. 

Benefit #4. Increase Your Amount Of Referrals

Ramping up referrals is one of the most powerful lead generation tactics you can employ.

But when you focus on closing as many loans as you can in the moment, keeping in touch with past clients often becomes an afterthought.

And yet 60% of customer referrals happen within the first six months after the loan is closed. 

Automated referral campaigns allow you to stay in touch with your past clients and increase your referrals, without lifting a finger. After a loan is closed, simply set up an automated series of post-loan emails designed to keep the client relationship strong and help you stay top of mind. 

Benefit #5. Easily Scale Your Mortgage Business

It’s pretty difficult to scale a mortgage business that has many manual workflows—and the last thing you want to do is scale your messy and chaotic systems. People make mistakes, and unfortunately, without the right system in place these mistakes will only multiply as your lead count grows. 

In other words, when there are cracks in your systems, you can expect at least some of your leads to slip through them.

On the flip side, when critical aspects of your business are automated, there’s really no limit to how many leads you can work with at the same time. 

Even if you decide to invest in new marketing channels or lead databases, you can rest easy knowing that smart automation has your back. If you want to turn your lead flow on full blast, you can easily and automatically qualify and nurture every lead.

The A to Z of Mortgage Automation: Grow Your Lending Business With A Scalable System

Automated Dialer: Get Your LOs On The Phone With The Right Prospects

Ever thought about how much time you spend punching a dial pad? 

With an automated dialer, you and your loan officers can automatically run through a large database of leads in much less time, increasing productivity by 200% to 300% compared to manual dialling. 

But how can an automated system possibly know who to call when?

Glad you asked. Some sales platforms (Shape included) offer a smart lead prioritization system, which ensures that every call the system makes for you will be targeted to the most promising lead, at the most optimal time.

At Shape, we use a lead prioritization algorithm that analyzes each lead in your database based on a list of 27 key criteria to instantly connect loan officers with the leads most likely to convert. 

Here are just some of the benefits of an automated dialer for your mortgage business: 

• Contact more leads in less time. Save hours by making sure your reps aren’t wasting time manually dialing every lead in your database.

• Convert leads faster. Consistently follow up on your hottest leads at exactly the right time.

• Distribute the right leads to the right people. Automatically distribute via Round Robin or your own custom rules to ensure optimal performance across the team.

• Instantly plug in new lead sources. Quickly work through large databases of potential clients and easily scale lead gen and prospecting up or down as needed.

SMS + MMS: Skyrocket Your Opening Rates

According to a Gartner survey, SMS open rates can be as high as 98%, compared to a mere 20% for emails. Additionally, the majority of people respond to SMS within just 90 seconds.  

Here’s how you can use automated SMS texts to boost lead conversion rates:

• Improve customer experience. Automatically notify clients with texts whenever their loan status changes by integrating your CRM with your LOS.

• Increase engagement with new offers. Send your best offers via text or MMS to maximize engagement.

• Use top-performing automated sequences. Combine emails and SMS texts into powerful marketing sequences to keep your leads engaged over time.

• Personalize your texts. Customize your SMS texts by directly using contact details pulled directly from your central CRM or sales system

• Stay compliant. Use a fully compliant platform to make sure your messages aren’t being flagged as spam. In Shape, we queue your messages to send just one text every 4 seconds to mimic human texting behavior for maximum engagement.

Automated Email Marketing: Send Emails That Generate Real Business

When it comes to ROI, not many marketing channels beat email. In fact, research shows that every dollar spent on email marketing can yield as much as $42 in return.

But achieving the highest possible ROI is only doable if you send the right email to the right person at the right time. Thankfully, this is something automation can help you achieve. 

Here are just some of the benefits of automated email marketing: 

• Higher open rates. Set up automated emails triggered by specific user actions and get up to 141.6% higher open rates than your standard business-as-usual emails.

• Boost revenue with automated lead segmentation. The right mortgage CRM will help you segment your leads based on your own custom criteria and send highly-personalized emails that drive 18X more revenue. 

• Create powerful email drip campaigns. According to KissMetrics, marketing automation paired with sequenced email campaigns leads to up to 20% more sales.

• Convert more leads by personalizing your emails. Personalized emails deliver 6X higher transactional rates. Use your CRM system to automatically personalize relevant emails for every lead.

Call Recording: The Power Of Tracking From A Central System

According to Hubspot, the majority of businesses use call recording mainly as a way to increase customer quality service or dispute controversial events. But there are other benefits that call recording provides for mortgage businesses.

Here’s why it’s important to have an automated call recording system for your mortgage business:

• Focused sales. Allows your sales reps to focus on the prospects and actively engage with their pain points rather than taking notes during conversations. 

• Advanced training. Your CRM gives you a full history of conversations with every lead across all channels so that new agents have the full context for every recorded call.

• Protect your business. Stay compliant and avoid potentially paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in regulatory fines by monitoring all marketing and sales activities from one central, compliant platform.

eSignature: Make Document Management As Seamless As Possible

According to Fannie Mae, 66% of homebuyers would prefer to handle their mortgages entirely online. 

No wonder the number of eSignature transactions has increased tenfold within just five years. 

Integrate e-signatures directly into your loan management process to gain the following benefits:

• Save time on paperwork for you and your clients. Add and edit eSignature documents directly from within your CRM

• Process loans faster. Automatically change lead status in your systems as soon as your lead signs, automatically schedule follow up actions in your calendar.

• Improve customer satisfaction rates. Trigger emails and follow-ups based on a change in eSignature status to keep the transaction pipeline moving.

The Power Of Smart Automation

The mortgage industry is changing fast. Loan officers are no longer competing based on who has the best offers or personalities. 

These days, it’s all about the system and service. 

Clearly, the role of automation in separating the best from the rest will be crucial. And yes, automation does take time and effort upfront. But after you set your processes in place, it’s only a matter of making small adjustments that make a very big impact for your clients and your business as an expert loan originator.

Ready to see for yourself? Find out how an automated mortgage marketing and sales platform can remove the bottlenecks from your transaction pipeline and help you consistently generate more leads.

Sign up for your free trial of Shape today!

Article Source:- https://setshape.com/blog/mortgage-automation