Smart Mortgage Marketing

These days, many in the mortgage industry are turning to direct mail postcards as a mortgage marketing tool. Direct mail is a proven marketing medium and has been for decades. It also gives the mortgage marketer the power to speak directly to a specific audience, such as homeowners.

But mortgage marketing with direct mail presents certain challenges, and these challenges need to be addressed before one begins a direct mail postcard campaign. For one thing, consumers receive a lot more advertising mail than they used to, so there’s more competition inside the mailbox. There’s also the natural skepticism people have toward direct mail marketing, and marketing in general.

These challenges can all be overcome if you take a modern approach to direct mail mortgage marketing. So how do you modernize your direct mail marketing? How do you motivate the modern consumer? For one thing, you can take them where they’re comfortable going – online.

To get the best results from your direct mail mortgage marketing, you should tap into the buzz of Internet activity currently taking place. Most people in the market for a new mortgage (or a mortgage refinance) use the Internet at some point to conduct research. The Internet helps people learn about mortgage, find mortgage companies, ask questions about mortgages … the list goes on.

This Internet activity is already happening, so you don’t have to do anything to generate it. All you have to do is capitalize on it. So how can direct mail mortgage marketing help you capitalize on Internet traffic? Here is one of the most effective strategies I have witnessed to date:

The Online Resource Center
With this mortgage marketing strategy, the concept is to create an online resource center with mortgage information relevant to your products and your key audience, and then point to it with your mortgage marketing postcards. By having a variety of lead-generation tactics in place on the website, you could ultimately make contact with an endless stream of website visitors.

By featuring the mortgage resource center, you are adding value to your direct mail postcards. You’re giving postcard recipients a good reason to (A) keep the postcard, (B) visit the resource website, and (C) contact you. This last point, direct contact, comes from having lead-generation techniques in place on your website, and also from having your contact information on the postcard.

Create a “Super Site”
The key here is to build true value into your mortgage resource website. Offer mortgage articles, glossaries, comparison charts, etc. Provide an “Ask the Expert” button so people can send their questions to you (instant mortgage leads). By adding this kind of quality content to the resource website, you’ll also be improving the website’s search engine visibility — and added bonus.

How the Postcard Relates
With this mortgage marketing approach, the real work is to develop the mortgage resource website in the first place. Once the resource website is built, the postcard’s job is fairly straightforward. In fact, this approach will transform the postcard into a welcomed messenger. That’s the key to success with direct mail mortgage marketing.

Can you see the lead-harvesting potential of such an approach? Can you see the PR, branding and search engine benefits as well? I can, and it gets me excited just thinking about it!

Related article: Direct Mail Mortgage Marketing