Join National Mortgage News reporter Spencer Lee in a conversation with Whitney Blessington and Shannon Schmidt, chief marketing officers at Churchill Mortgage and VanDyk Mortgage, about how lenders can evaluate their marketing strategies to generate business in a challenging, highly competitive market.
Transcript:
Spencer Lee (00:14):
Good afternoon. Welcome to the Arizent Leaders Forum. My name is Spencer Lee, a reporter at National Mortgage News, one of several publications under the Arizent brand. Very happy to have you with us for this discussion today titled How to Approach Marketing in a Challenging Business Cycle. Our goal in the next 40 plus minutes is to help industry professionals, those in the mortgage industry navigate through uncertain times, looking at the state of the market today, how they can target potentially target customers, maybe target special niches in the industry based on today's conditions, the importance of customer retention, how marketing can be used in recruitment and the role technology can play. That seems to be an evergreen topic. So we'll touch on several different themes today, hopefully for a live and very fun discussion. I have two marketing experts with us. They can provide some of their insights and they're both from lenders with wide national footprints.
(01:13)
I'll introduce them to you in just a moment, but first I'd like to invite those in the audience to send questions over. We have a little chat function down there. We can type your questions and hopefully we'll have some time at the end to do some Q&A, get to a few of those questions and if not all of them. But to get started, I'd like to introduce our guests that'll be sharing, like I said, their insights for the next 40 minutes. First, we have Whitney Blessington. She holds the role of chief marketing officer at Churchill Mortgage based just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She's been with Churchill for several years. Before that she worked in brand content and strategy within the technology industry, so maybe she has some tech insights for us and she also has previously also worked at Bank of America. Alongside with us, we have Shannon Schmidt, the chief marketing Officer at VanDyk Mortgage, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(02:08)
She's been in that role for the past year. Before that, she spent over a decade at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, working in mortgage marketing. So she has a lot of probably insights to bring from that experience and she has experience in both the banking and nonbank side. So thank you. I appreciate having both of you with us here today. I just wanted to get started, like I said, by just addressing the state of the industry the last 12 to 15 months. Needless to say, it has been at an adventure. Night and day from the previous 12 to 15 months, you could say. We've seen it in layoff announcements. We haven't seen as many lately. Knock on wood. We also seen the data, let me pull that up. I have a little bit of data. Latest lender survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association came out yesterday.
(02:57)
Volumes down 35% year over year. Refi is down 45%, and while much of the conversation is centered around mortgage rates and how they've sort of disincentivized any refinances purchase, mortgages are also off by almost a third, 32% at the beginning of the year. I think volumes were down at their lowest since the late 90s. So I wanted to ask both of you based on your experience. You both have a lot of industry experience, you've been through a few cycles. How different is this slowdown compared to other cycles and how's that affected the way you approach marketing? I'll start with Whitney. Your thoughts,
Whitney Blessington (03:36):
Thank you, Spencer. Thank you so much for having me today. Appreciate it. Well, it is quite different and just as you said, we've gone from one extreme to the other and we're on this pendulum ride, but where we're really seeing our opportunity is in the purchase market. We've noticed that the purchase landscape looks a little different as you sort of indicated before. We're seeing a lot of first time home buyers enter into the market. Not only do we have a bunch of millennials that have been potential first-time home buyers, but now the Gen Zs are coming in. I think they comprised about 9% of buyers in 2022. And that of course will grow over time. So we're seeing a lot of focus on the first-time home buyer, home buyer education, readiness assessment and things like that because the average purchase buyer last year was a 30, was that 36 years old. So it's much older. That's the highest age on record. So there's a lot of education that needs to happen to get people into homeownership.
(04:36)
The second area of opportunity we see is investment-property buyer. So one in six right now are investment property lookers for purchase business. They are in the market for short- and long -term rentals as well as construction-to-perm opportunities. And we also find a situation where we have a lot of accidental landlords, people who have homes at 2% a 30 year 2% ,don't want to lose that great deal, and so they just buy another property and become a landlord. So we call them accidental landlords. That's a pretty interesting little niche that we're really focused on.
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And then I would say the final group is kind of like the foundation, the backbone of all purchase markets, which are milestones. We essentially target, we call them the six D's. Life happens, and certain milestones are something we look forward to. Some are unavoidable. And the six D's are what we create little niche sub-segments for, which is, I'm not sure if you all have heard of it, but it's like diplomas, dogs, diamonds, diapers, divorce and death. So generally those milestones generally create purchase transactions. So we like to focus on those people in their time of need, try to understand their pain points. And so we've really doubled down on those efforts as well.
Spencer Lee (06:17):
Yeah, I've seen talk about accidental landlords, I've seen the headlines and that seems to be a growing trend. I don't know how big it is, but yeah, no one wants to lose those interest rates. So Shannon, what are you seeing?
Shannon Schmidt (06:29):
Yeah, I would say I agree with everything Whitney said, and I think there's just a couple other areas that we're thinking a little bit about, which includes — we still continue to see low inventory as we look towards the market. And so compared with the affordability issues that are also in the market, it's kind of like this rubber band — where are we going to see the breaking point of where that pent up demand comes back in? And so as Whitney mentioned, getting in front of the first-time home buyers as well as those move up or accidental landlords and making sure that they're ready for that move when that market hits that place where they're at. And so some of those relationship-building tactics have become extremely important to us and our LOs as we look to the future and just not only being there right at the point of purchase, but kind of growing that relationship with leads and with past customers so that we can be that first in line when they're ready to make that move and that market changes for them.
Spencer Lee (07:25):
You mentioned relationships and Gen Z. We've, some of my colleagues have written a lot about that audience or that segment of consumers. And what are you doing to try to attract them? I mean, what kind of efforts are you putting out? You mentioned Whitney, I think education, that's something I've covered a little bit. Can you dive a little more into some of the efforts?
Whitney Blessington (07:45):
Absolutely. So obviously we have affordability calculators and different types of calculators online. Those have been around, everyone pretty much has those, but we're doing something we call the readiness assessment screener, where essentially it's like a multistep form where you basically have someone self-serve and identify themselves if they are ready to buy a home and interested in talking to someone. We have a consumer-direct division, so when leads come in, some are just kind of kicking the tires. Those readiness assessments, multistep forms are very helpful in helping people understand — OK, I need more education. Let me talk to a loan officer about what might my next steps look like if I'm not ready to submit an application versus someone who's gotten a different outcome on the screener and then they're ready to talk to someone and get a pre-approval. So it's about kind of segmenting that large group and treating them based upon what their needs are, meeting them where they're at essentially is what we're trying to do. But we have obviously changed the advertising where we are. Obviously we advertise now on YouTube and different, a lot on social media and things like that to attract and brand, build our brand kind of where the younger generations are at this point. So we've tweaked a little bit on that.
Spencer Lee (09:23):
Any thoughts, Shannon?
Shannon Schmidt (09:24):
Yeah, I was just going to say, so Spencer, I think the one difference between Whitney and what we're doing her — we run a branch model. So we don't have consumer direct. And so a lot of our efforts when you're thinking about Gen Z are really getting our LO's really comfortable with video, personalized, making sure that we're in the channels that those buyers are in. And so I might not love TikTok, but my buyers do, and so do many of their realtors. And so how do I get comfortable, get in front of that video camera and start creating not just straight up mortgage content, but that really relatable, teach-me-who-you-are, be-authentic. Show me who your personality is because I really want to know who I'm working with. It's like that. I know we're going to spend some time and talk a little bit about AI, but it's that — how do you take the automation and pair it with the person, so that as those people are coming through and building those relationships that they know they can come back to you because you're meeting them in the channels that they're at today.
Spencer Lee (10:23):
That's very, very interesting. Very good point. Just meeting, building that relationship, letting them know a loan officer, building their personality so that the consumer knows who they are. But affordability? I've covered it a bit. It's, it's always an issue, but it seems it's definitely been more of an issue the past two or three years. A lot of these homes today — it largely depends on the market, but a lot of them are unaffordable just for the firs-time for starter homes and such. And how do you address affordability with some of these consumers?
Whitney Blessington (11:00):
For us at Churchill, it might be a little bit different than other lenders. We are a lender with a different mission. We like to see people ultimately become debt free and own their home free and clear. We feel that that is the real American dream. So a lot of our education and content is focused on getting the right mortgage for you, a smarter mortgage and not getting in over your head. So we start with the concept of starting with 25% of your net take-home pay and look at the 15-year fixed as our foundation, and then we'll — but no one size does not fit all, so that may not work for everybody. So then we educate them on what their other options are, and we always put forth a total cost analysis where they can compare side by side different loan products, what that would look like in terms of the total cost of the loan with your interest included. So we really do focus on educating. It's part of building that relationship that Shannon mentioned and becoming a trusted guide is how we approach things and take more of a conservative approach.
Shannon Schmidt (12:11):
And while we're not maybe the same in some of those regards, Whitney, I think that that's just a good tenant of the entire industry as we continue to see inflation and some of the other things that are taking place around us. Getting people into a mortgage they can afford is super important, but while we talk about affordability, rents have skyrocketed as well. And so it's this kind of how do you approach renters as well and help them get into a situation where they can be successful. And with that education, relationship building, et cetera, if you can be in a home that continues to historically appreciate, et cetera, you may set yourself up in a very different financial position as you move forward.
(12:51)
And so just making sure that we're doing that education to Whitney's point, doing that loan comparison and really helping our LOs, and then in turn, their customers understand what, not only can I afford, but what feels comfortable to me. Where can I live that life that, so I can eat pizza if I want on a Friday night, et cetera. And so, it's that consultant approach not just how do I get the sale, how do I get this and then also do your next loan because you've got that move up or that refi, et cetera, that comes back around.
Spencer Lee (13:21):
Pizza, the perfect Friday night dinner and you don't want to forgo that. So no, no. We've talked mostly about purchases right now, especially for first-time buyers or for Gen Z buyers, younger buyers. But I wanted to quickly ask about refi's. I think, I can't remember, I think 20, late 2021 , one of the analysts I regularly speak to said refinances are going to go through the floor. It's going to be — they'll just plummet. And he was right. Are they just a nonconversation at the moment? Maybe Shannon, what are your thoughts about that?
Shannon Schmidt (14:00):
One of the areas that we still are seeing some success in pushing some effort towards this cash-out refis. So I know that for many Americans, they've taken on a lot of debt as we've seen inflation. And while it seems a little funny to say, I'm going to go from a 2½, a 3, to a 6 or a 7 in terms of interest rate, if you're looking at somebody that's really struggling from an economic position, it can be a really useful tool. And so we've got a number of LOs that have really had some success in that area.
(14:34)
And then, I would also just say, and I'm sure Whitney feels the same way, but as we move forward, we think a lot about the purchase market that we're doing right now as our future refi opportunity. So how do we make some offers there and continue to make sure that those individuals know that when we do see a market turnaround, we'll be there for them to help them change that mortgage payment in a traditional refi.
Whitney Blessington (14:56):
Yeah, I love that, Shannon. Also to that point, we "marry the house and date the rate" is a common saying that we've heard, so we've used that as well. And because you're right, rents are high, especially in certain markets. They're exorbitant. So marry the house and date the rate, and then knowing that it will be ultimately be a refi opportunity and the key is just to stay in touch with people and really focus on that relationship aspect.
Shannon Schmidt (15:23):
Yeah, and I think one of the themes, Whitney, that I'm just seeing and hearing is — I've been talking to you and Spencer and the rest of just the industry in general is — it's unique to each person. That hasn't changed in the mortgage industry. And so how do we help get to know those clients, get to know those referral partners so that we can put that right product, that right solution in front of them for what their situation looks like, whether that's a rent situation, whether it's cash out, whether it's refi or getting them ready for their next home purchase. We talked about affordability, et cetera. Maybe they've got some credit issues to work through and putting the right tactics in place to make that happen.
Spencer Lee (16:01):
Good advice. Just talking about rates or rent when you were mentioning that rent is high, I can attest to that. I live in New York, so it's always high, but yes, rent is always an issue. But you mentioned a few things that sort of the perfect pivot, but before we get to that, just about future customers, future refis. But before we get to that, I just want to remind the audience that we do have Q&A available. If you have any questions at the end of this discussion, hopefully we can get to a few of them. Just feel free to type your questions in that little chat window.
(16:33)
And you mentioned future refis. Customer retention. That's one thing I wanted to touch on. Once you have the customer, once you have a buyer, they get their home, you've hopefully, hopefully been their lender, and hopefully they're current on their payments, and they get to keep their home. What after that? And like banks, they have several other products. They could promote an auto loan, savings for their kids' education or whatever. A lot of nonbanks don't quite have that option. We've seen, we've seen a little growth in that over the past year, but what can you do to make sure that Churchill is still at the top of mind among your current customers? Or VanDyk? Not playing favorites here.
Whitney Blessington (17:21):
Well, I'll take it, and we'll go to Shannon. I can't wait to hear what she says as well ,and I can learn from her. But honestly, retention marketing, our database marketing is the bedrock of our company. We put a lot of focus on it and I've got half of my team really trying to constantly find new topics. What we try to do is — since we are a national company, we always are seeking input from our field, the production field. Understanding what's going on in the marketplace. Getting little inklings of what's on the horizon, such as, back in the early summer, the 2-1 buy down became this emerging product that we all jumped on. I heard about it back in late spring from a branch manager out in California. So I'm very collaborative with my production team, and that leads me to what we do is we take that content and we wrap it into weekly email sweepers and smart bombs. That's what I call them.
(18:24)
Sweepers are emails that go out to the entire database, whereas a smart bomb will be a targeted, highly targeted communication — perhaps someone that's got a VA loan and we have a VA opportunity for them. So we focus on those sweepers and smart bombs. In addition, I have an agent-focused email that goes out weekly and we are persistently consistent with our weekly communications. On top of that, I have, of course, CRM campaigns based upon the disposition or profile of the client. And that is something that the loan officer can trigger themselves. I've seen in the chat someone was asking if we include texting. Yes, texting always gets opened and read. So texting is a key element to our CRM campaigns. And then, beyond a self-directed by the loan officer, self-directed communication, we also have a layer of calendar- based events. So we have events or day-based events such as an AM-annual mortgage review. Sorry for the acronym, an AMR. We also have, of course, birthdays or letting a realtor know of a birthday for clients. We have those triggered events based upon calendar holidays and things like that. So it's kind of a multilayer of communications constantly going out to make sure the relationship between the loan officer and the client is very, very strong. We do whatever we can to keep our loan officers top of mind and that's the approach we've taken to do that.
Shannon Schmidt (20:04):
And Spencer, I would say we're at an infancy in some of our journey at VanDyk there. So we've always had some CRM campaigns that have gone on, but as a came on board, we spent a lot of time building out very similarly to Whitney, a lot of stack on that. So how do you get the right message to the right customer at the right time? And so pulling in the data elements that we can leverage — the bane of the existence of many yellows right now, the mortgage credit trigger, making sure that we've got good information on that, pulling up and making sure that we know when one of our clients list the home, making sure that we've got the right messaging that goes out in front of them, so that we can one, alert the LO and then two back them up. So I always say, our CRM or any of our marketing that's coming out of our centralized is not there to replace the LO, it's there to help them. As they're out on calls, as they're doing some of their other activities, we can come alongside and make sure that we're there when that data piece comes in and helps us get in front of them. So very similarly, we have a lot of what I like to think of as kind of upper funnel. We don't know how close to in market customers are and making sure that we stay in touch with them all the way down into we have a little bit more information on you. We're learning from the different data sources that we have that you may be closer to transacting. And so how do we switch up that messaging and make sure that that applies to you? And then also making sure that LO knows this is a great time to make that phone call, to call the real estate agent and hand over that referral and have a really good place.
(21:40)
The only other thing that I haven't heard either one of us talk about is I think it's also a really good activity around asking for referrals. Your past customers. One of the things we've seen that's most effective is to be able to say, okay, you had a great experience. Let's do that annual mortgage checkup, let's do that annual mortgage review. And hey, by the way, do you have any friends or family that might be in the market? I'd love to serve them. And same with some of the referral sources. Being able to take those customers back to that referral source, which we all know is kind of the gold standard of being able to provide that back, that value back.
Spencer Lee (22:16):
Nice. Referrals word, word of mouth, maybe you don't get a lot in quantity, but you get a lot in quality I think with word of mouth. Good word of mouth. Nice. So now you mentioned loan officers, and I wanted to touch on that a little bit. Marketing in recruitment of loan officers. Now in a past life, I used to work in marketing for a small business, so I've always thought — whenever I think about marketing, I always think about, how do you attract the consumer? How do you attract the customer for whatever product you're selling — in this case mortgage? And that of course definitely applies in the mortgage industry, but mortgage industry also has this other layer where you're trying to recruit loan officer. And I'm wondering if you could touch on that.
Whitney Blessington (23:04):
Do you want me to take it, Shannon?
Shannon Schmidt (23:06):
I can take that one to start. I was just going to say, obviously this is a critical piece within most of the different independent mortgage banks and just in general the bank and mortgage banking industry to bring the LO's over to the different brands. And the way that we approach it and think about it is just sharing what's great about us. And so we use a lot of the same channels that we're using to get in front of customers or referral sources — videos, how do we share some of the events that are happening and what it looks like to be an LO at Van Dyke, and then driving them in to have conversations. Because very similarly, we find that really building that relationship and making sure that we've got a good fit on both sides is the most effective way of making sure that we can continue to grow our business and the LO can continue to grow their business.
Whitney Blessington (23:56):
I find recruiting marketing is a big focus over the last 12 to 18 months. We are in a high expansion. We are in a growth mode right now. I mean, when volume goes down with your existing production team, what do you need to do? You need to go and grow your production team. And we are really excited about the opportunities and what the next couple of years are going to bring because our recruiting actually has been really highly successful. Just like Shannon said, basically everything, every channel we use, every strategy we use, we basically do for the recruits, except just tweak the messaging, it's about stretching and repurposing content. And like Shannon said, we also bring in people. We like to share the Churchill culture. We feel like it's one of our unique selling propositions, one of our key differentiators. So the culture is very strong and precious to us. So we like to make sure we bring people in, make sure that they're a good fit for us and we're a good fit for them. So that's critical. I'm glad she brought that up.
(25:02)
But in terms of recruiting, I also have big efforts on re-recruiting our existing production team. So just like we have client retention, we have production team retention efforts as well. We do a lot of round tables where we have little focus groups to understand what the top producers are really finding beneficial, what they don't like, what there may be, if there are pain points, so that we can address those proactively. They love being able to give their feedback and their opinion. We're all one big team. So to hear their immediate feedback and then be able to make change for new recruits and other efforts has been incredibly helpful. So I would recommend that as well.
Spencer Lee (25:46):
Good advice. Yeah. Now I wanted to pivot a little bit and maybe talk about technology. Technology is almost at the heart of everything in business now in every industry, and you can't avoid it. In my conversations with consultants, tech consultants in the past, they've always said, I don't think it's any secret, but mortgage lending is behind on technology, I don't know where it is exactly with mortgage marketing, but is there any technology you see out there that you're really excited about At least even if you haven't used maybe to test? And I think it holds a lot of potential for your efforts in the future.
Shannon Schmidt (26:26):
I can take that to start Whitney. So technology, obviously we talk about it every day, but I think some of the things that we're spending some time looking at is — AI's kind of the buzzword right now, but what are the AI tools that make sense to bring in to help move our business forward. Not just trying to pull everything into the stack. And so really doing some testing around things like purchase prediction, lead scoring, how do we really understand within our database where to spend time and where to spend effort as we help the LOs do that. And then also teaching our LO's how to use some of these tools has been a really impactful and good tool for us as well because they've got a lot of referral sources that are super curious on this. And so being able to put some events together and have them be able to sit down and learn from their LO partners some of the different technologies that are out there, that's one of the areas that we've had a lot of engagement on.
(27:27)
And then just continuing to look at what our stack looks like and bringing in the right connections to it. So continuously staying in front of the different tools. We onboarded a new CRM system this year, and so that's been a big function for us. How do we get in front, train and then also teach our LO's how to be successful with it? There's so much under the hood, it's really impactful for them when they know how to use it. But how do you start, and how do you use the right tools that are inside that not and not feel overwhelmed by it? So we're in a little bit of a phase of trying to make sure that adoption is high, but it's high in a way that we can prove out that it's going to help them grow their business.
Spencer Lee (28:07):
You can have the best tech, but IT adoption is low. Like what's you, yeah,
Shannon Schmidt (28:11):
Yeah, absolutely.
Whitney Blessington (28:13):
That's exactly what I was going to say. It's so exciting. All the technology available to us now is so exciting, but if you can't use it properly and there's low adoption, it's not worth the effort. So what we try to do is stay very focused and really focus on two or three tools that the loan officers can really use. And we do promote adoption through training. Just like Shannon said. I actually, there was a person on my team that was a naturally good trainer, and about two years ago we just realized, oh my goodness, we need to train these loan officers how to use these tools because there's no point to it if we don't. So that's what she does now, and she's great. And we've seen an adoption really rise now by 20% in the first couple of months, and then 60% by the end of the year.
(29:06)
So we're excited about that. I do recommend having someone focused on training. Data augmentation is something that I have, that I'm testing now. I'm interested in understanding the predictive analytics as it comes to buyer propensity. So going back to those six D's that I mentioned, when are people entering into those new phases of their lives? When are they about to hit those milestones? That data appended to our client database can help drive those conversations. They can at least alert us that there may be a conversation ready. So that's interesting.
(29:50)
And the other technology that I think is really helpful are the TCA, which I mentioned, the side-by-side comparison for the loan products as well as the monthly home valuation digest. Basically every month, understanding the value of the home and sending that to the clients. Once a loan officer knows how to use that and collaborate with a Realtor and going after their mutual client, that is a winning combination. So that's, that's been great for us
Spencer Lee (30:22):
That that's really interesting. Now I want to ask a little bit about AI, because AI is everywhere. You see the headlines, every headline, business headline or tech headlines, seems to refer to AI, and I myself have written two articles in the past week about AI. What are your thoughts about that? I imagine they have a future within mortgage and mortgage marketing specifically.
Whitney Blessington (30:46):
Yeah, I'll just take this before I lob it over to Shannon. I mean, it's a junior copywriter at your fingertips. I mean, it helps us come up with creative headlines, emails. We create a lot of proprietary content through eBooks, eGuides, and it's great at helping us just getting started with a framework of content, and then we go through and kind of put our Churchill spin on it. But I think it's incredibly helpful and incredibly powerful. What do you think, Shannon?
Shannon Schmidt (31:17):
Yeah, I agree. We actually just had my team meeting yesterday and spent a good portion of it talking about prompt writing because it's one thing to have the tool we were just talking about, it's another one, how to use it really effectively and translate that into ideas that can move forward. So the copywriting was the first thing that was super impactful with AI for us, just in terms of having somebody — because I think one of the gaps we sometimes run into in marketing and mortgage is you really have to understand the customer journey and you really have to understand the customer to write good copy. And sometimes you end up in a spot where you might understand the product really well, but you don't know how to translate that value piece. And I just find that being able to have that conversation in an AI world where they've got the knowledge of the whole web has been very helpful for my team and also I think for a lot of our LO's.
(32:09)
A couple other areas that we're finding a lot of use for it. It's been great for competitive analysis with some good prompts, you can write some really good ways to understand what are key competitors. It even can get down to the LO, you can get down into a market and have a good comparison of some of those different factors out there in a way that's super easy to understand, digest and then translate to what should I do about it. Brainstorming has been the other place where I think those kind of three areas have been the first places that we've seen AI just kind of help marketing and move us forward in that. And I think we'll continue to find more uses of it.
Whitney Blessington (32:51):
My website, my graphic designers and website team used ChatGPT to create photographs instead of going to iStock. They basically described the scene that they wanted a photograph of, and then they used that on a landing page. I mean, it's pretty remarkable.
Shannon Schmidt (33:09):
It is. I just did an AI photo shoot for myself. It was $17 the other day because I wanted to see how it would turn out. It was crazy how accurate it was. You could totally use it as your headshot on LinkedIn, and nobody would know the difference that it was created by a computer.
Spencer Lee (33:25):
Very nice. No, ChatGPT. I haven't dived into it yet. I'm a colleague of mine has, and he's said, oh, you should do it. It's kind of fun. But I'm sort of afraid of getting sucked into that. But I think that's part of our future. I know one mortgage marketing platform has already employed it to in its CRN, so we'll probably be seeing more of that in the future. But just listening to your comments, copywriters are warned. You'll always need copywriters, but yeah, they need to pay attention.
(33:59)
I also wanted to kind of touch on social media, and we have a question in the Q&A little bit about social media. And now when I say that, that seems like such an — it's not an old tool. It's only, I don't know how many, a couple decades old, but with technology advancing as much as it has, it seems like an old tool. How effective is social media now? I know I think Whitney, you mentioned YouTube, but yeah, what strategies do you have for social media?
Whitney Blessington (34:29):
Well, we view social media, well, Facebook, Instagram as the new CRN or it's an additional crm, right? That's where all of your relationships start. Some of them start, and some of them are maintained at a top, at a light level. Those relationships are maintained. So we think it's really important from a branding perspective. It doesn't necessarily bring in a lot of leads, but it is more of a online reputation tool in our perspective. So what we use it for is basically at the local level, helping loan officers look like the mayor of their town. essentially. What we do is we provide them, we feed them content constantly. We have monthly library of templates that are on our marketing studio. We also have weekly trainings on how to do a reel or something like that. And then we have daily tips on something that's happening in the news, and that you could weave that into a quick video. Like Shannon said, video is king. So what we try to have our loan officers do is take a topic and just riff on that topic for a minute, and then put their special cookie code on there to a web form. So that's how we use it. Again, it's more of a branding play and keeping our loan officers top of mind. But we do have that a small lead element to it.
Shannon Schmidt (35:58):
And I would say we're very similar. We've got content that we put out every day of the month that we make available to our LO's that they can push to platforms. We do a lot of trainings, but I think the one place that we're really trying to push is the, we've talked about video, but just giving ideas, showing LO's how others are doing it. I think there's sometimes a fear about getting in front of the camera and actually making your first one. And so, we spend a lot of time also going outside of our own walls and our own brand, just seeing what others are doing, what's effective, and then sharing some of those ideas out to our teams.
Spencer Lee (36:33):
Now, we have a few questions in the Q&A, but there's one other topic I wanted to get to hopefully before we get to that. But in this market, we've seen a lot of consolidation. It is sort of that environment for industry consolidation and a lot of new partnerships or mergers. Companies try to take advantage of gain market share and get new customers. Yesterday, we just saw a big merger, Mr. Cooper acquiring Home Point broke at the end of the day. I'm wondering if in cases like these, you're combining cultures, even if it's just a joint mentor with a new partner, how do you develop that relationship and make sure it works? Yeah. Well, for everyone involved, and maybe Shannon, you can talk a little bit about that.
Shannon Schmidt (37:21):
I can take this one. When we were talking earlier, I started out my career in some of the JVs that Wells Fargo had. And I think the key is really conversations and making sure that you're aligned on some of the really key things, like what's that value proposition that you offer as a organization to your LO's? How do you bring in that LO culture from both sides and combine them to make sure that you can move forward in a really without missing a beat, because you're going to have two marketing teams, two operations teams, two of everything else, and how do you make sure that you get people on the same page really quickly? And I think the best way to do that is a lot of conversations before, during and after that acquisition.
Spencer Lee (38:06):
We have actually, I see several questions in the Q&A, and unfortunately, we're not going to be able to get to all of them, but I'll try to grab a few of them. One interesting one I see right here. Do you work with the data science team in your job? And if you do, how do you use the team for strategy?
Whitney Blessington (38:23):
That's a great question. We have basically, because we have a lot of leads coming in through our consumer-direct division, we're about split 50/50 retail and consumer direct. I use Tableau, and we look at leads by cohort, we don't have necessarily a data scientist on staff, but we do have an incredible analytics team that helps me really fine tune and optimize my lead sources and understand what the conversion rates are down to the loan-officer level, and we're able to redistribute and feed, sort of optimize that entire side of the business. I'm not sure, Shannon, do you have a data scientist?
Shannon Schmidt (39:06):
No. So we're strictly retail at this point, and along the lines of some of the infancy that we're in our retention practices, that's a roadmap item for us. And so we've got some things that we're doing internally within my own team to kind of take a look at some of the upper funnel or the early indicators, but we don't get as far into conversion rates as I hope we do very soon.
Whitney Blessington (39:30):
Yeah.
Spencer Lee (39:32):
Another question we had. We might have touched on this a little bit earlier. What strategy or platforms do you have to post on loan officers' social media accounts on their behalf? Do you use any platform or software to do that?
Shannon Schmidt (39:46):
Our CRM has a built-in integration with social, so once the LO goes in and logs into their social, they can push right from the CRM to their different sites that they're on.
Whitney Blessington (39:58):
And similar to Shannon for the retail side, our CRM has that capability, and we push on their behalf. But for the lead-taking side, we use the marketing automation tool. So we have a huge, I'll just say HubSpot, where it actually will post. And I have multiple accounts that we manage. Hundreds, we go up to 300 accounts that we manage
Spencer Lee (40:26):
A lot of accounts.
Whitney Blessington (40:27):
Yeah, that's a lot of accounts, yes.
Spencer Lee (40:30):
Another question, can you elaborate how you are using the seven D's? I don't know if it's it's seven or six. I might have I think he's referring to what you mentioned, Whitney, How you are using the seven D's to drive leads? Is it a vendor doing that or in-house? Is it working and profitable?
Whitney Blessington (40:47):
Yes. Okay. I love this question. So our loan officers, we had just a standard purchase nurture CRM campaign, but what we're finding is when they start getting in conversation, when they are taking notes like, oh, Bobby's about to graduate, or Cindy's just gotten engaged and is looking for a home, or they're thinking about getting a dog or something like that, they used to make notes. So now we just finally decided, well, let's do something with that information. And so what we do now is, and we have leading emails, so we keep them on the purchase nurture campaign, but we layer them on with a topical email intermittently in between, which is talking about dog — getting a yard and securing your fence for your backyard or something like that that's relative to the milestone. And in terms of profitability, yes, that's, again, that's more retention marketing, and it's really just all about the relationship.
(41:47)
So it makes the client feel heard and also cared for. So we do love that tactic, but it's more done at the conversion, at the kind of midfunnel level. In terms of top of the funnel efforts, we have some pay-per click ads that are focused on, so let's just use the dog example, something. If you're searching for a home for a backyard, we might have an ad that leads in with that topic, but then just goes to a landing page that is purchase that may have a mention of dog ownership, but it may not. It depends on how big the segment is. But it is just those little tweaks that you can add these days thanks to technology, but it makes the loan officer feel very well supported that the marketing team has their back. They're doing something unique and different, so that in itself is a win.
Spencer Lee (42:42):
I think we have time for one more quick question, quick answer, like one or two hard answers. But what media is working the best for you? Direct mail, SEM, SEO — that's like one item, SEM/SEO, social media, YouTube, et cetera. Who wants to take that? Actually, you both should take that.
Shannon Schmidt (43:00):
I can take it at a quick level. I think Whitney, you might have a more detailed one than me. We are, we don't do a whole lot top of house. So the efforts that I'm doing in any of those channels are really dedicated to the LO and what's successful for them. And so it really takes having that conversation and then building that strategy plan out for each LO. And I think, right now it's picking that what's authentic to you? What can you do really well? What can you go deep on? And then building out around that. If social's not authentic, if you really struggle with video, that's not where we're going to put you. If you are trying to build referral relationships, we're going to come up with the channels that are going to get in front of Realtors and do that. So I think from our perspective, not having a CD model, we probably don't have one. It's really situation based and we've got capabilities in all of them.
Whitney Blessington (43:48):
I love that though, that authenticity If it's not authentic, it's just going to fall flat. That's really good, Shannon. So I would say to answer that question, I would say SEO/SEM, of those three options, although I do feel like direct mail has great opportunity because there's so much room in the mailbox now, and that's probably something we will be exploring when volume picks back up. So, but SEO/SEM, creating a ton of content that's unique and customized on your funnels, so you can use ChatGPT to crank that out. And we see that our website traffic from our SEM and SEO efforts just by doing that has ticked up probably by 15% in the past — even in this down market — in the past 12 months. So I definitely think creating a lot of content to fill that white space in the internet is a great strategy.
Spencer Lee (44:46):
Thank you. It looks like we're, we're up on time. We're actually over time, but this has been a really fun conversation. I hope it's been informative for the audience out there. So I want to thank everyone for joining us, everyone in the audience, but especially our two experts today: Shannon Schmidt from VanDyk Mortgage and Whitney Blessington from Churchill Mortgage. Thank you very much for joining us for this Arizent Leaders Forum.
