Positioned to Win

Stepping Stones to Mortgage Lead Conversion Success

By Patrick O’Brien LenderLogix

Nothing is worse than finding out that a credit union member has chosen to finance with someone else after you’ve invested time and money into their homebuying journey.

Whether a realtor steered them in a different direction, their neighbor recommended a different lender, or a cheaper interest rate won them over, it’s a common issue credit unions face and it directly impacts pull-through rates. So what are successful lenders doing to win the mortgage lead conversion game? They’re adopting technology and strategies that keep members engaged in their mortgage ecosystem.

A Change In Approach

Any lender can tell you how many applications he or she did this year. When gauging success, the mortgage industry has historically operated with that core metric in mind. Unfortunately, many cannot tell you how many leads they interacted with, how many of those turned into pre-approvals, or how well their pre-approvals converted to applications. But why?

These top- and middle-of-the-funnel metrics have an outsized impact on whether those leads make it to closing. Buyer data tells us that interactions at every stage of the funnel drive conversions. Additionally, having a better understanding of these conversions at each level of the sales funnel helps highlight areas of improvement. You can’t fix a leak without knowing there is one.

INCREASING YOUR NUMBER OF LEADS

Leads have not been in short supply over the last few years. Unfortunately, many lenders became accustomed to drinking from the firehose and got too comfortable hanging out at the bottom of their sales funnel. Now strategy matters more than ever. Here are a few ways you can increase your flow of leads:

Build new (or stronger) realtor relationships. Easier said than done, I know. But a great way to hook and sink referrals is to provide the realtors in your market with true value. That could be educational content that makes them feel more comfortable talking numbers with members or technology that gives them immediate answers and on-demand pre-qualification and preapproval letters.

Homebuyer education seminars. This sounds like a pretty traditional strategy, but there are many modern ways to execute it. Take the questions your members already ask you or the pain points you most commonly hear and provide proactive advice.

Audit your online loan application and lead capture landing pages. Are they inviting and simple to navigate? Are you forcing them to create an account when they don’t even know you yet? Are you offering them resources and materials to engage them if they’re not ready to apply? Take a look at the journey they have to take before you even capture their information.

Use social media as a selling tool. Ditch the cookie-cutter “Now’s a great time to buy a house!” post. Instead, record a 2-minute video showing an actual listed house and what payment would look like with a temporary buydown.

BUILDING TRUST TO DRIVE PRE-APPROVALS

There are quite a few reasons a lead may not turn into a pre-approval. Each member’s journey will be unique, and the most successful lenders know how to build trust early in their interactions. Here are a few ways you can pre-approve more members: Have a strong credit repair strategy. Whether you work with an agency or utilize online platforms, you should be able to steer members toward a better score and higher chances of qualification. Be a product knowledge expert. If one program doesn’t work for them, you should be able to explore others that will. Demonstrating your knowledge will establish you as a trustworthy resource. Define your CRM workflows. Create strong follow-up and outreach strategies for borrowers at each stage of their journey. Customize your touch points with insight hyper-specific to their financial position when you can. Maintain a strong online presence and remember that reviews matter. Make sure sourcing them post-closing is a non-negotiable part of your general process. Audit your document uploading process. Make sure it’s easy for members to submit what you need. This is a great way to get them invested early.

Creating Confidence To Boost Applications

Members who are confused about their financing do not win bids. Confident members win bids. Here are a few ways you optimize this part of your sales strategy to convert more pre-approvals into applications: ensure payment and closing cost clarity. This one is self-explanatory. What’s their payment going to be? How much cash to close do they need? How will those numbers change from home to home? Provide members with a custom-tailored mortgage calculator. If you don’t provide them with a hyper-accurate way to crunch numbers, they’re going to search “mortgage calculator” online and likely get sold as a lead to your competitors. When you can keep a buyer in your ecosystem and answer those questions using technology you provide in-house, it changes the game and you’ll see an immediate increase in conversions. Present clear option comparisons This sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s way too easy to over-complicate this strategy. Keep it simple - I cannot emphasize this enough. Put the FHA next to the Conventional and list the interest rates, the payment, and the closing costs. That’s it. They don’t need to know every line item that varies.

From Application To Clear To Close

Today, most lenders measure the pull-through rate. This is the one stage of the funnel that lenders can influence the least, but the opportunity is still there. Here are a few ways you can move the needle at the bottom of the funnel: Automate your collection of upfront fees and request them the moment you have intent to proceed. A member that has invested $500 with you is significantly less likely to walk away. Automating this process reduces operational labor, accelerates payment completion, allows for the next-day transfer of funds, and provides members with the high-touch, user-friendly digital experience they expect because they can pay right from their mobile devices. Stay transparent from beginning to end. Members don’t want surprises. Audit your appraisal management process. How are you keeping members informed at this phase? How are you moving things along internally? How are you communicating bad news if a house is under-appraised? What technical solutions, if any, do you have in place? Are you updating members via SMS? Keeping members engaged keeps them sticky regardless of what hold-ups may occur. Fine-tune your problem-resolution approach. This goes hand in hand with product knowledge. A seasoned lender knows what to do when something goes wrong. “Can I flip this borrower to another product? Can we go into single-premium mortgage insurance and lower that debt ratio to get it through AU? Can I massage the loan terms enough to get it approved?” Knowing how to navigate out of murky waters grace- fully can make or break any deal.

Positioned To Win

Winning the lead conversion game requires continuous auditing and optimization. Break down your approach like we listed above, identify low conversions (leaks), and deploy the most accessible but impactful strategies first. Going into 2023, the most effective stage to focus on will be your pre-approval to application conversions. Why? Because it’s going to be a lot easier to convert members already in your qualified pipeline than to source new leads altogether. In closing, here’s a hypothetical scenario I’ll leave you to consider:

Let’s assume a loan officer takes in 150 leads per year, 60% of those convert to pre-approvals, 50% of those pre-approvals convert to applications, and 90% of those applications close. With an average loan amount of $225,000, that’s roughly $9.2 million in annual volume.

What if that pre-approval to application conversion rate increased from 50% to 60%? That would result in $11 million in annual volume. Same number of leads, 20% increase in volume.

Incremental changes can yield gamechanging results.

Patrick O’Brien started his career as a loan officer and spent 15 years in mortgage banking before founding LenderLogix in 2016. Drawing on Patrick’s origination experiences, the LenderLogix team has designed best-in-class software centered around superior experiences for loan officers, borrowers, and realtors.