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news & marketing tips — January 27, 2006
Viral marketing
strategies for your business
Viral marketing
refers to any strategy that encourages people to pass on a marketing
message to others, creating the potential for growth in the message's
exposure and influence. There are examples of viral marketing
all over the web. If you have a Hotmail e-mail account, you
unwittingly infect the recipient with the footer message included in
each e-mail.
Hallmark.com offers free e-cards for you to send to
a friend, who will have to watch a short advertisement for Hallmark
before reading your message.
One
of the most popular viral marketing campaigns last summer was the
Wedding Crashers website, which included a feature called "Crash
the Trailer." You could upload a photo of yourself and a friend
and watch the trailer of the movie with your pictures replacing the
photos of the characters in the movie.
You don’t have to
invest a lot of money into creating your own viral marketing
campaigns; you simply need to offer something unique and valuable to
your clients that will prompt them to tell their friends and family
about it. Here are a few viral marketing ideas you can implement
into your mortgage business:
E-mail your
clients a link to your Home Price Index. And, of course, encourage
them to forward your e-mail to a friend who may be looking to sell
their home. If you haven’t activated your Home Price Index feature on
your XSite yet, go to the Lead Capture section of your XSite and check
“activate.”
Write your own
articles on mortgage related topics that would be of interest to
consumers on your XSite. Then, allow people to reprint them on
their website, in their blog, newsletter, magazine, etc. Not
only will your articles bring in additional hits, but it will also
help build your credibility. Be sure to add a brief bio of yourself to
the end of each article and include your guidelines on reprinting your
work.
You may also try
submitting your articles to a website content provider like
ArticleCity.com. Simply submit an article you've written to the
site and, if it's accepted, it will be listed in their directory.
Send your
clients an e-newsletter with useful information or unique advice.
Sending your newsletter via email makes it easy for your clients
to forward it to a friend. XSellerate has 10 different
newsletter templates to choose from and many include pre-written
articles on saving money, home improvement and more
—
just add your own content and contact information and send it to your
contact list.
Include a
signature in every e-mail. This may seem simple and, likely,
you already include your contact information at the end of your
emails. But also try including a catchy tagline or your company
slogan in your signature and add a separator like a dotted or squiggly
line between the email message and your signature. It helps set
it off from the text and if your e-mail is forwarded, it will stand
out.
Wowing customers
now means more referrals later, study says
When shopping for a
lender, 61 percent of recent borrowers asked their friends family
members, their REALTOR® or other personal acquaintances for
recommendations on choosing a mortgage company, according to the J.D.
Power and Associates 2005 Primary Mortgage Origination Study.
Additionally, more than 40 percent of borrowers indicate they utilize
the Internet as a resource for gathering information during their
lender shopping process.
The study measures
customer satisfaction with the mortgage borrowing process among 4,498
consumers who originated a new mortgage in the past nine months.
Three primary factors were identified that drive overall customer
satisfaction: application/approval process, loan
officer/representative or mortgage broker, and closing process.
"There is money to
be made by really wowing a new customer," said Jeremy Bowler, senior
director of the finance and insurance practice at J.D. Power and
Associates. "During the post-sale halo period, delighted
customers are out there making the most referrals. In a marketplace
crowded with lender options, personal testimonial can be the most
effective form of advertising for the lender."
And while the
application/approval process is a significant factor in achieving
customer satisfaction, the study found that the closing process has
the greatest impact on overall borrower satisfaction. Customers
value convenience when it comes to closing as well as accurate monthly
payment calculations.
"Borrowers may feel
somewhat deceived when their monthly payment does not match what was
quoted in the Good Faith Estimate," Bowler said. "It is vital
for lenders to be up-front and as accurate as possible with details at
that time, especially if assumptions are being made regarding consumer
credit scores."
Of course, it’s up
to you to provide your customers with accurate numbers, but your XSite
does help you with the convenience factor when it comes to the loan
closing. Automatic status updates let your customers know what’s going
on with their loan and tools like DirectFax allow them to convert all
of their loan paperwork into PDFs so everything is organized in place
and nothing gets lost in the shuffle. Your clients can also view their
paperwork and loan status any time they need to in a
password-protected area of your XSite. |
