By Jessica Swink, VP of Digital and Brand Experience, Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group
Snappy banking apps and easy-to-use dashboards are now the baseline for customer experiences. But delighting someone requires going above and beyond, and the best way to do that is by sending the right message at the right time in the right channel.
This understanding is what drove Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group to choose Total Expert – we wanted an industry-specific solution that catered to our needs as mortgage lenders.
Today, we use Total Expert to help guide customers as they make some of the biggest purchases of their lives, leading with timely and personalized outreach. Here are three ways we make sure every customer receives the messages that are most impactful to them.
1. Use Automation to Connect with Customers More Deeply
We use Total Expert’s automation to power many types of communications, from paper mail to single-send emails.
One example we’re particularly proud of is our Intraloan Journey. This Journey identifies milestones in our Loan Origination System and automates communication to customers based on those milestones.
Automated outreach is pivotal to succeeding in a competitive purchase market. Not only do customers receive information quicker; agents also save the time they’d need to track loan statuses and deliver follow-up communication.
This swift and personalized messaging builds credibility with our customers, which helps us foster lifelong relationships.
2. Create Unique Journeys to Meet Various Customer Needs
There are a lot of misconceptions about who can own a home; many people feel it’s out of their reach.
To address this, we started building Journeys focused on educating potential borrowers about their options for buying a home
Once we recognized how valuable education was, we integrated more educational content into our Journeys. For example, we built a TBD Mortgage Approvals Journey, which we use for borrowers who were approved for a mortgage but hadn’t yet chosen a home.
These TBD mortgages are based on customers’ existing financial situations. So we make sure to include reminders to avoid credit-altering purchases, while including materials like guides on what to look for in a home.
These messages build credibility and help establish us as our borrowers’ continued point of reference for all things mortgage-related.
3. Inspect Every Touchpoint and Message to Deliver Valuable Outreach
We create valuable, personalized outreach by making sure the format of our messages aligns with their content. If our customers aren’t reading a text-rich email with tips on building credit, for example, we might recreate it as a video walkthrough.
Remember, nobody wants spam in their inbox.
Valuable messaging results in higher levels of engagement. Our Intraloan Journey has an average open rate of 86%. Why? Because it’s informative at a high-stakes time when borrowers are fully invested in the biggest purchase of their lives (a home).
Communicating updates with our customers at the right time in the right channel helps foster trust. Our customers don’t wonder whether we’re listening or paying attention to them. They know because we’re continually providing them with the information they need when it’s most valuable to them.
It Takes Support to Deliver Results
One of the best parts about working with Total Expert is plugging in with their top-tier support team.
Total Expert takes customer support to a new level. Our Total Expert customer success manager doesn’t just send us product updates. She digs into our performance to send us helpful reports and functions as a sounding board for any ideas we might have for the platform. We’re not just customers – we’re partners.This is important because an innovative approach to outreach requires the use of different channels and different technologies; there’s always something new to learn. We embrace those lessons and feel excited about the progress we’ll continue to make leveraging Total Expert.
