How We Achieved 99% User Adoption at Northpointe Bank

I think Northpointe Bank is most unique in that it’s a bank with home lending at its core—we have one deposit branch located in Grand Rapids, Mich., about 30 home loan centers or satellite offices across the country, and support around 140 loan officers. Where we don’t have brick-and-mortar home lending branches, we often have remote teams. And what we don’t spend on banking deposit locations, we put back into the rate for consumers with our savings, money market, and CD accounts.

One-stop shop for sales and marketing communications  

A whopping 99% user adoption rate 

When I was brought on in 2019, we came from a CRM where we only had about a 30% adoption rate. Upon starting I was immediately introduced to the Total Expert team and the directive that we would be transitioning to a new CRM. During that same timeframe, Northpointe also made the decision to launch a new loan operating system (LOS). It was a less-than-ideal situation because our loan officers were not only incredibly busy closing loans, but they were also drowning in new technology. So, even though they took all the training and tried to dive into Total Expert, they really didn’t have time to dig into all the benefits and use Total Expert to its full potential.  

Recognizing the necessity of supporting the sales team on the back end while they closed loans, we automated as many parts of the Total Expert technology as possible. Once the market slowed, the value in having a robust CRM became more apparent to our loan officers. They began reaching out to the marketing department on their own for additional, one-on-one training and worked to utilize the technology more fully.  

Now, Total Expert is our friendly, one-stop shop for all things marketing. From flyers to social media and emails, it’s all in Total Expert. It’s all consistent. When our loan officers want something new—instead of creating it themselves or going rogue—they know how to send those requests to us so we can get it in the system for ease of use. We also provide ongoing training and short Total Expert training spotlights on weekly calls, so they can keep learning more and expanding how they use the platform. 

Today, 99% of our loan officers use Total Expert—and we are on our way to 100%! 

Working smarter, not harder, with easy integrations 

I can’t emphasize enough how easy it is to integrate Total Expert with other tools! For example, we integrated it with our rate engine so loan officers can create rate flyers by themselves without needing our help. We piloted the way for an integration with the Box and Bestow closing gift platform, which is amazing because our loan officers have been asking for something like that, but we didn’t really have a good way to do it on our end.  

We’re also using integrations with BombBomb to allow LOs to share quick, custom, and compliant videos with clients and partners; and rebel iq to expand and maximize our customer acquisition opportunities. The integrations are so easy—we just used Total Expert’s outbound data connector to do them. 

Automated Journeys powered by sales- and marketing-created content 

We love Total Expert’s ability to automate messaging intelligently through journeys and campaigns, too. We worked closely with our sales team to build a bunch of specialized journeys that cover topics like lead purchase, lead refinance, post-close, recruiting, closing gifts, and banking onboarding (checking accounts, savings accounts, HELOC, all-in-one-loans, dormant accounts, CD renewals, and more).  

There’s virtually no limit to what we can do with these. 

Ease-of-use designed for any and every user 

One of the other great things about Total Expert is that it’s so incredibly user-friendly for both sales AND marketing teams. It’s easy for loan officers to get in and do what they need to do with it, on their own. It’s easy for marketing to get in there and build out whatever the loan officers need from us, too. And it was easy for me to launch it even though I had never launched a CRM by myself. 

Plus, it’s great to know that if we do need help, Total Expert’s Help Center assets and customer service are there for us every step of the way. 

Customer engagement platform a selling point for loan officer recruits 

I also use Total Expert whenever a manager reaches out to me to “sell” Northpointe’s marketing to a recruit we have on the hook. I show them the flyers, the Journeys, the social media, the integrations. I literally show them everything they’re going to have to work with when they get here. And they’re usually stoked about it. They can’t wait because it blows out of the water whatever they were using before. 

Fast success that’s shaping our future pipeline—and organization

Unlike some vendors I’ve worked with, it really feels like Total Expert shares Northpointe’s vision of what success means to our users and customers. 

If you think about where we came from—inconsistent marketing and messaging, people using different systems, loan officers sending their own version of messaging out of Outlook or whatever they used—Total Expert has made it very easy for us to shift from organized chaos to very consistent (and compliant!) brand messaging.  

Now we maintain an extensive library of creative marketing materials that people across the bank use and trust. Our customers enjoy a much more consistent, proactive customer experience and our systems seamlessly communicate with each other. Our small but mighty marketing team can pivot and move much more quickly than before. 

What I’m most proud and excited about on a personal level, though, is the appreciation I receive when I walk someone from our sales team through how to use Total Expert. When they see all the different things they can use Total Expert for, all the tools and resources they have at their fingertips, they’re absolutely blown away. They were so busy when we first launched that they didn’t have the time or mental energy to fully appreciate it. But now that they’re figuring out how much it can help them, they can’t get enough! 

Here’s what one of our loan officers—someone who generated 400 views for a single open house listing—said about how he uses Total Expert to structure his day: 

“I typically start my day by pulling up my daily task list from Total Expert. I use Total Expert for all my daily to-dos, whether they are associated with a client or not. I print out my list so that I have it in front of me all day as well. Total Expert is by far the most used tool for me. I keep all my notes about a client there, as well as any tasks associated with that client. I use the print library for realtor open houses. I use the Single Property Website tool almost daily when I get the new listing alerts. I also make sure to tag the realtor in my social media posts about the site I created. I use the Recurring Tasks and Journey options to help me stay in front of prospects. And getting referral partners to do co-marketing through Total Expert is a big help.” 

Since Total Expert unifies data and does such a great job of seamlessly communicating with other systems, its use at Northpointe quickly spread beyond our initial use case to make the lives of people in other departments easier, too. 

Unified data for banking 

About a year and a half after we started using Total Expert, our small banking team needed an all-inclusive place for all their marketing and communications materials. So, they started using Total Expert too. 

Single source of truth for personalizing servicing statements 

When our servicing department wanted to start putting the loan officer’s name on the servicing statement, we began setting Total Expert up as their single source of truth for all the information tied to a specific loan. 

Proactive answers to common questions borrowers have after their loans close 

While FAQs on your website can be helpful, we didn’t have anything proactive in place that would give new borrowers the information they needed after their loans closed and our customer service team used to receive a boatload of inquiries.  

Now we have Total Expert-powered, post-close Journeys in place to get in front of people, give them the information they’re going to need—answers to the questions they’re most likely to ask—after their loans close, so they don’t have to contact our customer service team for that kind of basic information.  

Streamlined end-user communications from marketing to sales 

I also use my Total Expert “marketing admin” account to blast out new information— everything from new marketing materials to details about upcoming trainings or anything else we want them to know about—to our sales team. I do it this way because then we can see who opens the messages and who interacts with them, and we can also draft engaging informative messaging with ease.  

Automated campaigns for HR recruiting 

Our HR and recruiting team use Total Expert to store and distribute recruiting materials through print, social, and email avenues. They also run their recruitment processes using automated Journeys powered by Total Expert. 

What’s next?

I believe the key to future success in financial services marketing is continuing to identify the moments when our customers need us—whether it’s for a specific financial need or just support and education—so we can provide value and deliver on our promises to them. Obviously, there’s always more we at Northpointe can do to achieve that goal. That’s why we’ve just launched Total Expert Customer Intelligence for all our users.

With it, our loan officers won’t have to manually dig through their referral partners or their existing database to find opportunities that are hiding in plain sight, like people who might be ready to get a mortgage, refinance an existing loan, etc. The great news is that the handful of loan officers that piloted Customer Intelligence absolutely love it! In fact, we’ve already had some great wins because of it, including some deals our loan officers closed that they may never have learned about if they hadn’t received those alerts from Customer Intelligence.

I know we’re only scratching the surface of what that whole Customer Intelligence platform can do. But I can tell it’s going to help us grow and be as successful as possible.