We’ve talked a lot about how to generate mortgage leads online in our past blog posts.

We’ve coached you through writing SEO content to attract organic traffic to your website. We gave you the steps to creating clickable Facebook ads. We shared how to turn a web visitor into a mortgage prospect using calls-to-action.

We even let you in on the hot digital marketing tactic that nearly all lenders are ignoring — working with digital mortgage influencers.

But all of these tactics are just the first part to the power of a digital mortgage platform.

The next part is to nurture those leads into your actual mortgage client, and this is where many mortgage professionals fail.

Whether you’re a single LO or a bank, your mortgage lead nurturing plan should include:

• A clear goal
• A target audience (for example veterans or homebuyers with low credit scores)
• Content relevant to that particular audience
• Multiple touches or opportunities to see your offer
• Engagement with a mortgage professional

So if your lead nurturing plan currently consists of only mailing a happy holidays postcard with a new calendar (both of which are great ideas, but not a lead nurturing plan), then you’ll want to bookmark this mortgage marketing post for reference.

Steps to Turning Online Leads into Mortgage Clients

Engage on Multiple Touch-points

After they fill out your lead capture form, invite the prospect to continue the conversation by adding them to your email list or subscribing them to your blog feed.

In your “thank you for filling out our form” email, you can also ask them to connect with you on social media. It doesn’t matter too much where they choose to engage with you, the only thing that matters is that you stay connected to them.

Studies show that consumers need several “touches” or engagements with your offer or business before they decide to purchase.

Make it Personal

Nurturing the lead to mortgage client means that you’ll have to continuously address their specific concern and show them that you have the home loan solution.

The key is to be specific.

So while you make have cast a wide net to catch all first-time homebuyer leads in Denver, for example, you’ll want to narrow it down that list even further.

For example, your Denver-area first time home buyers can be separated by how soon they plan to buy a home, their credit scores, individual first-time buyers versus married buyers, or people that applied for a home loan with you but never saw it through.

How you separate the leads depends on your goals. What matters is that make your offer personal and extremely specific to their needs.

Use Email Marketing –Particularly a Drip Campaign

A drip campaign is a series of emails created to lead the prospect to take a specific action. It also serves as those “touch points” that we mentioned earlier.

The series of emails work sort of like roadmap where all roads lead to mortgage client conversion (as opposed to leading to Rome).

For example, if your lead is in the “applied but never followed through” group, then the series of emails might address their hesitancy, helping them to build trust with you as well as stress the urgency current low rates.

Read this post on how to get started with email marketing for mortgage leads.

Don’t forget to test and review your campaign! If you see that you’re still not seeing Those email leads to convert into clients, then it’s a sign that Something in the drip campaign needs Improvement.

Respond Quickly

Ideally, you’ll want to respond within a few minutes of the lead coming in.

Some studies have shown that leads that got a response within 5 minutes were 21x more likely to become a customer rather than leads that waited 30 minutes for an answer.

You also want your response to be as personable and engaging as possible. Automated emailed responses are a good start, but it should say more than, “Thank you for contacting us. We’ll be in touch soon.”

Let your personality and sincerity to help shine through on all of your digital communications.

Also, don’t let your automated emailed replies be your fall-back! Call your prospects and help them grow their confidence with you.

There are more things you can do to nurture leads into a mortgage, but we recommend starting with these suggestions.

Still struggling to get leads from your current site? It might be your digital mortgage platform!

Click here for a free trial and see all the bonuses we’ve included in our mortgage website, all designed to bring you more leads.