You need a mortgage blog. You need an email marketing campaign. If you’ve been following our blog for some time, these words probably sound familiar. No doubt, content marketing and email marketing are foundational to online mortgage lead generation –and that’s why we mention it so often.
But if you want to get the most out of these two lead-generating avenues, you’ll want to combine them. With the synergistic content marketing strategy, you’ll always be in touch and front-of-mind with your mortgage prospects.
Before we dive in, let’s review the value of your mortgage blog and email marketing.
Key purposes of a mortgage blog:
- Content gives a prospect a reason to be on your site
- The main area for mortgage Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Builds authority with both readers and search engines
- Creates trust
- Keeps prospects on your site longer
- Creates opportunities to ask prospects to fill out your digital 1003
Now let’s look at what email does:
- Keeps you relevant and in your prospects mind
- Can send announcements to build anticipation
- More personal since they are reading it in their inbox
- Can segment your email list to send targeted messages
- Use it as an avenue to invite subscribers back to your website –possibly to continue loan application.
Now that we know how a blog and email work, it’s time to explore how to make them work in harmony to create the ultimate mortgage journey that leads prospects straight to closing.
Use Email as a Hook
The most frequent way to use email for lead generation is to send your blog posts. It’s the most common because it works so well and it’s relatively easy to do. By emailing your prospect every week, you keep their original intent (to apply for a loan) alive. Also, since you are the one emailing, they associate your business with their intention to apply for a loan.
Plus, as they read the highly relevant and useful information, their confidence with you rises and inches them closer and closer to filling out an application.
Here are three different ways to email your blog updates:
- Send the entire blog post with a call-to-action (CTA) and link it at the end. The CTA could be to apply for a loan or even just an invitation to comment on the blog.
- Send a snippet of the blog with a link to your site where they can read the entire article.
- Send a weekly/monthly newsletter with your most recent blog posts and announcements.
Autoresponder Lessons
Create a collection of lessons where you answer the most frequently asked questions about the home buying process. Mail them out as part of a series for new subscribers and warm up your prospects to the idea of applying for a loan with you.
The most effective autoresponder lessons also include plenty of links to foundational articles on the mortgage website.
Showcase Your Featured Articles
Your email blasts are also great places to showcase guest blogging you’ve done, articles around the web where you’ve been featured, professional events you attended, or even the latest reviews.
Make sure you always include a CTA and link back to your site with every email.
Increase “Permission”
At the footer (meaning, the end) of every blog post, include a CTA to sign up for your email newsletter. Even if your email marketing strategy is just emailing your blog posts, getting their email to send it to their inbox is still essential.
When people give out their email, they are inviting you into their space. This simple action increases their trust and moves them all the closer towards applying for a loan with you. Not only that, but email is also easy to share –making it easy for these prospects to “refer” your services whenever they forward one of your emails to a friend.
Special Announcements
Your business is full of potential special announcements. From welcoming a new team member to adding a more simple way to get a home loan with a mortgage point-of-sale system to sending holiday greetings, there’s always a reason to send a special announcement and keep the “good vibes” alive between you and your prospect.
How how does this tie in with your blog content? Much like your mortgage blog topics, you can write a post on your blog, then share it via email. Or simply email the special announcement and add links back to your site to “explore what else is new” at your business.
See how that all ties in?
Individually, your email and blog content are powerful tools for generating leads and guiding prospects towards applying for a loan. However, when you combine them, you create a symbiotic mortgage marketing plan (and with little effort to boot!) that will continuously nurture leads to apply and, eventually, to closing.
If that sounds good to you, you’ll also want to check out our suite of digital marketing tools! Stackable and customizable to your lending business, each of our digital mortgage tools simplifies the process for both lenders and their borrowers. Click here to set up a free, live demo.
