How to Identify Home Lending Opportunities

There’s something old and reliable about the annual Spring and Summer real estate boom. Like clockwork, buyers and sellers come out of the cold eager to upgrade, downsize, or refinance. Even in the thick of the pandemic last year, the Census Bureau reported a 43% increase in home sales August of 2020 vs. the previous year. This increase was largely driven by Millenial and first-time home buyers who expanded into suburban areas¹. 

Home has taken on new significance in the post-Covid world. Now home is not just where you return to at the end of each day - it’s a refuge, an office, a school, a recreation center, your favorite bar and restaurant. And as more jobs are going remote, with commuting being less of a factor, Americans are freer than ever to live where they want and in exactly the home they desire. 

Real estate experts predict that 2021 will be a strong year for home sales and continued low interest rates, but cautiously remind that there is presently a low level of inventory³. Additionally, they note, rates may climb slightly as the economy strengthens². For even more loan rate predictions, check out this Time.com article where several financial experts face off and share their unique perspectives.

THE OLD DAYS...

Back in the old days (not so long ago for most of us) selling Mortgages was easier. Someone walked off the street directly into your bank, or called to book an appointment. You were their only financial institution, had been managing their accounts their whole lives, it was a no brainer for them to borrow from you and for you to lend to them. Nowadays, with mega national banking brands and online lenders spending billions to advertise, and one up each other for the lowest rates and best terms, the “game” has gotten much much harder. But that’s where we can help!

"Not even 10 years ago, people were skeptical about trusting neo-banks or non-bank mortgage lenders. They relied on their community banks and credit unions to give them the best mortgage rates, terms, and service. Trust still drives a lot of client retention in the world of finance. As new competitors gain trust points - you have to work harder to retain their business. One of the best ways we see to accomplish this is by turning your data points into relationship building blocks." - Marla Pieton, VP of Marketing for Segmint and former community bank executive.

What Marla references above is the new rulebook for connecting with your customers. Consumers are generally happy to have financial institutions use their data, so long as the return for them is better, more personalized and relevant service and offers.

HOW SEGMINT CAN HELP YOU IDENTIFY HOME BUYER OPPORTUNITIES

Segmint’s transaction analytics approach, categorizes and tags your account holders with Key Lifestyle Indicators (KLIs). These KLIs can be examined individually or as a collective, allowing you to identify the behavioral patterns of a single account holder, group of account holders, or your entire institution. This includes KLIs designed to model consumers who are potential candidates for both mortgages and home equity products, as well as KLIs identifying all customers who make mortgage or home equity payments to competitive institutions.

Leveraging your clean, tagged data, we help you deeply understand your customers and where you can best grow with them. We give you the full picture of your customers, combining analysis of their transactions with an overview of your product line utilization. We do it by combining library scientists with advanced artificial intelligence modeling. As a result, our categorization of transaction data is the most broad, deep and complete that you’ll find anywhere, period.

Using our Segmint end-to-end Marketing Automation solution you can build out targeted media for a nearly limitless number of push and pull campaigns. Segmint’s marketing automation solution comes equipped with target populations ideal for home lending campaigns. Segmint’s data science team and library scientists refine and improve models on an ongoing basis. 

Our customer success team can guide you in setting up a campaign to attract
First-Time Mortgage buyers using our proprietary KLIs* - here are a few examples:

● Tagged with Intent KLI: Those who clicked onto your FI’s mortgage information page online.

● A custom look-a-like audience based on your FI’s recent mortgage activity

● Balances: Higher than average savings account balances.

● Housing status: Renter

● Exclude: Those who already have mortgages with your FI. 

● Exclude: Those who are receiving unemployment income.

Once your audience has been created, it’s time to engage*!
● Start slowly. Send prospects a soft-sell email with links to your website for more information about mortgages. Include contact information so they can book a one-on-one session with you. If you have a pre-recorded video or webinar, link that information for them. If you have an upcoming live event, invite them to it.

● Using Marketing Automation features, set up ongoing digital marketing campaigns on your own website, online and mobile banking platforms. Using captivating photography you can also include specifics about your current mortgage rates and terms. 

● Retarget using the Open Internet. Segmint’s solution allows you to target ads to your account holders and prospective consumers - where they are spending their time online. Once they have browsed your website, if they allow the use of cookies, your account holders and prospects are tagged with a unique identifier. That identifier then allows for third party websites to show your financial institution’s ads on their pages, while people browse online. This creates a high level of impressions, which increases your likelihood of successfully earning their mortgage business.

PLAY DEFENSE - RETAIN YOUR ACCOUNT HOLDERS

In our previous blogs about Open Internet and Competitive Digital Advertising, we showed you that your competition is advertising, and you should be too. 2020’s low interest rates brought on a surge of refinance applications, this has slowed only slightly. Experts are predicting 2021 will be a high refinance year.

Here are a few strategies* to help retain your account holders in this competitive season:
● Identify those who hold a mortgage with you with a high interest rate or have not refinanced recently. Target them with digital ads about refinancing with your institution. It may sound counterintuitive, but it is far better to keep them as a long term account holder, than risk losing them to a competitive FI.

● Account holders who have Competitive Mortgages, but use your other products: Cross-sell them with direct mail, email and digital advertising about your Mortgage Refi offers. 

● Consider offering a free mortgage education class virtually or in person at your branch or a local library. This grassroots approach is excellent for relationship building and for building trust between borrowers and lenders. Many young people are eager to learn and be able to ask questions about mortgage types, rates, terms, debt to income ratios, ways to save, or any information you can share. Market this course online, by mail, through local realtors, and of course through your tellers.

● The moment someone contacts you for a pre-approval, the clock is ticking. In today’s aggressive real estate market buyers need a pre-approval to put in an offer. Since pre-approvals do expire, they may only request one when they already are seeing houses they like. Mortgage brokers like Rocket can turn approvals around in hours, make sure you give the attention required to compete in this area. After you send them a pre-approval, ensure you are checking in with them, show that you care about earning their business.


Your financial institution is sitting on a goldmine of consumer spending data. The problem most financial institutions have is that the data is messy, uncontextualized and not properly labeled. We help FIs every day to make sense of their data, build always-on and ad hoc communications strategies, build better relationships with their account holders, and grow share of wallet. 

*Compliance Note: When marketing your FI’s products it is important that you are checking in with your local regulating body for the most current guidelines. Be sure you remain compliant so that you are not discriminating against a particular group. Note that due to this, some of our recommendations above may not be applicable in your area.

References:

1 https://fortune.com/2020/10/20/real-estate-coronavirus-pandemic-home-buying-zillow-redfin/

2 https://time.com/nextadvisor/mortgages/mortgage-predictions-2021/

3 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSACSR