10 Email Marketing Rules Every Mortgage Broker must follow

Some of you may have found this post and thought email marketing is long dead. In a world of AI (Artificial Intelligence), why on earth would anyone still be using this old, and potentially redundant method of marketing to their clients?

Let’s keep it real for a second: email marketing has one major advantage over all of the other forms of marketing.

The people that have signed up to your email list are your audience. They have already shown an interest in the content you share, have done business with you or are interested in doing business with you.

Ignore them at your peril. These are real people who believe you can help them, don’t disappoint them now.

What’s more you can reach out to them as many times as you wish. Email marketing is still one of the only major marketing channels you have direct control.

They want to see content that is going to help them on their personal financial journey to home ownership, a better mortgage rate or guidance on how they can become mortgage free sooner.

Take a look at these top 10 email marketing rules every mortgage broker should be following to stop losing leads and potential clients.

Autorespond promptly

Ever sent in an email to a company and not had a response in 24 hours? How did it make you feel?

That’s right, like your problem doesn’t matter to that particular company.

Don’t be like that with your mortgage clients. If a lead submits an enquiry to your website, you need to ensure that an automated email is sent back to them within 5 minutes.

This email acknowledges that you have received their enquiry and outlines the next steps that will be taken to help them solve their problem, whether it’s a follow up email or a telephone call.

Tip, if you wait 24 – 48 hours to go back on the enquiry, that lead is already looking elsewhere. So be prompt and get back to that lead the same day or the next working day.

Clear, fair and not misleading subject lines

To even get someone to read the content of your email, you need a catchy subject line.

According to Porchgroupmedia.com, 47% of all email recipients decide to open your email based purely off of the subject line. That’s huge.

The temptation to create a clickbait non-compliant subject line, such as “Get a 0% mortgage today”, is a sure fire way to find your email campaign in the SPAM folder and the regulator asking you some serious questions.

Keep your subject lines clear, compliant, free from acronyms and one that leans towards the contents of the email. A classic example could be something like “What the new Bank of England base rate means for your mortgage“.

Celebrate your customer’s birthday, anniversary date

Do you know some of the key dates about your customers? What do you know about the people on your list that you can celebrate?

If you do then celebrate those key dates, celebrate their birthday, the day they moved into their new home or perhaps when it’s time for that financial review.

Contacting your client only when it’s time to renew their mortgage or protection policy is treating them like a walking, talking ATM. Don’t do that, nurture and build a strong relationship with your clients.

Be the broker that has a genuine interest in your client’s financial health and in delivering the very best outcomes.

Celebrating their key dates is just one singular method you can use to keep the door open for further advice.

Segmentation

If you have a large list of contacts, there is a strong likelihood that list contains people at different stages of the financial life cycle.

Alongside this, not all of your clients are going to be first time buyer’s. A Buy-To-Let landlord is going to be interested in a different piece of content in comparison to someone looking to remortgage.

So going through your list, segmenting them based on their interests is going to majorly help you nurture those leads and generate business accordingly.

Keep it clear, drop the jargon

Under Consumer Duty mortgage advisers have to ensure their communication is clear. Delivering an email filled with acronyms like LTV, ERC or SVR is not going to help your customer base, it’s going to put them right off.

Translating your content into readable English, think 12 years of age, is going to help educate your client bank. An educated client bank is far more likely to contact you for advice than one that is confused by all the different terminologies.

Keep it simple, keep it clear.

They don’t believe you, show them

People, and especially when it comes to their finances, are not going to believe you based on your own wild claims.

You have a responsibility of showing social proof to your clients. You can do this by either providing a link to your Google Reviews page, perhaps embedding your latest Trustpilot review into your emailer or even a full-on case study.

Let the customers you have already helped do the selling for you.

Personalisation

At the very start of your email campaign a simple “Hi [Name]” is a great way to personalise your emails.

However, you then need to start ratcheting up that personalisation. Engagement with one of your emails about downloading your First-Time Buyer guide should then be followed up with another email referencing the guide.

Perhaps in a third email you then provide further information around how a first-time buyer can make use of the buyer’s guide covering the ideal deposit needed, the average budget and what they can expect from working with you as a mortgage broker.

Let their behaviour on your emails dictate the personalisation.

Stay GDPR Compliant

Not every email you send to your client bank is going to be for them, and that’s ok. It is far better to have a smaller list of highly engaged prospects than a list of people who click spam.

Under GDPR law, people have the right to be taken off and removed from your email marketing list. Ensuring your emails have an unsubscribe link at the bottom of all the email marketing campaigns you send out is vital.

People can also reach out to you and request you delete all of the contact information you hold on file for them. Remain compliant and have that removal process on hand.

Remember to also include your regulatory wording, relevant disclaimers and any information about fees that you charge for advice that you give along with references to your FCA number.

If you are ever in doubt if your email is compliant with regulations, get your compliance officer or financial promotions team to take a look.

Keep it mobile

Over 80% of all emails that are sent are read via a mobile device. That means your email also needs to be mobile friendly.

Keeping it mobile means, shortening the paragraphs to no more than two sentences, utilising bullet points as much as possible and using the correct image formats to download high quality image and video formats.

If your email looks like a wall of text when they open it, there is one place that email is going…the bin.

One call to action

Ever had one of those emails with 3 or 4 calls for you to “click here” or “check this out”. How did you find it? Did you click on one of them, some of them or none of them?

Look an email needs just one singular call to action, that is the whole point of the email.

You are sending the electronic correspondence because you want your customer base to do one thing. Perhaps it’s to download your new first-time buyer’s mortgage guide, or a link to register for a webinar.

Having one singular call to action to download that mortgage guide or register for your webinar is going to go a lot further than trying to get them to register for both.

90 – 180 day nurture sequence

Not every person that signs-up to your email marketing list is ready to apply for a mortgage or is looking to remortgage.

The majority are likely to be shopping around looking for the best deal or the broker to give them the best advice for their situation.

Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Mailerlite enable mortgage advisers to setup automation campaigns.

These automation campaigns can then be used to drip feed helpful, educational and insightful emails every week to your prospects to help keep your firm front of mind.

Take the time to really think about where your customers are likely to be on their mortgage journey. You may need more than one automation campaign to cover each stage of the customer’s journey.

I’m documenting my journey into the world of financial services, taking my knowledge of marketing with me. Want the latest insights to your inbox? Sign-up below.