Even though the current mortgage and debt markets are like riding a roller coaster there is no reason for your business to suffer. Whether you are a mortgage broker, or a loan modification business, aged mortgage leads are an incredibly productive way of reach new customers.

Here are just a few of the advantages of using aged mortgage leads in this market:

1.    Homebuyers are struggling to find financing. New homebuyers want to take advantage of historically low housing prices, and this is an ideal time to buy a new home, but most banks are simply unwilling to lend at this time. This has led to a supply and demand imbalance and buyers are desperate to find someone who to help them-naturally making them interested in a good mortgage broker. Aged mortgage leads that focus on purchase mortgage leads can be a goldmine for brokers right now.

2.    Homeowners are in trouble. The mortgage meltdown, followed by the current credit crunch is hitting everyone. But, it’s hitting homeowners even harder. Any borrower that financed a home in the last 3-5 years needs mortgage help more than ever, right now. Loan modification companies can use this market turn to their advantage–offering homeowners the hand up that they so desperately need-guiding them to the multitude of loan modification programs available.

3.    Quality, targeted leads are always helpful. Regardless of age, there is no substitute for targeted Internet leads, particularly in the mortgage market. Even if the lead (homeowner) managed to find a mortgage a few years ago, the chances in the market are such that they are now likely to be struggling with that loan and need new assistance. Once again, there are big opportunities for loan modification companies.

The mortgage market will always go through credit cycles and business transitions, and this current cycle to will pass. As bleak as it may appear, there is always hope for a positive turn and it does appear that many areas of the country are withstanding the crisis better than others. Aged mortgage and debt leads always have a place in the financial services market, but they are particularly useful right now.

If you are not taking advantage of aged mortgage leads, you could be missing out on a great opportunity to grow your business when others are struggling. It’s always hard work to find new clients, but right now the bad economy is working in your favor. The economy is handing you millions of opportunities to those savvy enough to find and offer much needed assistance to consumers.

Already have aged leads? Take the time to review them–start going through them and revisiting potential clients to see if their needs have changed since you last spoke. For companies that are looking at purchasing new leads, this is an ideal time to consider the economics and opportunities of aged leads.
With the right approach, you can make these leads work to your benefit and your company can fight this housing market downturn effectively.

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One of the questions I get asked with the most frequency is why aged mortgage or debt leads? Why not use conventional real-time leads?

Truth be told–if you have the marketing budget and can turn the ROI on a $20-$40 real-time mortgage lead then you should. However, most experienced mortgage lenders and debt companies would tell you that is a challenge. A challenge that probably the top 20% are effectively making into a profitable business model.

So, there is certainly the principle factor of cost that makes aged leads very attractive. But, the savvy lead buyer knows there is another very powerful advantage to aged leads. You are potentially targeting a very motivated borrower.

Underserved

The very nature of an aged Internet lead is one of a bruised customer. They have been underserved by the market. This can occur for a variety of reasons: bad credit, lender capacity, regional coverage, or simply inefficiency by a lead provider.

Your advantage? When these leads show up in your lead queue you have the opportunity to wow them with service and responsiveness.

Exceptional Experience

Showing aged lead customers an exceptional customer experience will grab their attention and improve your conversion. For those myriad of reasons above these customers are going to be enthusiasticly looking for someone that can help them, and intends to offer great customer service.

Referrals

The other bonus to serving these customers effectively is the trust, loyalty, and referrals they have the potential to yield. Having saved these consumers from their financial challenges–they will be happy to refer their friends and family.

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Fresh leads or aged leads? It is a classic lead generation debate. I heard it discussed in some of Twitter chatter from the recent LeadsCon. Most often the discussion is around the speed at which Internet leads reach the lead buyer.

The Debate

It seems most buyers of Internet leads have this intuitive perception that real-time Internet leads are better. In the perfect world they should be, because in the perfect world leads (customer inquiries) are generated and find a home in sub-second timing. The reality?

Internet lead generation is a complex ecosystem of websites, marketing, consumer behavior, affiliates, lead aggregators, lead exchanges, lead brokers, filters, data verification, matching, and inefficient waste. For this reason, there is opportunity in aged leads.

Internet Inquiries are Imperfect

The opportunity in aged leads starts with the imperfection of the Internet inquiry. This classic process of driving consumers to take an action online is very much an art, not a science. As such, you will have imperfections.

Here are just some examples:

• Technical errors and lost inquiries
• Misrouted inquiries
• Confusing or misleading calls to action
• Incomplete actions
• Unexpected capture process

All of these examples can leave a consumer lost in the lead ecosystem–unserved.

Consumer Behavior is Imperfect

Consumer behavior is no less imperfect and leads to just as many unserved leads. Internet users are notoriously unpredictable in their actions and inactions. As a result, they create more imperfections in creating the ideal real-time lead.

Here are some examples of behavioral errors:

• Follow the wrong capture path
• Make mistakes in completing the inquiry
• Abandon the inquiry
• Intentionally enter partially errant data
• Objective in submitting inquiry is misaligned

Again, these simple and unexpected behaviors will again cause consumers to be lost in the lead ecosystem.

Imperfection Creates Opportunity

Of course, many of these imperfections produce an aged lead. They either get misrouted to a buyer that can’t help the customer, the buyer is not diligent in following up on all of the contact information, or the lead generator simple loses the lead in its delivery process until it is too late.

Fortunately, for the aged mortgage or debt lead buyer these are easy challenges to overcome with a solid, diligent sales process. And for a fraction of the cost an enormous marketing ROI opportunity.

The verdict? Be cautious in assuming real-time, fresh leads are perfect and try a few aged leads to see if “there is gold in them thar hills!”

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New loan modification programs seem to be springing up daily. The latest is Obama’s mortgage modification plan–”Making Home Affordable.”

New Programs

What does this have to do with making aged leads more valuable? Simple, every new program is broader and more inclusive. This makes every aged lead that was having trouble getting qualified in the past a brand new, fresh loan modification lead.

Troubled Borrowers

Homeowners that are having trouble making their mortgage payments have been in limbo for six months to a year. Major banks and servicers have been suspending foreclosures, but not offering viable workout programs.

This is frustrating for homeowners, but an opportunity for you to finally bring some help to these folks.

This large population of homeowners that have already been on the Internet to seek help and have been told “no” are unlikely to return. But, they are sitting in the queues of lead brokers–waiting for hope to call.

Pipeline of Clients

This also becomes a lesson for sustaining a strong sales pipeline. Government and mortgage lender programs are likely to continue to evolve, becoming more inclusive as we work our way out of this economic recession.

That means that your pipeline of withdrawals and declines will continue to have value, if you nurture those leads. Aged leads are becoming more valuable with each new “revolutionary” plan for recovery hatched by the White House, Congress, Federal Reserve, Treasury, or big bank.

Trust Building

Keeping this pipeline of aged leads informed and positioned to get help as soon as it is available is a powerful trust builder. If you help a borrower or homeowner in this economic mess you are likely to have a client for life.

Look for those powerful client relationships in your aged leads.

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Virtual assistants are becoming all the rage in Web Worker circles. These are professional assistants that help information overloaded people get things done, in higher volumes. Can this be a smart move for mortgage and debt professionals?

I think so. Mortgage brokers have used processors for years to make the post-sale and doc-prep streamlined and painless for increasingly demanding borrowers. The concept is similar–these assistants give you more bandwidth. A virtual assistant, like a loan processor, can be very effective at completing repeatable processes. Processes that make you money, but are not necessarily differentiating or driving new business.

Most discussion of the virtual assistant discussion is around the traditional office assistant role–just making that resource “virtual.” However, I think it could have a stronger role with aged mortgage and debt leads as a prospecting resource.

In this market, as credit tightens and borrowers are increasingly faced with challenging financial scenarios a lot of your mortgage or debt leads are immediately ineligible. However, to get to that conclusion you usually have to collect at least a couple of additional pieces of information.

A virtual assistant can not only help you with managing your phone messages, email management, and appointment scheduling–they could increase your aged leads contact rate. By simply making a connection, collecting the answer to 2-3 simple questions (make sure they provide NO financial counseling or advice), and passing the qualified ones to you–you can easily double your contact rate and possibly even your closed deals for the month.

Check out a few of these discussions on virtual assistants and tell me what you think of the idea:

• Chris Brogan on Using Small Boxes
• Web Worker Daily on Virtual Assistants
• International Virtual Assistants Association

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I just picked up on a New York Times article–Banks Bypassing Mortgage Brokers. In essence it talks about the emerging trend of big banks closing down wholesale and correspondent divisions. This is a very concerning issue.

Not only will this have obvious effects on thousands of mortgage industry jobs, but it will directly hit the new home buyer and borrowers attempting to refinance mortgages. Mortgage brokers are about 65% of the mortgage market, both in originations and client databases. That’s right these folks are the direct relationship to the vast majority of mortgage borrowers.

For years banks have focused their attention on funding and servicing loans, not explaining and counseling customers on mortgage finance. Taking them out of the process will leave most borrowers in a void of information and education. Potentially, this will increase the problem with borrowers in the “wrong” mortgage financing.

What do you think the impacts of this trend will be to consumers?

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This market is certainly a confusing time to be quoting mortgage rates. Are they up or are they down? It is probably the opening customer question on most of your mortgage lead calls. The media is hitting your customers with tons of mixed signals on where mortgage rates are heading. You need to be ready.

Of course many of you know how mortgage rates work better than I do. However, I suspect many are just watching the rate sheets and quoting. This may work until you encounter a complex scenario or a smart customer that wants to know more.

So, as I always am, yesterday I was on the hunt for some of the best mortgage rate reporters. Not the obvious charts that you can get on Bloomberg, but people that can give you the skinny behind the number and where it is headed.

These are the two best I found: Mortgage Reporter and Florida Mortgage Daily. Both are solid mortgage loan officers with a real working knowledge of what is happening on the street.

Here are a couple of samples of what you get from these two pros:

• Although Florida Mortgage Daily is targeted at the Florida market the analysis and support is relevant to most mortgage markets.
• Dan Green is a part of the Bankrate Survey and is great at going deep on what is about to happen with rates and why. By the way, if you think you have a clue about what mortgage rates are about to do you are an all-star–notice the Bankrate consensus chart; up, down, unchanged 33% split. Wow!

The big point here is that in this crazy and competitive market customers are coming with lots of questions. Every closing depends on you coming up with answers.

Where do you get your mortgage rate information? What resources give you the edge on the phone with the client?

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Seth Godin, one of the master innovators out there and father of online permission marketing, just pondered this question on his blog: “What to do when the new thing does work?“

I think it is a perfect question for our current market. Whether you are in mortgage or debt, our markets are in transition. As a result you are probably trying something new–buying aged mortgage leads or debt leads for the first time, starting a blog, focusing on your database marketing. Whatever it may be, it is probably different from what you were doing in 2004.

Chances are all those changes or new things are not hitting home runs. So, what should you be doing?

Let’s start with the don’ts:

• Don’t panic
• Don’t start spamming any email you can find
• Don’t lay down your last marketing dollar on advertising
• Don’t give up

Now let’s look at the do’s:

• Do measure your results so far
• Do step back and look for things that are working
• Do look for reasons why your new thing is not meeting expectations
• Do some testing and tweaking of your approach

New things often need tuning.. Just like when a professional basketball player or golfer makes an adjustment to their swing, they need time to perfect that new adjustment. Prior to that perfection they may perform worse, but after the tweaking process they usually get a big jump in performance.

I see this all the time with new clients buying aged leads. The first month might be a little rocky, but once they get tuned into the new thing–they blast off and never look back to the old ways.

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(photo credit: brianpearson)

How many leads you should be buying for your mortgage or debt shop is a critical first question. Too many and you lose effectiveness, too few and you lose motivation. So, what is the right number of aged mortgage or debt leads to buy?

Really the answer to that question is more complex than you might first think. Here are a few key factors that will effect the lead buying formula:

1. Lead source. This is probably one of the biggest factors. Different sources have different conversion rates and level of effort that should be applied to convert. The better the conversion and lower the effort you are applying to convert them will reduce the number of leads you need to hit your sales numbers.

2. Sales performance. Lead distribution should be based on sales performance. If you are closely measuring and managing this performance you will know exactly how many leads each sales person can handle, and hit top sales production.

3. Lead Management. If you are working any reasonable size sales pipeline you need help. The average lead buying mortgage or debt shop is managing between 50-100 active leads at any given time. This makes some form of lead management software critical to success.

A good foundation of metrics will serve you better than any specific number. However, there are some good rules of thumb like recently mentioned on the LeadCritic blog. There suggestion is 3-4 per day and a maximum pipeline of 40 leads.

For aged mortgage leads or debt leads, I recommend this be a bit higher–5-10 per day and a pipeline of 50-100. This will account for a potentially lower contact and conversion rate, while reaching the same or better ROI.

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Looks like the government has pushed us back into a refinance boom.

You might have already noticed your phones ringing. If yours hasn’t or your customer pipeline is cold get this boom started with aged mortgage leads.

Here are some tips to get your mortgage leads pipeline pumping out loans again:

1. Buy aged mortgage leads. These are great Internet leads considering the market we are in. Most are professional marketing campaigns, with high intent customers. Unfortunately, mortgage brokers and loan officers have drawn down so much that there is an oversupply. This creates a pricing advantage.

2. Create a “market update” email campaign. A lot has happened in the last few weeks. You will be surprised how many consumers don’t even know mortgage rates have hit 37 year lows. Use you market update email to get them thinking about their current mortgage or the ideal opportunity to buy a new home.

3. Direct mail past clients and new aged mortgage leads. The average consumers’ mail has significantly less commercial advertising with most retail and credit card businesses in trouble. You will be surprised at the response you can now get with a well designed piece of direct mail.

4. Follow-up on leads and in-bound calls. Hopefully you are getting swamped with calls, but whatever you do don’t drop the follow-up. Consumers are in a panic, they want to lock-in these new rates now. And, you are not sure how long this cycle will last. So, get an air-tight tickler or simple lead management system to maximize each opportunity.

5. Tell others about your success in helping customers. Testimonials are great motivators for customers to choose you. As you get these successes collect testimonials and attach them to all of your marketing. People are looking for folks like them to endorse you. Collect and use those testimonials liberally.

This is a great time to be one of the few surviving mortgage brokers–make the most of it!