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Find the "best" lead products available to mortgage professionals

First, Let's, clarify what 'best' means.

The best is going to be different from one company to another. The right program is based on several factors including:

1. Make up of your office staff (experience, team organization)
2. Complexity of your back end and follow up system (software, staff)
3. Resources available to kick start a marketing campaign ($$)
4. Goals of your marketing efforts (long term sustainable or quick success) Refinance Leads.
For most broker/bankers, the first two are the most important factors to look at. Mainly, how experienced are your people and secondly, what kind of support staff and software do you have readily available.

Ask yourself; Do I want to be involved in creating the interested and qualified client? Do I want someone that has already shown interested and is most likely qualified for a loan product? A description of common mortgage lead products.

Read about adjustable rate mortgage leads

Hot Transfers - One of the most expensive ways to find interested prospects. If done properly, these leads are ready to do a loan and the best part is that you do not have to call them. The problem is that you have to close a high percentage to offset the cost. UNLESS you are ok with a high cost per loan and quick turnover (some are happy with this model since time is always a factor). Most good hot transfer products should convert at 15-20%. This type of marketing is fast disappearing because of market conditions and the ability to create the same product for half the price in-house with good back end marketing systems.

Phone call from an Ad - Always a staple in many markets. This classic advertising is in my opinion a good investment. Think of what has worked for you and stick to it. Most print advertising works well with a good call to action and brand identity. Research techniques and methods of advertising. we recommend Greg Frost and Loantoolbox.com as a great way to create good call capture marketing. Especially in smaller markets, your company should have yellow page and RE book advertising as this is especially useful in cross-marketing with Realtors and other business affinity partners (appraisals, lawyers, title companies, exterminators, financial planners, etc.)

Mortgage Internet and Telemarketing Leads - Much like hot transfers, these leads are fast becoming rare and more and more non-exclusive because of the market and greediness of lead generation companies. There are many companies that still create outstanding leads at reasonable pricing, but these leads are few and farther between than most.

Mortgage Telemarketing leads are also moving quickly to the wayside because of DNC laws and the frequent outsourcing of telemarketing to other countries which of course creates a lower quality lead.

Mortgage Trigger Leads - Trigger leads are an up and coming product that has created quite a stir in the mortgage community. In 40 states, the bureaus offer the name, address, age of loan, credit score, phone, and mortgage inquiry date to those brokers that want to compete with applicants that have had their credit run. On the one hand, these are proven buyers looking for a loan - on the other hand, they are working through someone else. One thing to note on the trigger leads is there are no media costs - in other words, there is no cost to find the prospect since it is triggered on their credit being run. This makes the retail price of Trigger leads very appealing. Even with a 1 or 2% closing ratio, most brokers are very happy with the overall cost per lead.

Custom Courthouse Data - Specific real time leads can be generated by research teams based on variables desired. For instance, research teams can find out the types of adjustable rate mortgages and when they are to expire based on the research done by individuals looking up court documents. The more complex and rare the data is, the higher the cost per record. Note however that this can be used to pinpoint a lot of information about their loan and could provide insight into how to approach certain situations.

Actual Credit Scored Mailing Lists - All three bureaus provide a derivative of this product and we recommend that when using an actual scored database, that you implement specific targeting as well as good follow through which we will go into deeper here in the next section. One of the great things about actual scored data is you can pre-filter the file to include only those scores you can work with. The bureaus also have other filters like length of residence, consumer debt, late payment information that can be filtered along with credit score to target specific mortgagors.

Summarized Scored Data - A derivative of scored file as an alternative to purely modeled consumer/homeowner data, this file is a good way to approximate credit scores and Loan Type (FHA/Conventional) without actually getting a hard score. The modeling is based around taking the average credit score for a full residential block and assigning each household this score. The only real downside to this type of data is that you cannot overlay as many credit report specific variables and you run the risk of blending scores which, as you well know, two neighbors may have completely different loan needs.

County Recorder/Tax Assessor - The old fashioned and still highly popular choice for many title companies and mortgage companies looking to farm general mortgage holders. While this data will boast a wide range of selectable criteria, the way the file is updated creates a lower quality database. Sometimes 20-30% of this type of data may contain errors or may be different altogether based on how often this information is updated. Since county clerks update at different times and the cost of going to every courthouse is expensive, most will use online programs.

Read More: Pros and Cons of mortgage lead products.