Your Customers Are Shopping – How to Outsmart Your Competitors

Well, it was bound to happen. The thieves are taking over mortgage lending and financial services in general. The hottest item for those with ‘sticky fingers’ – your borrowers!

Just about any law enforcement agency will tell you that most thievery is a result of the ease of the opportunity presented, along with assessing the effort involved. Coveting thy competitor’s borrowers is becoming easier every day in lending.

The surge of available Big Data continues to swell, as does use of the newer technologies being deployed to convert that data into actionable intelligence. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA) continues to generate unprecedented visibility and opportunity everywhere.

What visibility you ask? Consumer behavior, actions and intentions. With the right data sources and robust applications to decipher it, the ability to monitor consumer behavior, and even predict it in many cases, is on the rise. It is somewhat ‘crystal ball-like,’ compared to just throwing darts without such intel – an approach far too common in the way many lenders market their goods.

In the financial services world, offering loan and credit products to consumers, the cost of acquisition can be quite expensive. Depending upon the product and scenario, it can take months to break even. So, losing borrowers any time after closing the transaction is extra painful, much less the lost upsell and cross-sell opportunities. We all want the lifetime value of a customer to grow well-beyond toddler stage.

With a Borrower Intelligence platform like Sales Boomerang, you can help fend off competitors on every contact in your portfolio and CRM database. Deliver the right message at the right time, such as when your borrowers and/or prospects:

  • Just listed their home for sale
  • Cross a threshold of tappable home equity
  • No longer require mortgage insurance
  • Hit pre-set interest rate targets
  • Make mortgage inquiries
  • Were previously declined, but now eligible

You pay darn good money for leads and customers. It is smart to ‘defend that spend’ and fence your contacts off from the competition – taking a ‘No Trespassing’ attitude.

Here are the primary ways that smart marketers approach mining Big Data:

Descriptive: Describes what has already happened (e.g. applied for a mortgage)

Predictive: Attempts to forecast what is likely to happen in the future (e.g. when rate hits 3.0%, these borrowers in portfolio will seek to refinance)

Prescriptive: Results from the above analysis, suggesting various options to take

For decades, our industry clung to watching what already happened with consumers, but the popularity of predictive analytics continues to grow in epic proportions – across all retail and consumer facing ecosystems. It is not just a luxury to know or predict your borrowers (and prospects) next move, it has become fundamental.

The question is – Do you know your own next move? Your customers are shopping and sending signals out. Will you be the first to be alerted, outsmarting the competition, or will you be an accomplice to the thieves standing in line to loot your portfolio and CRM database?

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