There are 300 to 400 people in your database who already know you, already trusted you once, and have not heard from you in over a year.
That is not a cold list. That is a warm list you let go cold. And it is sitting on roughly 20 to 35 percent of your annual volume, because that is the share of loans that comes out of the database rather than fresh leads. Database recapture done consistently is worth somewhere around six to twelve extra loans a year for a working LO. The problem is never the list. The problem is that “I should reach out to old contacts” is the easiest task in the world to push to next week, every week, for fourteen months.
So here is the build. Three touches, one trigger, real copy. You set it once and it runs itself.
The trigger
The trigger is the last-contact date, not a calendar blast.
In your CRM, filter for any contact where the last meaningful touch (a call logged, an email opened and replied to, a real conversation, not a mass send) is 12 or more months old, and the contact is not currently in an active loan. That is your dormant segment. In BNTouch you build this as a saved filter on last-activity date and drop the whole segment into the sequence below. New people age into it automatically as their own 12-month mark passes, so the machine keeps feeding itself without you rebuilding the list.
One rule before you turn it on. Pull anyone with an open complaint or a deal that went sideways. Reactivation is for people who liked working with you. The rest is a different conversation.
Touch 1, day 0: the useful market note
No ask. You are re-entering their inbox as a person who knows something, not a salesperson who wants something. The whole job of this email is to not get deleted and to remind them you exist.
Subject: where rates actually landed
Hi {First name},
Quick one, no action needed. A lot of people I worked with a while back have been asking me the same question lately, so I figured I would just send the answer instead of waiting for the call.
Rates have settled into the mid-6s, and the market this year is mostly purchase, not refinance, running close to two-to-one. What that means in plain terms: if you have been waiting for some big drop to make a move, that is probably not the plan to bet on. The people doing well right now are the ones making the math work at today’s number, not next year’s hoped-for one.
That is it. Filing this under “things you might want to know.” If you ever want me to run your specific situation, you know where I am.
{Your name}
Notice what is missing. No “let’s hop on a call.” No calculator link. You are buying back permission to be in their inbox, and you do that by being useful first and asking for nothing.
Touch 2, day 7: the genuine check-in
Now you talk to them like a human who remembers them, because you do. Short. Personal. The opposite of a newsletter.
Subject: thought of you
{First name}, it has been a minute. I was going back through some old notes and your name came up, and I realized I never actually checked in to see how the house worked out.
No pitch here. I am genuinely curious how things landed. Did the place end up being the right call? Anything change on your end, new job, growing family, thinking about moving again?
If the answer is “all good, nothing changed,” that is a great answer and I am happy for you. If something did shift, I would love to hear about it.
{Your name}
The reason this one works is that it is true. You are an LO, you have notes on these people, and “how did the house work out” is a real question a real person would ask. If you cannot send it honestly, do not send it. But most of the time you can, and that honesty is the entire engine of the reply.
Touch 3, day 21: the open door
The soft close. You name the door, you point at it, and you let them walk through on their own time. No pressure, no countdown, no “act now.”
Subject: leaving this here
{First name}, last one from me for a while, I promise I am not going to become the guy who emails you every week.
Three things tend to bring people back to a conversation like this: a rate that finally makes a refinance pencil out, a move (bigger place, new city, helping a kid buy), or pulling cash out of the equity that has built up while you were not looking. If any of those is even a maybe, that is the moment to grab fifteen minutes, because the math is worth checking before you make the decision, not after.
If none of it applies right now, no worries at all. Save my number, send people my way if they need someone honest, and I will be here when the timing is right.
Here is my calendar if it is ever useful: {link}
{Your name}
Why three and why this order
One touch is a coin flip on timing. Five touches to a dormant contact reads as desperation and gets you marked as spam. Three is the number that lets you lead with value, then warmth, then a door, without ever tipping into pressure. The market note earns the open. The check-in earns the reply. The open door catches the ones who were quietly waiting for a reason to come back.
And the reason to wire it into the CRM instead of doing it by hand is the same reason it never gets done by hand. The trigger fires on the last-contact date whether or not you remembered. The segment refills itself. Six to twelve extra loans a year is not a heroic effort. It is one sequence you build once and stop thinking about.
If you want to see how the last-contact-date trigger and the saved dormant segment get built inside BNTouch, so this runs on its own instead of living on your to-do list, book a quick demo. Bring your real database size and we will look at what your dormant segment actually holds.
