The First 30 Days in BNTouch: A New Loan Officer Onboarding Checklist

A new loan officer who completes five setup tasks in the first 30 days inside BNTouch starts shipping pipeline before the end of month one. The five: complete the Quick Setup Marketing Wizard for one campaign so the first automation is live, import three campaigns from the Content Exchange so the marketing library has structure on day one, configure campaign settings (name, group, unsubscribe label, multi-loan handling) for each imported campaign, build at least one custom marketing template so emails carry the LO’s voice, and run a first import of borrower and partner records into the right database. Each task has a screen and a click path. Together they take about three hours spread across the month. The loan officer who skips them runs at half capacity for six months instead.

By Yuri Polukeev, Founder of BNTouch.

The first 30 days inside any new CRM are the deciding window. The loan officers who use them well end up running automated campaigns, sending personalized emails at scale, and triaging pipeline from the dashboard. The ones who do not end up still copying email templates from Word documents six months later.

Day 1-3: Run the Quick Setup Marketing Wizard for one campaign

The Quick Setup Marketing Wizard is the most useful first-week tool inside BNTouch. “For each campaign in your CRM, you’ll see a quick setup button to the right” [pzEcO46n30g m1]. Click it. The wizard walks the new loan officer through a series of questions: which records the campaign should add automatically (all clients, all partners, only specific databases, only records in selected groups), whether the campaign should backfill to existing records or start only for new ones, and what default template to use. “The next question will determine what records the campaign will add and start for automatically. For all answers that start with yes, the campaign will use automation triggers to add records according to the selected” [pzEcO46n30g m2] rules. Pick one campaign (the new lead welcome is the standard first pick), run the wizard, ship it.

Day 4-7: Import three campaigns from the Content Exchange

The Content Exchange is the campaign library shared across all BNTouch users. “This library is separated into two categories: campaigns by BNTouch and campaigns by subscribers. The first contains campaigns that BNTouch is designed and made available to all users” [mbdnzKQmBjU m1]. The recommended week-one imports: a borrower portal invite campaign, a partner portal invite campaign, and a closed-loan post-close drip. Search the Content Exchange, click into each campaign for “a more detailed description of the steps and settings” [mbdnzKQmBjU m4], preview each step using the blue links, then click the import button. The campaign drops into the new loan officer’s account with all steps and settings preserved. Edit the body copy to match the LO’s voice, then run the Quick Setup Wizard on each.

Day 8-14: Configure campaign settings on every imported campaign

Every campaign has a settings page that controls four things new loan officers commonly skip. One, the unsubscribe display name. “You can enter a title in the name visible on unsubscribe page field” [zX8vEmnBw80 m2] so the borrower sees a recognizable campaign label, not an internal code. Two, the campaign group assignment for grouping related campaigns under one heading in the marketing tab. Three, the start-only-once-per-client setting that controls behavior for borrowers with multiple loans. “If you have clients with multiple loans in your records, yes will only allow the campaign to be started once for the client’s account” [zX8vEmnBw80 m3]. Four, the share-with-other-users toggle so the LO’s team can copy the campaign for their own use. Click update settings to save. Repeat for each imported campaign.

Day 15-21: Build one custom marketing template in the LO’s voice

Imported campaigns come with BNTouch’s default templates. Week three is when the new LO replaces at least one with their own. From the marketing tab, click templates, click add new template. Pick design type (style and stationery) or letter type (full text content). Build out one welcome template with the LO’s branding, headshot, signature block, and tone. Save. From this point forward, the welcome campaign uses this template instead of the platform default, and every email landing in a borrower’s inbox reads like it came from the LO.

Reusable templates are the single most useful piece of week-three work. Built once, applied across every welcome email, status update, anniversary message, and referral ask for the rest of the LO’s career on the platform.

Day 22-30: Run a first import of borrower and partner records

Most new loan officers arrive with a contact database (spreadsheet, prior CRM export, partner contact list). Week four is when that database lands inside BNTouch so the campaigns have records to fire on. Use the import button on the relevant record list. “When importing records make sure each file has a unique file name” so the system can map fields correctly. Once records are in, run the Quick Setup Wizard on every imported campaign with the “yes, start for existing records that match my criteria” option selected. The campaigns start firing on the imported list within hours.

Quick Setup also fires retroactively if needed. “If you don’t want the campaign to start for your current records but do want it to start automatically for any new records that match your criteria, choose the second or third options” [XT7f9X4hwnw m6]. Useful when the LO has imported partner records they want in the system for reference but not on the active partner drip yet.

What this 30-day checklist does not solve

Two honest limits. One, the checklist gets the system set up. It does not get the loan officer to use it daily. Adoption is a separate problem. The LO has to open the daily dashboard, log tracker events, and check the alerts panel every morning for the system to compound. Two, an LOS sync (if the brokerage uses one) is a different setup task than the import. The training video on the CRM walkthrough notes that the data is only as good as what feeds into it. If LOS sync is not configured, records will be missing loan amounts, rates, and status fields the campaigns rely on. Schedule that conversation with the admin in week one.

See the 30-day setup running on a sample account

If you want to see the Quick Setup Wizard, Content Exchange, campaign settings, template builder, and record import flow on a working account, the fastest path is to request a demo and ask the BNTouch team to walk through a new LO onboarding sequence. The mortgage CRM overview covers each of the screens in the checklist above.