Communication is the key to success in every industry. Every successful entrepreneur out there knows, the better your communications the more opportunities you will make. The first part of the communication process starts with finding out your target audience’s needs: What do they like? What more can you offer to them? What problems can I solve for them? These and many other questions are constantly bothering the minds of great entrepreneurs. Today we would like to talk about the evolution of business communications and what every successful mortgage professional should use today.
Old-School
Although very little time have passed it is already really hard to imagine mortgage business without our current communication tools. Not too long ago there were no emails, no cellphones, no internet. People communicated through letters, faxes and landline phones. Today it is hard to Imagine having to wait till after work hours just to get in touch with someone because their only phone was attached to their home.
This was also the time when people sent mailers and brochures to their prospects and leads, a time when consumers had limited access to information channels and every channel almost worked independently from the other. Lots of Marketing Agencies took their start from about a half century ago and it wasn’t until around 1988 when the internet started to connect people and change the channels of communication, information gathering and marketing.
Nowadays
Up to 1990’s B2C direct marketing was mostly done by regular post or by the telephone, as you can imagine, both of these methods are quite expensive. That is when email marketing took place. Email marketing got so much attention and proved itself so effective that literally every company was doing it and is still doing today. Actually, Madison Logic posted global data in April 2014 that claimed 122 billion emails are sent every hour.
Another thing that got lots of attention in the communication field is text messaging. Another piece of statistics: 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. That is why communications between a customer and a service partially switched to text messaging.
The Future
Finally, the interesting part. The future of mortgage communication is being formed as we speak. The number of communication platforms is growing everyday and to effectively take advantage of this we have broken down a couple of different avenues for you.
1. Social Networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… All of them provide you with a great advertising tools to sell your service, but are they equally good for communications? Social websites dump so much information on everyday visitor (whether it is your customer or yourself) that a valuable piece of information can be easily lost and never found. Well, to lose something you have to have found it first, and that is where the second problem lies – a valuable piece of information on Social networks may simply be missed.
Imagine if you’re sending and receiving hundreds of messages in Facebook everyday but do not have a tool, like various email inboxes, to help you get through all of them?.. Do you know what you’re missing? Do you know what you’re looking for?
2. Two-way notifications in a client-service mobile application. As we mentioned before, 83% of Americans own a smartphone – this is a huge field for communications using mobile applications. Now you don’t have to restrict yourselves to text messages. Every successful mortgage company out there should offer a mobile communication platform.
It can be used in so many ways: you can send and receive documents from a customer or from a partner, show various graphs or presentation and much more. The best part is, you will be able to notify your client or partner about the update in the transaction instantly.
3. Special social websites. (Try not to confuse it with Common Social Networks) Communication websites that are provided to you and your customer by a service are certainly going to take their niche in the communication field.
Besides communications, such websites usually provide necessary information from both sides to help make better business decisions. Some go further, and provide additional services to allow both the company and the client to receive feedback, referrals from partners etc.
4. Communication applications. Everyone know about Skype or WhatsApp and is actively using it for personal purposes. Well, you should also use these applications for business too.
These applications provide you with a way to instantly notify a customer or a partner about the recent changes, give them a video call via your desktop or a mobile and many other not-so-often used features, such as file sending.
5. Finally, keep your email skills polished and ready for action. Email is still working and is actually still rocking. When the communications website/application dust settles, it will still probably take its’ niche.
Email is one of the most integrated tools. Literally every decent mortgage service is capable of sending emails providing you with one of the most convenient notification and informational tool out there. But not every service is capable of sending such notifications to customers or partners.
As you can see, communication has evolved and to be on the same page with your clients and partners you have to monitor lots of different channels. But rest assured, if you’re capable of doing so, you will always be on top of every possible business or partnership offer.
In this article we’ve tried to cover the hottest communication tools out there, but maybe we’ve missed something. Please tell us what other communication tools you’re using? What tools have brought you the most business? Make sure to let us know in the comment section below.
