Here’s a stat that will blow your mind in 2019:

50% of consumers still prefer to be contacted by brands via email. –Adobe

Or how about this one:

Email is nearly 40 times more effective at customer acquisition than Facebook and Twitter combined. –McKinsey

When it comes to digital marketing techniques, it seems like lately all of the attention is being paid to the new kids on the block: social media marketing, paid social (Facebook Ads, etc), paid search (Google Ads, etc), and their ilk. We get it! We, too, believe you absolutely must have a social media strategy for your business in 2019.

But when it comes down to what is actually the most effective and ROI producing strategy, email marketing still reigns supreme over all others. It’s hard to argue against the fact that, according to Forrester, more than 90% of emails get delivered to the intended inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans will ever see your posts show up in their news feed.

Where can loan originators best utilize email marketing?

LOs have a myriad of opportunities for email marketing within their industry and with their specific audience. When done well, timely email messaging can be a difference maker for lead activation and customer retention.

Keyword: timely.

This is where segmentation comes in. Use what you know about the contacts in your database to divide them into groups based on their “stage” through your customer journey. A person or persons who have contacted you for advice but aren’t quite ready to submit an application will respond to much different messaging than a client whos loan you just closed.

But both are ripe for email marketing.

As are your business and referral contacts that you want to stay top-of-mind with. You can use email to keep them informed on market activity or invite them to events you’re hosting.

Just about any way you can think of to slice your database and contacts can be an effective segment to market to. After all, 92% of online adults use email with 61% accessing it on an average day. That level of usage provides a savvy LO with unprecedented access to their target audience.

Most loan originators are now utilizing email marketing automation through their mortgage CRM in order to segment their contact database and deliver automated, yet personalized, content. This is the best way for an LO with a medium-to-large database to stay organized and manage multiple co-occurring email campaigns.

Okay, LOs should be leveraging email, but then what?

Knowing that you should be using email marketing, and setting up your campaigns isn’t enough. If you don’t know how your audience is responding to those emails, it’s hard to make changes that will generate the engagement you want.

Fortunately, we are blessed to live in an age that puts a priority on data and analytics. A high-quality mortgage CRM or marketing automation software with an email component should provide basic analysis like open and click-through rates for each of your individual campaigns.

For example, open rate is a good indicator that the contact segment is appropriate for the message and that the audience is expecting to hear from you. If your campaign was designed to move prospects to submit an application, then each one that does is considered a conversion.

Use the insights to improve upon your messaging, and fine-tune the data points used to create your segments.