Lead Generation: Family First Finds Tailor-Made Sales Prospects
Bank Technology NewsIf the mortgage market is on the downswing, competition for the highest quality leads will be more intense than ever, and that’s drawing attention to an alternative online lead exchange that allows lenders to stipulate exactly what kinds of potential customers they want, and when they want them, as part of the bidding process. “I’m only interested buying leads from borrowers with excellent credit,” says Mark Haddad, a branch manager for Family First Mortgage, who is looking for those leads on LeadPoint, a “market-based” online lead generation service. “I had some success in prior years using more traditional lead services, but the quality (of the potential borrowers) was all over the map.”
Michael Rosenberg, LeadPoint’s CMO, says his firm works without a contractual commitment for brokers, allowing for an “eBay-style” marketplace for leads that can drive down the fees that lenders pay for those leads. The exchange also gets lenders off the hook for buying leads they don’t necessarily want-since the lenders are only seeking leads when they are actually in the marketplace-so they don’t have to buy leads at a time when they might not be looking for them. “They can buy leads when they want and how they want. If you don’t want to get leads on Sunday, you don’t have to get them on Sunday,” Rosenberg says.
A few months ago, Family First’s Haddad started to surf for leads on LeadPoint, which allows bidders to stipulate what kinds of attributes they are looking for in a potential customer, with financial products including mortgages, auto loans and other products. Demographic factors such as size of loan, credit quality, loan-to-value ratios, and geographic location are taken into consideration before the leads are presented to the lender for bidding.
Haddad has built a pipeline of more than a dozen loans totaling about $500,000 through leads found on LeadPoint. He says the cost is also less-about $20 for refi leads, as opposed to about $50 for a group of potential leads obtained through other online lead services. For Haddad, the hope is that by making these stipulations electronically known to the exchange before bidding, he can reduce the amount of time associated with pouring over potential leads to find good fits after the bidding has already taken place. “The leads are broken down by credit grade or loan amount,” he says. “It’s like a mini-spreadsheet.”
Participants on the exchange enter a range of loan amounts, such as $100,000-$124,000; $124,000-$359,000 and so on. They also click on credit attributes such as “excellent,” “good,” “fair,” or “poor.” Beyond that comes state designations and other regional preferences. He also says the site’s access to market data helps him make decisions on what kinds of leads to bid on, and what kind of market actions different types of borrowers are getting. LeadPoint, which has generated about one million leads in the past year and has attracted the participation of HSBC, US Bank, Quicken and Ameriquest.
LeadPoint would appear to be a competitor to a number of Internet-based lead generators, most notably LendingTree, which has enjoyed nearly a decade of success and brand recognition in the space. A spokeswoman for LendingTree, which has generated 20 million leads since its founding in 1998, says its network of lenders tailors leads by setting up filters based on factors such as FICO scores or geography.
http://www.banktechnews.com/article.html?id=20070102C4Y255M7
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