It is official. You can now follow the daily activities, well most of them, of the ZipSearch marketing department on Twitter. What is Twitter? If don’t already know it is a cross between instant messaging and email. A Twitter user leaves short 140 character messages or notes throughout the day, basically posting what they are doing at the moment.

This is extraordinary display of transparency and should bring interest to many people, including our current client base. Ever wonder if your lead provider is actually doing anything with data that you send or optimizing their campaigns? Now you can see ZipSearch doing just that in real time.
If you would like to follow ZipSearch on Twitter you can go here

Have a great weekend!!

As the month of May closes we see the numbers holding strong. Refinance Leads to Purchase Leads continue to stay above 85%. Also the numbers for Conventional to Subprime are holding strong.

What has become apparent is that there is a lot of opportunity out there. When you look at the purchase side of things, you can definitely see a need for people who know how to help with Debt, and Credit Rebuilding.

Can we say “New Business?”

Here are this weeks numbers for Refi:
Colorado Good Credit: 91% refinance mortgage leads
Michigan Good Credit: 85% refinance mortgage leads
New York Good Credit: 84% refinance mortgage leads
Wisconsin Good Credit: 91% refinance mortgage leads

Contact us now to learn more about these ratios in the states that you do business in and how we can help you maximize profits for your company: 800.949.2919, ext. 301.

How the time flies. With May past half way, the refinance to purchase ratio is holding at above 85%. Which is down compared to the past months. But this is going to be expected as the market starts to shift to the land of buyers.

With that said, our Marketing team is still working hard, and keeping the volume consistent with our clients needs. Remember: Our goal is to provide clients with a pipeline of leads to push their return on investment to new levels.

Here are some numbers:
Florida Good Credit: 89% refinance mortgage leads
Illinois Good Credit: 92% refinance mortgage leads
North Carolina Good Credit: 91% refinance mortgage leads
New Jersey Good Credit: 93% refinance mortgage leads

Contact us now to learn more about these ratios in the states that you do business in and how we can help you maximize profits for your company: 800.949.2919, ext. 301.

Over the last 7 years I have worked with real estate agents and lenders on either generating their own leads or purchasing leads as a means to be successful.  The one thing that constantly resonates is the frustration the lender or realtor feels if that lead is not ready to make a move instantly.  The question that begs to be asked is if a lead is not put into a home or loan immediately is it a bad lead?
From my perspective, after working with hundreds of lenders and realtors the answer is 100% “no.”  To dig deeper we need to realize that people become a lead for a plethora of reasons and we need to recognize that with the Internet and media their reason could be swayed in an instant.  Just imagine, you are inquiring about refinancing and just as you hit submit, a news flash on Yahoo says the fed talks about cutting rates.  In that instant, you are thinking about waiting.  Now, this may seem like a long shot but think about how many articles, blogs, reports and stories have been published via Internet, radio, tv and newspaper that could change ones perspective very quickly.  In order to really work leads in today’s market you have to have a paradigm shift from idle lists of people you call and try and close immediately.  You have to look at them as an investment and have persistence.
There are many ways to do this and here I will outline what I find to be the most effective.  First, once you receive the lead, you must call it immediately and send an email immediately.  Now, I recognize life and business happens but if you are going to buy or generate real time leads, you have to call them as soon as you get them.  This hopefully will have you getting people on the phones that are excited and still interested.  The longer you wait to call them the higher the chance they are working with other people and/or they no longer care.   The best thing you can do is have your leads routed to your cell phone or set times everyday to check you site or lead management system and make the calls you need to.
The next key piece is follow up.  Most lenders make a couple of calls and send an email or two and move on.  This is an inefficient use of leads and money perhaps spent to get them.  You need to call them of course and send an email but this needs to be on a regular basis.  Now, there is a fine line here but putting them into a drip system is an efficient use of time and money.  There are many types of systems for all types of budgets but what you want is something that is customizable and stays in touch with the lead for no less than 12 months.  Every email that is in your drip system needs to be customized by you to be more than just the stock filler that the average drip comes with.   This customized content should reflect the market, your business, testimonials and should always have a call to action preferably to your website. The repetition of the drip will help you to stay in touch with little effort and will help the potential client get comfortable with. Over time by doing these two things you will see leads come to fruition.  I often liken leads to seeds because many times it does take along time before you see the fruit of your labor.
So back to the main question instant gratification or investment, if you look at it for instant gratification you are wasting your time and money.  If you look at it as an investment you will see more success and will be building your business for the long run.  No leads should ever be wasted and in today’s market.  There is no reason not to make the most of what you are buying or perhaps what you already have.

Another phenomenal week flies by us here in sunny San Diego and while I was a little under the weather the refinance ratio was not. If you are an advertiser on one of our flat fee websites you are seeing a good ratio of refinance leads to purchase leads.

This means no waiting for consumers to find a house or sitting around waiting for the real estate agent to call you back. The amount of refi leads in the mix should be keeping you nice and busy. They should also be helping produce a pay check at the end of every month. If you need more volume it may be time to look to other states and follow through with submitting those state license applications.

Until then here are a few examples of what we experienced last week.

Minnesota mortgage refinance leads were at a solid 85%

Louisiana  mortgage refinance leads topped out at 92%

Lastly West Virginia mortgage refinance leads were at 96%

Until next time, happy closing.

Another week has flown by us and marketing is still producing a large percentage of refinance mortgage leads to purchase mortgage leads.

I expect at some point these ratios will begin to shift once the market officially becomes a buyers market. Until then here are a few examples of what we are currently producing.

Kansas refinance mortgage leads 89%, Good Credit Leads.

Oregon refinance mortgage leads 90%, Good Credit Leads.

Hawaii refinance mortgage leads 96%, Good Credit Leads.

Bam! Another promising Purchase/Refinance report was just released today showing a high percentage of refinance inquiries compared to purchase inquiries. There is no doubt that people are looking to refinance and also take advantage of the current market conditions. Now your challenge is finding a loan that they can qualify for.

Here are a few example states:

California refinance mortgage leads 87%, Good Credit Leads.

Florida refinance mortgage leads 86%, Good Credit Leads.

Washington refinance mortgage leads 92%, Good Credit Leads.

The team here at ZipSearch is excited and pumping on all cylinders to deliver quality mortgage leads to you. Now get out there and call them!! BAM!

It was announced yesterday on LeadCritic and officially announced today over the wire that Kaleidico is taking the requests of lead providers to heart and driving action. Going back more than a year, lead providers like ZipSearch! have requested the ability to receive positive and negative feedback from their buyers with no response. The tipping point that pushed Kaleidico to drive this implementation came from a number of repeated requests from lead providers at the recent LeadsCon convention. On a side note, if you missed attending LeadsCon you truly missed a great opportunity to gain relationships that could grow your business and of course missed the chance to listen to our CEO David Schneider and myself pretend that we aren’t as dumb as we look. I, quite frankly think we pulled it off!

One of the ongoing topics at the convention was quality and feedback and that the fact that they are both tied together at the hip. Without feedback from buyers, driving quality leads becomes something similar to pin the tail on the donkey. (Yes, some of us are pretty darn good at playing pin the tail on the donkey because we have been doing it for such a long time.) The feedback that we receive from buyers is something similar to pulling up the scarf covering our eyes and allowing us to take a sneak peak at the donkey picture on the wall. With that insight we are able to nail our marketing efforts with only one tail and not three.

Enough talk about donkey’s. The bottom line is that this is really positive news for the industry. Yes, of course it is going to benefit the lead buyer, if you choose to allow your feedback data to be sent to your partners, which I would strongly urge you to do so, but it will also help the LMS companies, lead providers, title companies and of course your employees. All these players and many others will benefit from your higher conversion ratios. Now, this in no way is a silver bullet, but it will help lead provider generate better leads for you.

One big question or concern that comes up from lead buyers is that once a lead provider sees how well you are doing they will raise prices. I guess this is a valid point, BUT…I think it is very short sighted. In fact, I actually begin to get a little frustrated at that comment. Has a lead buyer who used to buy 400 to 500 leads a day I considered my lead providers as partners and I was aways willing to give feedback to them, good or bad. Many times the provider would be able to pin point issues in the campaign that could be optimized in my favor. I am not making this up. If you had the the chance to ask any of the major lead buyers in the space they would tell you that they absolutely give feedback to their lead providers.

The fear of a price increase doesn’t seem to be a reasonable arguement to me. Currently there are literally hundreds of different sources for leads and the market is very competitive. Unreasonable price increases by a provider would not stick.

Quick example:
What if you have a lead provider that received feedback from you in real-time and was able to optimize your account to the point where your conversion ratios increase by a half percent. This would subsequently increase your revenues too. A month goes by and the lead provider comes to you and say’s “Joe, we are going to raise your price from $20 to $25.” This is a risky move on the provider, but ultimately you have two choices. 1. You can accept the price because it may seem reasonable to you and you want to reward your partner for generating high quality leads. 2. You the provider to hit the road and you either transfer volume to a current provider or go out and find a new one. In either cases you benefited from the increase in conversions and made more money. I really can’t foresee a down side.

The good news for non-Kaleidico users is that ZipSearch! is on the forefront of this movement and will be implementing the same feed with LeadROI and Lead Mailbox. We have yet to come to an agreement with Leads360 but that will happen soon. I will keep you posted.

I personally want to say thank you to Kaleidico for taking the initiative on this issue.

Do you disagree with my opinions? Is this bad for lead buyers?? Let me know if you think so.

Refinance mortgage leads continue to hold strong at ZipSearch! Refinance to purchase ratios are still above 90% for the month of March. These ratios have been consistently above 50% over the last couple of months. This can be directly related to our marketing team as they work continuously to scale volume for our clients in order to meet their demand. The Goal in Mind: provide clients with a pipeline of leads to push their return on investment to new levels. Look at these numbers:

Illinois Good Credit: 96% refinance mortgage leads
Nevada Good Credit: 95% refinance mortgage leads
California Good Credit: 91% refinance mortgage leads
New Jersey Good Credit: 93% refinance mortgage leads

Contact us now to learn more about these ratios in the states that you do business in and how we can help you maximize profits for your company: 800.949.2919, ext. 301.

Another week has flown by and another Refinance to Purchase report has just been released. Our directory sites are creating extraordinary value for our current clients based on the large amount of refinance leads that are in the mix. Remember folks, our directory sites are unfiltered. Meaning you don’t choose whether you will receive purchase or refinance leads and therefore prices are adjusted accordingly. However, with these numbers current clients are receiving phenomenal deals! Don’t forget that we also offer programs on a pay per lead basis too.
Without further ado here are your numbers:

• Pennsylvania good credit mortgage refinance leads 79.25%
• Arizona good credit mortgage refinance leads 85.71%
• New Mexico good credit mortgage refinance leads 96.24%
• Washington good credit mortgage refinance leads 88.73%

With mortgage leads bringing in those types of ratios and on a flat fee none filtered product you can’t go wrong.

Give us a call if you have any questions or would like to learn more about our products and services.