Driving Down Lead Costs while Increasing Conversions
ClearLead Inc. solves complex problems for a Fortune 500 mortgage company
The Client
A Fortune 500 diversified financial services company with significant interests in the mortgage industry.
Background
The client’s go-to-market strategy relied heavily on demand aggregation through multiple unbranded websites that together attracted leads for mortgage loan applications. They augmented their own lead aggregation activities with unbranded leads from third party websites, as well.
The criterion for an acceptable lead requires that it be within 10% of the national average for a minimum loan amount for normal types of properties in any state in the country. In addition, there are many other “hidden criteria” that determine the “closure capability” of a client.
ClearLead was asked to reduce the client’s unbranded lead cost and simultaneously increase conversion rates.
ClearLead was also tasked with determining the keywords to optimize within the client’s targeted product categories: new home, first time buyer, and refinances in the Loan-To-Value of 85% with FICO requirements of 650 – 850. Further complicating the assignment, the client wanted leads from a fluctuating target set of states, the priorities for which changed on a weekly basis.
Lastly, the client required a minimum of 500 leads per month.
The Solution
First, ClearLead acknowledged that the most cost-effective and efficient advertising media is natural search results: the ranking of ‘natural’ search by keywords. Over 80% of all internet searchers bypass the ‘paid’ advertising and go directly to the first page of the ‘natural’ rankings.
In the initial discovery phase, ClearLead developed an optimal keyword assortment for the client’s target products. Exploiting artificial intelligence (AI), ClearLead created a proprietary analytical tool to measure the value of the keywords and ranking success and to capture search engine algorithm changes in real-time.
ClearLead emphasized geographic keywords with ‘town,’ ‘state’ and ‘city’ prefixes and suffixes in the search terms and our success landed a higher percentage of conversions. To increase relevance with ‘local’ search, ClearLead created thousands of articles and links that married the keyword and both the national and regional ClearLead mortgage website. This catapulted the websites into the Top 10.
Results
Today, the combination of paid and natural search results from our efforts are generating upwards of 750 to 1,000 leads per month for the client’s specific programs and targeted states – double the client’s aggressive target.
ClearLead also reduced the lead cost by approximately 35%. Viewed against the conservative range of lead volumes, this equates to a cost savings to the client of approximately $100,000.
ClearLead increased the effectiveness of those leads by boosting their conversion rate to 75% to 85% - a better than three out of four close rate for those qualifying themselves on the designated landing pages. Those who fell into the 15% to 25% non-conversions were most often classified as duplicates (10%) and ‘unable to contact’ (4% to 5%). The overall conversion rate of the program was 18% - 20%. More importantly, the client realized an annual revenue increase of well over $1 Million.
Conclusion
The key element in this campaign was ClearLead’s ability to anticipate this new breed of mortgage shoppers – on the internet, through search – then apply the AI-assisted optimization of the client’s site. ClearLead provided proprietary technology to target, control and ultimately lower costs for our client. After delivering double the requested lead volume, a cost savings of over $100K and incremental revenue of $1 million to $2 million, the client canceled contracts with 4 competing SEM vendors and increased ClearLead’s share to 60% of the overall marketing budget.
To find out if your company qualifies for the ClearLead customer acquisition solution, request a FREE consultation or call us at 866.976.4669.
|
