Lead Market Integrating, Innovating

Kirkland, Wash.-based HouseValues recently announced a joint venture with a lead management software company that would offer the lead company’s clients a customized lead tracking and distribution tool they say will help mortgage professionals increase conversion rates.

“From day one, our goal has been to not only bring our clients the best leads, but also the best tools to manage and ultimately convert leads into closed business,” HouseValues executive Kevin Akeroyd said in the announcement. “As the competition for customers becomes increasingly fierce, more and more lenders and mortgage brokers are asking for a single solution: leads combined with a comprehensive and easy to implement and use lead management solution.”

Software solution developer Leads360 said its existing clients have seen conversion rates more than double from the use of its lead tracking and distribution tool, Mortgage Market Leader.

The Inglewood, Calif.-based software firm said its management tool automatically routes leads to assigned loan originators, tracks the progress and creates real-time reports for performance and production analysis.

Customized reports can track contact and close ratios, identify and return bad leads, and assess which marketing campaigns are the most effective, the company said.

Lead companies such as HouseValues and LoanWeb.com say they are offering the integrated management system at discounted rates to lenders as a way to manage their leads; assuming they don’t already have a system in place.

“The much larger lenders that have internal (lead management systems) of their own will have a tougher time getting a remote system like this to work for them,” LoanWeb executive Keith Moore told MortgageDaily.com.

LoanWeb has been using Leads360 since January 2005, he said, and since then they have seen improved conversion rates and an increase in orders.

“Using Leads360 gives a better perspective on which leads are working best and the LOs progress,” Moore said.

Moore noted that when the mortgage business was booming, lenders weren’t as concerned with tracking lead progress however, in a tightening market lenders need to manage their leads better to maximize their value.

Maximizing value by recycling leads, Boston, Mass.-based Intellidyn Corp. introduced a new prospecting tool Intelli-RECYCLE designed to increase the value of mortgage leads by tracking those that have not closed, essentially “harvesting” them for future use.

“In addition to ensuring that these homeowner prospects are still in market, we are able to verify and correct the loan and credit profiles that the homeowner conveyed at the time that they responded, and to provide our clients with the prospect’s current lender and loan type,” Intellidyn CEO Peter Harvey said in the announcement.

HouseValues Akeroyd said Intellidyn had come up with a nice little niche. “Intellidyn has a lot of competitors out there … however Intellidyn knows mortgage lead data really well,” Akeroyd said. “I think it’s a good idea, and should be successful based on the data they sit on and their expertise.”