Mortgage Automation: Zapier For Loan Officers

Mortgage Automation

Mortgage automation is the process of using technology to streamline underwriting, sales management, and marketing efforts within the mortgage industry. Furthermore, using automation in business processes will allow loan officers and mortgage professionals to focus on the part of their business that needs the most hands-on approach. Often, mortgage automation allows loan officers to take time to strategically build their sales pipeline and develop a thoughtful marketing strategy.

The top producers in the country have used mortgage automation to take their business to the next level. Instead of spending hours on data entry, social media posts, or sending out the same email over and over. Successful loan officers have found ways to automate these tasks and close more loans. In the industry, automation is synonymous with complicated technology. However, there are tools that have simplified this tech so anyone can use automation daily.

What is Zapier

Zapier is the best business automation tool for non-techy people. Zapier defines themselves as, “Easy automation for busy people. Zapier moves info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work” [1]. This tagline perfectly wraps up what Zapier is and how you can use it in your daily work life. In terms of pricing, Zapier offers a free plan with 5 automatons, a starter plan with 20 automation, & a professional plan with unlimited zaps. If you are an individual loan officer, the free Zapier account should work fine. However, if you are a senior LO or market leader, the starter plan is $20 a month and well worth the price for the mortgage automation capabilities. In my career as a marketer, I have not found a business automation tool as accessible as Zapier.

How to use Zapier for Mortgage Automation

The first step to using Zapier is figuring out what plan works for your workflow. The free version gives you access to 5 single-step zaps. This means that you can create 5 simple automation. You cannot create a multiple-step zap; for example, sending data to a database, filter data, and then sending it to your CRM. This would have to be 3 separate zaps on the free version. Additionally, you will not have access to premium app integration on the free version. The most popular premium apps are Facebook Lead Ads, Salesforce, Quickbooks, Pinterest, and Paypal. While Facebook Leads Ads is a premium app, you can still integrate automation with your Facebook page. However, Facebook Lead Ads is a specific app within the FB Ads Manager. If you are not running paid social media ads, do not worry about this premium feature. If you want to see a list of all premium apps, visit Zapier’s App Page.

If you are willing to pay $19.99 a month, you will qualify for the Starter Plan. This is the most popular plan among high-producing mortgage loan officers. The premium plan gives you access to 20 zaps, multi-step automation, 3 premium apps, and webhooks. For those who are not familiar with webhooks, a webhook is a method of communicating with applications and software that are not directly integrated with Zapier. For example, if you want to pull data from a CRM that does not have integration with Zapier, you can use a webhook, which often comes as a URL, and send this custom URL to the support or integration team that is connected to your CRM. Once the integration team drops in the webhook on the back-end, the data from your CRM will flow to Zapier. Utilizing webhooks open up the world of mortgage automation to its fullest capacity. Our team utilizes webhooks as API between multiple software that connect our entire marketing suite.

The final subscription Zapier offers is the professional plan. This plan costs $49.00 a month and gives you access to unlimited zaps, unlimited premium apps, and custom logic paths. Custom logic paths are a way to filter data using logic. For example, if you have all your CRM data flowing into one database, you can use custom logic to categorize your users by lead source (Zillow, Facebook, etc.). This function can help you digest your database quickly. This subscription is best suited for a market with multiple loan officers handling substantial volume. Once you have decided on the best fit for your business model, you can strategically think about the mortgage automation solutions that make you more efficient.

Top Zaps for Mortgage Automation

Send Lead Directly to CRM

If you are a consumer direct loan officer, chances are you have leads coming from multiple sources: Lending Tree, Zillow, Facebook, Google, etc. If you have not figured out an automated way to manage your leads, you will spend all of your time finding your leads, manually inputting them, and tracking who you followed up with. Instead of having 4 lead sources going to 4 different places, you can use Zapier to send all of your leads to one CRM or database. This will cut down on the time you take to track down your leads and help you scale into new markets quickly. Specifically, creating a lead to CRM automation starts with your lead source as the trigger. Once a new lead is generated, it will kickstart the automation to send all lead data into your CRM. From there, you can map this info into your primary lead generation campaign. This was the first major mortgage automation our team implemented and it changed our entire business process. Loan Officer no longer have to dig through emails to find their leads and can focus all of their efforts on working their prospects.

Schedule Social Media Post

Posting on social media is part of a loan officer’s weekly duties. However, going through the same process every few days, or once a week, can be burdensome. Using Zapier, you can create a zap that posts every week for a month. When you have new creative, you can go into your automation and swap out your images and update the verbiage. This task can take between 2-6 hours a week. With Zapier, you can spend 1 hour once a month setting this up. After the zap is set up initially, it will take 20 minutes to update monthly. This simple zap showcases the power of mortgage automation in your everyday marketing workflow.

Connect CRM with 3rd Party Systems

Most Loan Officers have 3rd party systems and software that they send borrower information to and from. Homebot is a popular post-closing software in the industry right now. Homebot sends your borrowers equity reports on the value of their home. Overtime, Homebot pulls out refinances and generates referral leads. Currently, most loan officers send Homebot a bulky excel sheet once a month with all of their closings. This takes time to format properly and pull the data. A great solution is to send this data directly from your CRM to Homebot. If you have an integrated CRM, you can create an automation that sends that info directly to Homebot once the borrower is marked as closed. If this zap does not work for you, there is another solution for loan officers that do not have a CRM that integrates with Hombot. You can send your data from the CRM to a spreadsheet. When the spreadsheet creates a new row, this will trigger a new zap that sends the spreadsheet row info to Homebot. While we use Homebot as an example, this solution works for many 3rd party software that needs your CRM data.

Henry

Henry has spent the bulk of his career working for mortgage companies and marketing agencies. He uses his experience in the martech industry to guide his strategies and insights in the mortgage and real estate world. He firmly believes that marketing success in every industry boils down to a technology-centered strategy.