Cotality Marketing & Retention Solutions help Agave Home Loans achieve 5X RoI on their marketing spend

About Agave Home Loans

Founded in January 2020, Agave Home Loans is based in Phoenix, Arizona, and does business in 14 states. Operating as a call center model, Agave Home Loans employs 75 people and specializes in home loans, refinancing, real estate, and purchases.

Co-founder Marshall Gottlieb emphasizes that stellar customer service is essential to Agave Home Loans’ mission. Marshall realized early on that for Agave to be successful, they must execute the highest level of care and trust with their clients.

“We’ve built really good systems, and we have an incredibly high standard of communication and client service, and that’s allowed us to deliver a good white glove experience,” he explains.

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Challenges and goals

Agave Home Loans’ biggest challenge was acquiring high-quality leads quickly. And anticipating the discontinuation of credit triggers, Agave is turning an eye to retention strategies.

Marshall explains that it can take months to pilot lead providers, leading to significant time and money lost if the leads prove to be low-quality.  “Leads are kind of like a black box, in that you don’t know what you’re going to get, and there’s a wide array of quality,” he says.

Marshall realized he couldn’t afford to slowly test lead pools over time. His team needed a more immediate solution, one that his LOs could act on swiftly to anticipate clients’ needs.

Generally, Agave Home Loans sought more accurate data to build marketing and outreach campaigns that put them in front of clients before they lost out to another lender. Marshall pointed out that targeting clients who are not in-market wastes time and resources.

“How do I get the right person on the phone at the right time with the right mortgage broker or banker, so we can best serve the client and have a profitable lead source that helps us grow as a company?” asks Marshall. “Understanding what data works best is key to all of this.”

As Agave holds itself to a high level of customer satisfaction, Marshall wanted to make sure the solutions he chose complemented his mission of creating authentic relationships.

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Solutions

Agave Home Loans implemented Marketing & Retention Solutions from Cotality™, focusing on three components within the overall solutions offering:

• Precision Marketing to identify potential clients in the market.
• Lost Leads Analysis to identify competitors and understand where leads are going.
• Property Intelligence to provide clients with accurate home values using Automated Valuation Models.

The sales team and loan officers are the primary users.

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Setup and launch

Initially, Agave Home Loans uploaded 10,000 CRM records into Precision Marketing, later increasing that number to 25,000. Marshall noted the straightforward process, explaining that his Chief Technology Officer easily uploaded a CSV into Agave’s own database. That action immediately triggered alerts to Marshall’s loan officers, notifying them of a lead and offering a short engagement script.

Marshall credits Agave’s smooth onboarding to Cotality’s strong support team and willingness to accept feedback.

“I definitely feel [Cotality] wants to hear our feedback as users. I think when your intent is really good about making a meaningful product, certainly we’ll all get more out of it,” he says.

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Success

Agave has already seen considerable success and ROI with the solutions they’ve implemented, including:

• 4x-5x ROI on marketing spend, at $1,000 per month for Precision Marketing.
• 5 loans closed within the first month of using Precision Marketing.
• Up to 2 hours saved per day, per loan officer due to the efficiencies the solutions provide. That’s up to 10 hours a week saved per loan officer.

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More behind the numbers

Marshall elaborates on the success he’s seeing. Now, loan officers have the tools to proactively contact clients before they do a credit pull and are inundated with calls from lenders.  LOs can see which contacts have equity in their home and who may be casually shopping, all sourced by publicly available data.

Agave closed five loans within the first month of implementing Precision Marketing – a feat Marshall attributes to its accurate data. His LOs are proactively reaching out to clients and it’s paying off.

Importantly, loan officers can educate homeowners on their options for a home equity loan or refinance – even when homeowners didn't know those options were within reach.

“[People feel] like they haven’t been able to do anything for maybe four or five years, when rates were a lot lower, and [now] they want to update the bathroom or remodel the backyard,” Marshall explains. “A home equity loan or refinance makes sense for a lot of people right now, even though they don’t think that because they see on the news that interest rates are high.”

Plus, Precision Marketing’s easy-to-use email templates make it simple for LOs to send outreach to their contacts that sounds organic, natural, and helpful. Instead of loan officers spending time crafting their own messaging, they can use the pre-populated templates to stay top of mind and get back to doing what they do best – originating.

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Exploring lost leads for a clearer game plan

Marshall continues to evaluate Cotality’s Lost Leads Analysis solution after recently implementing it with his team. He notes that it’s helping him to get a clearer picture of how Agave can improve sales and retention strategies.

“If the person doesn’t transact with me, I just think they didn’t transact. But if they’re transacting with other people who bought the same lead, I know we’re just not winning from a sales perspective.”

On the other hand, he points out that Lost Leads is a great tool for debunking junk leads. “I can also see that a bunch of people did transact, possibly before the lead date. If a bunch of people are transacting and then I’m getting a lead, it tells me that the lead provider is selling me a bogus lead.”

This gives Marshall a crisper idea of what Agave is doing right, and what they need to change. In some cases, it may be improving sales strategies. In other cases, it may be as simple as finding a new lead provider.

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Powerful data saves time

Marshall stresses that when it comes to spending marketing dollars, it’s crucial to have accurate data. He notes that a loan officer can spend two or three hours a day calling leads that are cold or not in the market.

“If we’re being alerted to call people at the right time, it’s a couple of hours a day that LO gets back because they found someone who’s actually in the market proactively. They’re not getting blown up by a million lenders and that makes the contact rate higher,” he says.

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Araya fills the gaps

Agave manages these marketing applications on Cotality’s revolutionary Araya™ platform. The Araya platform offers lenders one place to view all their data solutions. Mortgage originators have the insights they need at their fingertips, with a single login, elegant UX, and straightforward navigation.

Marshall notes that for a small shop with no dedicated marketing team, it’s a game changer.

“I don’t have a marketing team. I don’t have a data scientist. Some of these things we [didn’t] even know were possible. We’re not super familiar with title data or payoff analysis. So, if there’s a one-stop shop that helps us understand what’s out there to improve our marketing effectiveness, then I’m for that.”

Marshall has big plans for Agave. He and his team are considering expanding to different states, and he's optimistic that Cotality’s Marketing & Retention Solutions can help him get there. He says he plans to use Cotality data to see where the growing markets are, what states people are leaving, which homeowners have equity, and more.

“We want to figure out how we can be a one-stop shop that provides an awesome financial service [to our customers]. And we want to work with vendors and companies that help us best accomplish that mission of providing excellent financial options for people.”

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Conclusion

Agave Home Loans has made significant strides in leveraging the Marketing & Retention Solutions, Precision Marketing, Lost Leads Analysis, and Property Intelligence, delivered in one, central source, the Araya platform. Under the leadership of Marshall Gottlieb, Agave continues to evaluate how they can serve clients with excellence and grow revenue with the growing solutions for mortgage lenders by Cotality.

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