After nearly 22 years teaching loan officers and mortgage companies how to develop leads and close more loans, the sudden shift in my advice regarding large-scale email outreach campaigns might seem a bit surprising.
For years, I believed email outreach didn't work unless it was deployed in very small, personalized mini-campaigns. When I say mini, I mean 10 hand-picked, highly personalized emails sent to top producing Realtors.
Back then, I believed this wholeheartedly. I had seen campaign after campaign flop, and it convinced me that Realtors were simply too busy, their inboxes already overflowing with spam for mass outreach to ever pay off. For nearly two decades, I stuck to that belief and avoided mass outreach completely… even in my own business.
And that's where we begin with today's article: how I learned I was dead wrong, (Yes, I can admit when I was wrong - Haha) and what you can actually expect from a properly executed mass email outreach campaign to Realtors. (Hint: very, very good things if you do it the right way.)
The Campaign That Changed Everything
A few short years ago, I was recruited by a company that made me an offer too good to refuse. It came with one massive challenge:
Reach every business owner in the U.S… Every. Single. Month!
Ambitious, right? With more than 18 million businesses in the U.S., how on Earth do you consistently get in front of every last one of them at least once every 30 days?
After I accepted the challenge, I started mapping out all the possible ways: paid ads, voice drops, phone campaigns, affiliates. But deep down, I knew there was only one realistic way to pull this off: Email. Freaking mass email…
I hated the idea.
At that point, I still thought mass email was a "necessary evil." But the board insisted it was essential if we wanted even a chance at success after I showed them the projections of outreach efforts vs. numbers reached.
Here's where things got interesting (And explains why I accepted this project). The company had a $250,000/month marketing budget, and I had full permission to allocate funds however I wanted. That meant I could hire the best consultants in the world to teach me how to do mass cold email the right way.
Two months of daily meetings, building, testing, and tweaking with industry experts, and I was dragged kicking and screaming into mastering cold email outreach.
And now? It's become one of my favorite go-to strategies, especially for loan officers, and I'm about to show you why…
The Results That Flipped My Beliefs
Here's what happened within six months:
- 110 full-time telemarketers were dialing six days a week
- Nearly 1,000 affiliates were promoting us
- Over $100k/month was running in ads across three platforms
And yet…
The channel that crushed them all, both in volume and ROI, was mass email outreach.
Nearly 40% of all new business over three years came from email. Not ads, not affiliates, not telemarketing. Just the very emails I once dismissed as spammy noise. (Surprised me)
Not only did it produce the most business, it was the cheapest channel to run by orders of magnitude.
That's when I knew I had to bring this back to the mortgage industry. Every day a loan officer ignores email is a missed opportunity, so it's critical you learn how to incorporate these strategies into your own efforts if you're targeting any sort of B2B referral source, which includes Realtors.
Why This Matters for Loan Officers
So what does this mean for loan officers who want more business? Simple: go after the lowest-hanging fruit first.
Realtors. (Don't pretend you're surprised)
Why Realtors? Because B2B outreach works best in email. It's cheaper, easier, and more predictable. Realtor emails are easy to find, they live in their inbox, and unlike consumers, they're less likely to smash the spam button when they get an email from someone they don't know.
If you want Realtor referrals (and every LO does), you cannot afford to ignore email. Simple as that. It's the perfect medium to get your message seen by enough agents that you invoke the law of averages - And win.
I've tested, tweaked, and executed these campaigns over and over. Done right, Realtor outreach emails consistently deliver. I'm talking about open conversations with top Realtors in under 24 hours — from a single campaign.
What loan officer wouldn't want that? Ok, so here's what you need to know to start your own Realtor mass email outreach… (Continued in Part 2)
Coming Next: The Realtor Email Playbook (Part 2)
Now the big question: How do you set up one of these game-changing campaigns for yourself?
That's exactly what I'll cover in Part 2 of this series: The Realtor Email Playbook — How to Write Emails That Get Opened, Read, and Replied To.
Stay tuned. You don't want to miss it.
