Why AI Should Be Your Strategy For SMS Texting

Mortgage brokers, banks, and credit unions have started to tap into a new marketing opportunity. It’s as convenient as email campaigns, but it’s a whole lot more likely to get noticed. It can be as personalized as a phone call, but it doesn’t require as much from your team. It’s short message service (SMS) texting. 

Only about a third of emails get opened up and read. And calls from unknown numbers only get answered 17% of the time. But people read 98% of the texts they get. 

In other words, SMS campaigns give you a way to get your lending institution’s offerings in front of potential customers. And when you tap into the power of artificial intelligence (AI), you can do that more strategically, and in a way that seamlessly integrates with your marketing and sales flow. 

Benefits of using AI-powered SMS texting

Choosing AI for your SMS text campaigns means automating a large part of the work while maintaining a personalized touch. Here are just a few of the perks this type of text marketing can deliver:

• Two-way conversation. SMS marketing isn’t anything new. In fact, spam-like texts became so prevalent that the federal government stepped in to regulate them. But AI texting moves away from those unwanted messages, instead giving leads the opportunity to have a conversation to get the info they want. You can use AI SMS to complete an initial lead qualification through a back-and-forth conversation, all over text. 
• Low lift for your loan officers. There’s no need for your loan officers to learn to use this tool. It can be set up to run in the backend, engaging with cold leads or gathering information from warm ones. The AI system then passes the lead to the loan officer when that lead is actually ready to move forward with the borrowing process. 
• Built-in compliance. The right AI texting platform will be built on all of the latest regulations around SMS compliance. That means it will only send messages that won’t get your company’s texts flagged as spam. 
• Seamless CRM integration. You can sync your AI texting tool with your CRM. This way, it can automate alerts in your CRM that notify your team when it’s time to take next steps. If a lead has been qualified via texts, for example, it can change that lead’s status in the CRM so your loan officer knows it’s time to reach out. It’s a little like having an assistant living in the CRM. 
• A human touch. A good AI text service will tap into a human-in-the-loop approach. That means that when the situation calls to get a live person involved, the AI tool initiates that connection. Say your tool is texting with a lead who tells you they’re at the hospital with a family member. The AI can recognize that this is a situation that requires empathy and tag in one of your team members to take the conversation over.  

Ways to get started with AI SMS

Those benefits might sound nice, but you’re probably curious to get down to brass tacks. Here are a few practical ways that lending operations are using AI-powered SMS texting to drive loan closings. 

#1: Live transfers

Ideally, every lead connects with a live person at your company who can move them forward. But the reality is that a lot of folks are busy. They might have submitted a lead form, then headed out to their company retreat or family vacation. They might have thought about refinancing their mortgage late one night, and completely forgotten about it by the next morning.

AI can step in to help bridge the gap between that initial interest and that lead’s real-life availability to connect with one of your loan officers. 

For example, once someone submits their information — whether that’s via your website’s contact form, a rate quote tool, or elsewhere — the AI tool can get in touch right away. It has the initial qualifying conversation via text, responding as that person does, whether they’re quick to reply or it takes days or even weeks. 

Once the lead is qualified, the AI can ask if they’re available to talk with a loan officer. If the person says yes, the AI initiates a call from the same number that lead has been texting. Once the lead picks up, they hear a recording that essentially says, “We’re so excited to talk to you. Press 1 to get connected to a loan officer.” 

Once they press 1, the AI tool routes an inbound call to your loan officer. That call is tagged so the loan officer can see that it’s a qualified lead. They pick up and immediately connect with an individual with high borrowing intent. 

#2: Deliver instant rate quotes

You can use AI texting to collect the information needed to personalize a rate quote, and then to send that quote to the lead. 

With a text that includes their customer rate dashboard, everyone wins. That lead gets the information they’ve been seeking, tailored to their borrowing scenario. And your loan officers get a way to see that individual’s specifics — collected by the AI tool — and how they engage with the rate dashboard. This way, they can provide bespoke service that helps that loan to close. 

#3: Database re-engagement

Most lending institutions have a big pile of leads that never converted. With two-way SMS texting powered by AI, you get a way to refresh those cold leads in a way that’s conversational and engaging. With a simple text, you can see if they’re still interested in exploring their loan options. The next text can find out where they’re at in that journey. 

Many lending operations use AI SMS to re-engage leads from the following categories:

• No response after several days of outreach from the calling team 
• Initial responsiveness but fell off after 30 days
• People who filled out applications but never did anything after
• People who only filled out part of the application

With a specific campaign for each category, you can potentially generate business from a lead list that otherwise would lie dormant. 

These are just a few ideas to get your wheels turning. If you want to explore what AI-powered SMS texting can do for your lending institution, schedule a demo with our team today. 

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