Why Mortgage Lenders Use LendingTree

Per its own data, LendingTree reports that 75% of a mortgage lender’s audience has familiarity with their brand. And with a network of 30 million borrowers, there’s some solid evidence to support that claim. 

As a result, mortgage lenders who are looking to promote their loan products often turn to LendingTree. By partnering with this online lending marketplace, lending institutions gain an opportunity to connect with a wide audience of people exploring their home loan options. 

Let’s take a closer look at why lenders use LendingTree — and how to go about doing so. 

What LendingTree offers to mortgage lenders

You can explore a few different options for using LendingTree to drum up leads:

• Loan Explorer. Many lending institutions go this route. This comparison tool lets potential borrowers compare rates in real-time. And it gives lenders the opportunity to be in the mix, showcasing their rates to appeal to people — and ideally convert them into leads. 
• Contact center. LendingTree’s customer care team regularly interfaces with consumers and recommends financial products to them. They can qualify leads, then hand them over to your loan officers.
• Local introductions. Since many homebuyers choose to work with a local lender, LendingTree has developed a location-based lead generation tool. 

The rate display advertising through Loan Explorer is most similar to other mortgage lender advertising opportunities. It’s a lot like Bankrate’s rate table ads, for example. But there are a couple of key differences.

For starters, LendingTree leads usually aren’t exclusive. That means that while you might get a lead’s contact information, another lending institution often receives it at the same time. You need to beat out the other lender(s) in the mix to win that business.

Secondly, because the leads aren’t exclusive, they’re generally more affordable. You might pay $30–$100 per lead, whereas they can cost $200 or more on Bankrate. 

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Perks for your team

While you’ll usually be competing with other lenders for any LendingTree leads, the company does provide some support to help you succeed. 

At LendingTree University, your loan officers can learn best practices and hone their sales skills. Plus, if enough of your team completes that training, you can get a special seal that displays on LendingTree along with your lending institution’s profile. 

Choosing LendingTree also means getting paired with one of the company’s account managers. As specialists in lender advertising, they can help to guide your campaign strategy to maximize lead generation and conversions. 

Understanding the LendingTree process

To get a better feel for if LendingTree might be right for your mortgage lending institution, it helps to understand how their lead generation works. It starts before a user ever visits their site.

LendingTree uses the following steps to generate leads:

• Advertising. Their team is continually striving to get website traffic to the LendingTree website. Specifically, they angle their advertising toward high-intent consumers.
• Landing pages. People click through to the LendingTree website from ads. When they do, they arrive at landing pages tailored to their interest. If they’re hunting for mortgage rates online, for example, a LendingTree web result might pop up. When they click on it, the resulting landing page will give them what they expect: mortgage rates. 
• Qualification form. LendingTree has website visitors complete a form to qualify them as a lead. These carefully optimized forms ask visitors for information like their home’s purchase price and their buying timeline. That information gets passed to your team so your loan officers can follow up appropriately. 
• Loan offers. Upon completing the qualification form, the visitor gets presented with up to five loan offers. If you partner with LendingTree, yours could be in the mix. 

LendingTree aims to take additional steps to further warm leads. It offers visitors the opportunity to sign up for MyLendingTree, for example, which provides them with their credit score and personalized offers. The company also sends regular reminder emails about any loan offers with which the website visitor was presented to keep them top of mind. 

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The key to success with LendingTree leads: speed

While LendingTree does quite a bit to qualify and warm leads, that doesn’t just benefit your company. It also benefits any other mortgage lenders who get that lead’s info from LendingTree.

As a result, if you’re going to invest in this mortgage lender advertising opportunity, you need to have a plan to act fast. If a prospective borrower gets presented with three loan offers, the first one to contact them has the edge. 

Your team needs to develop a plan to notify loan officers as quickly as possible when you get a new LendingTree lead. The loan officer should then make it a top priority to call that lead the moment they’re available.

To beat out the competition for that lead, speed is key. 

Getting started with LendingTree

Do LendingTree leads sound like a fit for your institution? If so, you can get started by filling out their partner inquiry form. Doing so will give you a feel for what potential leads experience as they complete the site’s qualification form process. 

Or if you want to talk with a team that understands LendingTree’s advertising options — along with ad opportunities with other sites — get in touch with us. We serve a multitude of lenders who use LendingTree, Bankrate, NerdWallet, and others. We can talk you through how these generally work. This gives you additional info so you can decide what’s right for your mortgage lending institution.