Consumer Shopping Insights Help Loan Officers Build Trusting Relationships at CrossCountry Mortgage

Technology for technology’s sake leads to a broken customer experience.

Samantha Lewis and Matt Jankowski, Marketing Director and Director of Digital and Analytics, respectively, are focused on pairing together cross-functional teams to create exceptional customer experiences and digital engagement strategies for CrossCountry Mortgage, a top 10 retail lender in the United States.

Samantha and Matt took the stage at V!A 2022 to share how they’ve been utilizing Verisk’s in-market signals to empower their loan officers with the data, insights, and tools to know when their consumers are in market—helping them do what they already excel at doing: educating future homebuyers and building their confidence when it’s time to pursue their dream homes.

Better Together: CrossCountry Mortgage Leveraging Activate

CrossCountry Mortgage has utilized Verisk Marketing Solutions’ in-market signal data and shopping insights to know what their consumers are shopping for so they can create relevant content for potential homebuyers, as well as empower their loan officers with the data and insights they need to educate and assist consumers out in the field. According to Matt Jankowski, “understanding our job from a corporate perspective is giving loan officers as much data as they can handle to be able to make what they’re already really good at doing easier.” The relationships loan officers build with consumers and understanding the state of the market to better educate consumers is critical.

The marketing team at CrossCountry Mortgage is working to build an internal, comprehensive program for all loan officers, which means being more selective with the marketing tools they currently use to surface opportunities to the field. This is where Activate has become a key tool in Cross Country Mortgage’s marketing tech stack. With consumers becoming more confused about rates in such a tight market environment, Cross Country Mortgage utilizes the data and insights provided by Verisk to provide consumers with content relevant to what they’re researching, as well as with human assistance when consumers need it most.

CrossCountry Mortgage wants to build an ecosystem where consumers can self-serve their experience as they’re researching and applying for home loan products. However, as soon as consumers “want a human interaction to answer those more difficult questions, especially in a tight purchase market where that frustration can happen as you put in 10-11 offers and still don’t have that dream home, having that personal connection is crucial so the consumer can have it when they need it.”

Empowering Loan Officers in their Communities

According to Samantha Lewis, Cross Country Mortgage’s strength is “our loan officers and our product – how can we provide loan officers with more information to be able to build more relationships.” All loan officers operate within the CrossCountry Mortgage umbrella, but loan officers have built their own local market strategies, meaning they deliver unique value to consumers. Overall, CrossCountry Mortgage strives to educate and guide customers through all stages of the homebuying process.

“It’s important for us to be able to capture as much data as possible and feed it to them so they can act on it. We are providing insights to our officers to be able to have more relationships and conversations that help build trust. We always intersect on privacy and trust. Their job is not to sell; their job is to educate consumers. Educate, and make sure every consumer is confident in the decision they’re going to make.”

Matt Jankowski, Director of Digital and Analytics at CrossCountry Mortgage

CrossCountry Mortgage has built their business through a vast retail network across the country, making loan officers the local face of CrossCountry Mortgage in their neighborhoods and communities. The corporate marketing team has had to strike a balance between “supporting our officers at scale and making sure we’re not taking over from a corporate perspective and overshadowing what they’re already doing really well.”

Learn more about the in-market shopping data and insights that can help you remove the guesswork from your digital marketing strategy and provide the confidence to deliver personalized experiences to the customers you care about.