Marketing a brokerage and maintaining a book is the goal of every broker. Mortgage Alliance does it once a year with an oversized cheque.
“This is our seventh year for the Minimize Your Mortgage Sweepstakes,” says Mortgage Alliance Brand Champion Louie Bettio. “We want to reward people for their loyalty for choosing their Mortgage Alliance professional to help them with their home financing and investment needs.”
Their annual sweepstakes rewards a loyal MA customer with $100,000, and has proven a popular tool in retaining clients and generating new leads.
Retaining your book is more important than ever, as CAAMP CEO Jim Murphy points out that some lenders are sending out letters six months before renewal offering their “best rate,” with customers usually opting for the lowest offer without consulting a broker.
For Jim Furlong, a marketing manager and administrator with The Price Group, Dominion Lending Centres, it is a matter of client education.
“People always think ‘fees’ when they think of mortgage brokers,” says Furlong. “We have to educate them, and be as aggressive as the banks at maintaining our book.”
Maintaining contact and customers, like with Mortgage Alliance’s big carrot of a $100,000 cheque for a lucky loyal customer, helps to keep that book full.
Last year’s sweepstakes’ winners, the Lopes family of Toronto, used the money to pay off car loans, banked most of it, and booked a trip to Jamaica.
And of course they put some towards their mortgage.
“It came at a perfect time, as the husband had been laid off from his construction job earlier in the year,” Bettio told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “They also donated to Mortgage Alliance’s 2012 Cancer charity fundraising through their Rally of Hope. There was a personal connection, as her mother Emilia was just declared cancer-free after battling breast cancer.”
The sweepstakes announcement and cheque presentation will happen at noon EDT at Mortgage Alliance’s headquarters in Toronto, and will be shown live on the web at www.mac-tv.ca.
Since the contest began in 2007, Mortgage Alliance will have awarded over $600,000 in prizes.
