Many mortgage companies across the country are currently using several common types of marketing lists geared towards direct marketing to mortgage and refinance prospects. Many of you who are diligently searching for the best mortgage lead available have surely tried a telemarketing or mailing list at some point. This article is not going to cover every single type of mortgage list and mortgage lead out there, instead, the focus will be on the differences of two types of mortgage lists primarily used for telemarketing and direct mail mortgage lead generation. They are:

• Modeled Mortgage Lists
• Credit Bureau Mortgage Lists

How Mortgage Marketing Lists Are Compiled

Before we weigh some of the pros and cons, let’s take a look at how each of these files is compiled.

Modeled lists can be “modeled” by an array of geography based standards like zip code, area code, and household. The most commonly used of these would be a zip code based modeling of consumer data in which certain known household elements are used to determine a set of unknown elements. Meaning, known elements like age and marriage status, along with zip code based home value averages, can be used to determine a household’s estimated income. In addition, certain selects, or the criteria a list is selectable by, such as the FICO score of a mortgage prospect from a modeled list will have some degree of error, as much as 20 points plus or minus. Most list brokers and list managers will maintain a zip code modeled consumer mortgage database derived primarily from court house records, telephone directories, deed and tax assessor data, as well as other sources.

Credit bureau lists are a little more simple. The credit bureaus themselves compile, maintain, and provide data to many industries, including mortgage. Therefore, most of the information available on a consumers credit report is the information that will be available to select a credit bureau mortgage list by. It is important to note, however, that most credit bureaus rely on third party data companies to apply many modeled selects, such as income, to their databases.

Modeled Lists vs. Credit Bureau Lists For Mortgage Lead Generation

A number of factors will come in to play when choosing either a modeled or true credit mortgage list. Three of the most important very well could be:

• the type of campaign you will be running – telemarketing or direct mail
• the size of your campaign and how it relates to the accuracy of the list
• and the big one….cost

Modeled lists tend to work better in a telemarketing environment utilizing a predictive dialer system of 6 to 8 seats or more where a significant number of outbound calls can be made in a day. Modeled mortgage lists can be purchased relatively inexpensively for large volumes, especially at 100,000 or more records at a time. Although the demographic data you may have selected in your modeled list may not be totally accurate, the shear volume of outbound calls to a generalized zip code based model can yield numerous mortgage leads from a low cost list. Modeled mortgage lists may also perform in a direct mail campaign, however, the primary benefit of modeled data in direct mail would be cost.

True credit bureau mortgage lists can be a powerful marketing tool, at a price. Although modeled telemarketing lists perform well with larger volumes in automated applications, mortgage companies may want to consider obtaining approval for credit bureau lists when hand dialing to prospective clients. Credit bureau lists seem to produce more prospects who are mortgage qualified in a low to medium volume telemarketing campaign. True credit data also performs exceedingly well for direct mail campaigns which integrate a follow up phone call once the mail piece has been delivered.

Even when taking all this in to consideration cost is still going to be the overlying factor. Start with a budget, from there, decide whether you will be utilizing telemarketing or direct mail. For telemarketing, research costs from several sources for a modeled and credit bureau list, take that information and determine whether you want to initiate a large scale campaign to generate many leads that may not all qualify, or a smaller more focused campaign with less, but more qualified mortgage leads. If a direct mail campaign, take in to consideration the quality and content of the mail piece you will be sending. Often times, the content of your mail piece can help you determine whether or not a credit bureau list would be needed for your marketing campaign. Are you making a firm offer of credit? Does your mail piece include the consumers personal information? In general, true credit lists out perform modeled lists for direct mail campaigns of most size’s.

Differences in These Mortgage Lists Selects

The most significant differences between modeled mortgage lists and credit bureau lists are the selects available to you as a marketer. Two of the most viable selects a mortgage company would require in their mortgage marketing list are FICO score and revolving debt. A modeled FICO score is quite simply that, an educated guess based on certain demographic and geographic attributes. FICO scores on a modeled mortgage list are not output in the list, meaning, if you view the file in excel for example, you will not see a column containing a FICO score. Whereas, true credit bureau lists are able to give you a consumers exact FICO score, not a range, on output of the list. This is all the same for the revolving debt select. Although modeled data cannot determine the type of revolving debt, credit bureau data can determine, to some extent, exactly what type of revolving debt has been accrued.

I hope this helps anyone in the mortgage direct marketing arena and am always available for questions. This is not meant to be an inclusive article detailing every difference between these two powerful marketing lists and should not be taken as such. So, as I said, please leave a detailed comment below for any more detailed or in depth inquiries.
Also, I have included, in excel, example outputs of both a modeled mortgage marketing list and a credit bureau mortgage list for you to download and see first hand what each of these files should look like.

MODELED MORTGAGE LIST EXAMPLE

TRUE CREDIT MORTGAGE LIST EXAMPLE