Mortgage Lead Generation Tactics Using Quizzes

Let’s say you’re running a mortgage business. If you don’t apply lead generation tactics on your site, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. 

Why?

Because lead generation helps you collect qualified leads for your email marketing campaigns. By connecting with the right people initially, you’re more likely to turn them into real customers.

In today’s post, I’ll walk you through:

Use this guide to generate leads for a mortgage loan, real estate, or banking. No matter the industry, these tactics can help!

Let’s get going.

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Why financial services need email marketing

You’ve probably seen other industries doing really well with email marketing ($38 return on investment for every $1 spent on email marketing!). 

And you’re wondering: “Can email marketing work for financial companies?”

The answer is YES!

Email marketing can help you make financial topics exciting, relevant, and compelling. Here is a good example from the luxury real estate agent The Corcoran Group:

image of the interior of a house with a phone showing the same picture and "Take a virtual tour with our agents."

This email is short, sweet, and simple. Also, it brings value because of the “free consultation” offer!

Email marketing is a simple process of delivering highly targeted and personalized emails to customers. With many email marketing tools out there, you can create and run an email marketing campaign in a breeze.

Still not convinced? Here are the top reasons why you should stop doubting and start emailing: 

1. Building customer relationships via email is more vital than ever

The financial services industry has been suffering from a trust deficit. Nearly 47% of customers don’t trust their own financial services provider. 

Whether you’re a well-known real estate agent, money lender, or banker, customers no longer trust you as they did before

So, how can the mortgage industry recover from this damaging fact?

Emails.

Email marketing is a tried-and-true method to build and develop customer relationships and loyalty. Using it, you can implement several trust-building strategies like:

  • Creating a welcome email to introduce your company and welcome customers to your community
  • Announcing events and company updates with newsletters
  • Sending onboarding emails to show features and guide customers through your services

You can also track customer behavior through emails. For example, how do customers interact with your emails? What topic are they most interested in? These insights will help you personalize your emails to their preferences.

Digital banking, digital lending, and digital mortgages are on the rise, which means contactless communication is becoming a standard for financial services. Old-fashioned marketing, like direct mail, is gone.

To keep up with these changes, the sooner you use email marketing, the better advantage you’ll have. 

2. Emails make financial information super accessible

Customers now require a digital banking experience. They don’t want to visit a bank branch just to view their recent transactions. They want to access and control their finances at any time, anywhere. 

To fulfill their needs, set up an email marketing automation campaign, which will automatically deliver important information to clients periodically (e.g., weekly or monthly) without asking them to go to a physical bank.  

This will also help your mortgage marketing team automate repetitive tasks and reduce wasted time. That means you’ll have more time to focus on other important things.

3. You can offer more than basic services with emails

If you think financial customers just open an account to receive their salaries and access their basic information, you’re wrong.

They expect more from you (with you going unnoticed for the most part). It’s time to give them what they want by using email marketing.

For example, you can send email newsletters to educate customers about financial management. You can send newsletters that focus on how to invest money for the future, manage savings, control costs, buy a house within a few years, or get the best home loans. There are so many topics you can cover.

When you give customers useful, relevant information, you engage them. They’ll want to stay in touch to see what else you have to say. That’s how your relationship with customers will grow stronger. 

Sounds good, right? 

Before you get there though, before you have your first email marketing campaign running, you need email addresses. You need to create a lead generation machine to acquire qualified leads.

create your own quiz

Understanding lead generation 

Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, or credit unions are currently using two ways to acquire emails:

1. Buy an email list: They purchase a list of names and email addresses from a lead company.

For example, they might purchase a list of 100,000 names and email addresses of single people who live in California. 

2. Rent an email list: You don’t own the list and can’t see the email addresses of the people you’re emailing. You work with the provider to send out your email.

Neither of these ways can help you create an effective email marketing campaign. Email recipients don’t actually know you. Hence, the messages you send them are unwanted, which leads to intrusiveness. 

You need a better way to build an email list. 

What is lead generation?

A lead is any person who indicates interest in your product or service in some way, shape, or form. 

A lead generation (or lead capture) is any method to collect the contact information of potential customers and to generate leads. 

One of the most widely used lead generation tactics is creating an opt-in email list. By opting-in, email recipients choose to leave their email in exchange for getting an offer or receiving email communications from your business. 

Here is how it works: A visitor discovers your website through search engines, ads, or social media. They see an email pop-up on the screen, encouraging them to enter their email address in exchange for an irresistible offer.

For example, Neal Realty & Investments asks visitors to subscribe to their newsletter. In return, visitors will receive emails with information about new listings. 

subscriber optin from Neal Realty & investments

Using an opt-in form is great for growing an email list through genuine relationships with new customers. You avoid violating legal regulation (like GDPR), which can happen when you buy or rent an email list, and protect your brand reputation.

Why do you need lead generation?

When a new visitor shows an organic interest in your service, you have a high chance of turning them into a prospective customer.

Here are the biggest benefits of lead generation:

  • Increase your company’s brand awareness.
  • Get the contact information of qualified leads who are already interested in your business.
  • Reduce waste of valuable resources, including time, money, and labor.
  • Positively impact your business’s bottom line. 

Sure, leads referred from financial planners or CPAs are great, but they aren’t enough to get your business ahead. With email marketing, you’ll reach far more people than you would with referrals alone.

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How to qualify a mortgage lead

Let’s talk about how someone can show interest in your financial services. 

Fact: Not all leads are equal. Some of them are good. Some of them aren’t.

Essentially, a lead is generated through information collection, which can come as the result of:

  • a person showing interest in borrowing money by booking a free consultation
  • a business owner filling out a form to download an industry report
  • a person leaving their email address to subscribe to your newsletter 

Let’s evaluate each of these scenarios.

1. A free consultation 

When a visitor books an appointment from your site, it means they expect your call and your advice. 

For example:

free consultation calendar signup form
Source: Bfinance

The visitor is willing to share their personal information with you. They want to know how much they could borrow for a home loan, and if they meet your conditions. Thus, they’re a qualified lead for your marketing or sales team.

2. Content

Here is an example of using content to generate leads from Illion Australia:

optin offering Mortgage Nation report download

Booking a consultation shows a person has a direct, genuine interest in your mortgage service. But downloading content (like an industry report or a guide) doesn’t. 

To truly understand the nature of a person’s interest in your service, you’ll probably need to deliver some follow-up emails at first. For example, ask them what kind of mortgage or loan they’re looking for. How about a debt rescue solution or credit score check?

The more information you get, the easier it will be to determine whether the person is interested in your service and whether they’re a good fit. 

3. Email newsletter 

You probably know very little about the people who have stumbled upon your website and decided to subscribe to your email newsletter. 

That’s true especially when your email newsletter form is generic, like the example below: 

generic subscribe form

Visitors don’t understand what they’ll get by opting in, so chances are they won’t open your email even if they subscribe. If nothing about your business sticks in their mind, they might not even remember subscribing to your newsletter.

Here is a better example from Elite Agent

optin form with description of what they share in email

Elite Agent doesn’t ask for much information, and the form makes it clear what subscribers will receive after entering their email. A person who fills out this form is interested in the service being offered.

By applying these lead generation tactics, you can collect qualified leads. However, the key to having a successful email marketing campaign is to keep your prospects close, and your best leads closer. It’s not about having as many conversations as possible; it’s about having conversations with the right people.

Read on for the most effective ways to find the best leads.

Why you should use quizzes for lead generation

“I’m a mortgage broker. Will a quiz work for my niche?”

Short answer: Yes. 

Quizzes work for just about every niche. Ecommerce, SaaS, college, online courses, finance, real estate—the list goes on. 

We love quizzes. We do online quizzes to take a fun break from everyday stresses. But also, by sharing quizzes with our friends and social network, we’re creating ways to connect with and relate to one another. 

“Okay. Quizzes!!! How do they help my bottom line?”

I know what you’re thinking! Here are some reasons why quizzes help drive conversions: 

1. A quiz gives personalized results, and personalization is the future

Customers want personalization more than ever. Need statistics? Here they are:

If you’re still not convinced, check out the CES 2020 Survey by CITE Research Dassault Systèmes. Its key finding is customers expect mass personalization, and brands need to act right away.

One of the most effective ways to show personalization is with quizzes because they give people personalized results based on the answers they give. 

And so, generating leads is more effective by using quizzes than other lead magnets. If you use a report to bait visitors, you give the same information every time someone opts-in. Personalization doesn’t exist there.

2. You get to know your target audience

A quiz can include different types of questions. Ask each question in a way that helps reveal the information you need—here lies the beauty of using quizzes.

When looking at a visitor’s answers for a home loan quiz, you can understand:

  • What they’re struggling with. Do they want to refinance an existing loan or get a loan for a property they’d like to purchase? 
  • What type of property they’re looking for (house, apartment, townhouse, etc.). 
  • What they want to do with their property (primary residence, rental property, etc).
  • Where they live, what they’re doing, and more. 

These valuable insights will help you determine if the visitor is your best lead and then do lead segmentation. 

3. Segment your email list the easy way

Using insights from quiz results, you can segment your leads easily. 

For example, you can categorize leads based on their location or type of mortgage they’re looking for. Then, craft target marketing messages for each segment of your audience. 

The more relevant your emails, the higher chance people will open it and engage with your offer. 

Now that you understand the power of using quizzes for lead generation, it’s time to learn some tactics to optimize them. 

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5 tips for creating a quiz that attracts qualified leads

Wondering if you can make a mortgage quiz engaging? 

Don’t worry! Read the 5 tips below and use them to make your own quiz.

1. Create a quiz that is actually worth doing

A quiz for lead generation is a bit different than a BuzzFeed quiz. There’s more to it than you might think. 

Remember, visitors come to you for a solution to their (serious) problem. They want to find the best mortgage, borrow money with an affordable interest rate, or rent a house. They don’t come to you for entertainment. 

That means your quiz (including the title and questions) should be tailored to your prospects’ problems. To do this, you should:

  • Think about what you’re offering and determine your goal for a quiz. 
  • Look back at your existing customers. Why did they come to you initially? What were they looking for from you? How did you help them out? 
  • Use analytics tools to analyze what type of keywords visitors search for to find your website. How did they hear about you? On which pages do they spend the most time when they’re on your site?

When you have the answers to these questions, you can use Interact to create a quiz. Check out these tutorials:

2. Be creative with quizzes

Create multiple quizzes to pop up at different times for different visitors. 

For example, if visitors search for a home loan, show a quiz to find out whether they should refinance their house or buy a new one. You could create a quiz for visitors who are about to leave your site titled “Before you leave, take this 30-second quiz to calculate the land value of your property.” Or a quiz for homeowners, titled “Do you want to know what kind of homeowner you are?”

Remember though, choose the right time to show your pop-up to avoid annoying visitors. It’s better to let visitors explore your website a bit before offering a quiz. 

3. Make use of floating bar 

If done right, pop-ups are an excellent way to collect leads. If done incorrectly, they can be considered aggressive and annoying. 

So, what could you do to grow an email list while providing a good experience for your visitors?

This is where a floating bar (also a hello bar or a smart bar) comes in.

A floating bar can be a one- or two-sentence space at the top or bottom of a website. It hangs out there beautifully and appears as the site loads; it’s not thrown in visitors’ faces like some pop-ups. 

For example:

example of a foating bar at the top of a website from Grace and Lace
Source: Grace And Lace

Because a floating bar isn’t intrusive, it can be a fantastic mortgage lead generation machine.

For example, you can use a floating bar to remind visitors that they can:

  • Do a free assessment
  • Book a consultation
  • Download the latest report
  • Check new listings
  • Join your next event

4. Craft a lead capture form

A lead capture form is a big part of your quiz. It’s where you ask visitors to share their contact information.

You can show this form at the beginning or end of the quiz. Alternatively, you can create a dedicated page to display the quiz results and include a capture form there. Visitors who want to know more about their results can share their information to get it.

Here are some tactics to design a good lead capture form for your quiz:

  • Incentivize your lead capture form. For example, give your visitors a free mortgage report or a free appointment. Find what works best to encourage them to join your mailing list.
  • Be clear about your intention. If you ask for visitor email addresses and say you’ll contact them soon, let them know what for. Clarify what they’ll get after opting in.
  • Ask for only the information you’ll use. For example, unless you’ll surely call visitors, don’t add the “phone number” field to your form. 

5. Distribute your quiz

A quiz alone isn’t enough. You need a strategy to bring it to as many people as possible. 

Interact allows you to share your quiz in several ways. 

For example, you can share the quiz link on social media platforms, email, and direct messages. Or, you can embed your quiz on a landing page or a contact form as Prosperity Bank did:

Prosperity Bank quiz question

This is gold because, in doing so, you distribute your quiz to more people who can potentially become your prospects.  

6 best quiz examples for mortgage lead generation 

Here are 6 real-life examples of using quizzes for successful lead generation.

1. Mortgage Teacher

It’s not easy to know exactly what type of mortgage you need. 

With this in mind, Mortgage Teacher greets first-time homebuyers with a quiz to find the perfect mortgage for them.

The Take Our Quiz button is designed to show prominently on the website. So, whenever a visitor goes to the site, they always see the button.

Mortgage Teacher quiz with button to get started

In this quiz, Mortgage Teacher asks about the quiz-taker’s finances, how much equity they have in their home, and more. It’s a branching logic quiz, meaning the next questions depend on how previous questions are answered. 

quiz question about how much equity buyer has in their current home

As the last step of the quiz, Mortgage Teacher invites quiz-takers to enter their email address. Mortgage Teacher can then follow up with how they can help save time and money, and help clients find the right mortgage option. By being upfront about their intention, they gain trust.

optin form that says Congratulations

But they don’t stop there.

If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see this:

suggests they apply to find best rate

Mortgage Teacher cross-sells visitors by asking if they can find the best rate for them as well.

By clicking “Apply Now,” visitors are directed to the Signup page. 

Mortgage Teacher makes the email field required in their lead generation quiz, but you can mark it as optional. A good approach is testing both options to see which one brings more leads.

At this stage, you can add an incentive to email signups. For example, offer a free consultation for those who give their address. 

2. Family Credit Management

Some lead generation quizzes are fun to take. Others can help you identify and solve problems.

For example, if someone is struggling with debt, they might benefit from a quiz that guides them to a debt-relief solution. 

Family Credit Management invites people to take a quiz on their homepage called, “Do you know how serious your debt is?”

quiz cover from Family Credit Management about knowing how serious your debt is

In this much simpler quiz, all questions appear on one page. The company asks quiz-takers about their late fees in the last 60 days, household spending plan, collection calls, and more.

3 quiz questions on one page

The last question is where things get interesting: “Would you like us to contact you regarding your results?” 

Choose “Yes,” and a form shows to collect information. Quiz-takers enter their details so Family Credit Management can contact them. But they can also select “No” to choose not to be contacted.

quiz question about if they want to be contacted with form to complete

Either way, quiz-takers can click “See Results,” where they could get bad news like “Dangerous Debt!” With this, Family Credit Management offers some hope (“While this might seem overwhelming, we can help get you out of the danger zone!”) with a call to action (CTA) button to receive a “Free Online Debt Relief Quote.”

Dangerous debt quiz result with link to free online debt relief quote

Family Credit Management knows that everyone wants to resolve their debt. So the company makes an irresistible offer. 

The company takes a more subtle approach to lead generation with quizzes. They make the email signup optional, not required.

Yet, they prove their expertise by offering a free quote on the quiz results page. This gives those who choose “No” for the last question a little push to convert.

3. Cashfund

When creating a lead generation quiz for your mortgage business, remember to make it trustworthy. Cashfund applied this tactic very well.

floating bar with invitation to take the quiz at the bottom of the Cashfund webpage

When someone visits Cashfund’s homepage and scrolls to the bottom, they see a question, opening a curiosity gap. Notice how Cashfund makes clear how much time it will take to complete the quiz. Before starting the quiz, visitors already know that it won’t be a big time commitment.

From there, they invite visitors to take a quiz to determine which finance model is right for their business and how much funding they’re eligible for.

quiz question of 30 second Finance Eligibility assessment

On this page, Cashfund applies tactics to build trust with visitors. They:

  • Show a trust badge at the top right corner of the page, so visitors know their personal information is secure.
  • Emphasize two times that the quiz takes only 30 seconds to complete.
  • Use powerful words like “easy” and “instantly” to communicate that the quiz isn’t complicated and that visitors will definitely get their results. 
  • Highlight the text “No credit check required” to state that the quiz is trustworthy.

Above a new question, they always show a short explanation for the previous one. This gives some encouragement to finish the quiz.

quiz question about if your business uses invoices or not

At the last step of the quiz, Cashfund asks for a name and email address and briefly explains the benefits of sharing this information.

optin to request personal report

They make the form simple. They know, at this point, that quiz-takers are more than curious about their results, so they’re willing to share their name and email address.

Similar to other mortgage quizzes, they show detailed results. But still, it gets much better.

special offer to talk to Cashfund about financing with a countdown timer

Cashfund offers $5,000, but only for a limited time (see the countdown timer under the activation form). They also use the powerful word “Now” and the CTA button in the activation form to urge people to take the offer. Cashfund understands the power of urgency very well.

They also include testimonials. Cashfund takes advantage of social proof to increase trust with new visitors, which is useful to drive conversions. 

3 testamonials

And they don’t stop there. If visitors continue down the page, they’ll see the Frequently Asked Questions section. 

FAQs

Here, they answer the common questions visitors ask. Visitors won’t find any reason to refuse the offer. 

With this assessment quiz, Cashfund:

  • Captures email addresses
  • Learns their prospects’ demographics and finance situations 
  • Can nurture segmented leads with email marketing
  • Makes highly personalized service recommendations
  • Builds trust with customers and potentially drive sales 

4. Compare The Market

Helping visitors make a better financial decision is another approach to create a lead generation quiz.

If you ever dreamed of having your own financial advisor, Compare The Market makes your wishes come true with their financial style quiz.

Visitors can access the quiz by hovering their mouse on the “Financial Consciousness” button. 

header with how financially conscious are you? and a button to the quiz

They click “Take the quiz” and are directed to this page:

quiz cover for quiz

Compare The Market imitates fun Buzzfeed-type quizzes by asking, “How financially conscious are you?”

To encourage visitors to do the quiz, the company shows existing survey results with exciting data. That arouses a lot of curiosity. 

(Note the green color of the “Take the quiz” button. The “action color” pops against the gray background.)

The quiz includes 10 questions, and most of them are multiple-choice:

quiz question about what determines your ability to meet your financial commitments

At the end of this well-designed quiz, Compare The Market doesn’t ask you to enter personal information. All you need to do is click “Finish the quiz” to see the results.

question about how often you monitor RBA cash rate announcements

The result page is highly visual with a ton of information about how financially conscious you are. It also shows how your score compares to others.

quiz results with a description of result with a number (30)

In the middle of the page, Compare The Market shows a CTA button to ask if you want to learn more about your score. 

graphs comparing you to others

Click “Send me my score results,” and this opt-in form will be shown:

optin to find out more

Besides your email, Compare The Market also adds optional fields, i.e., age, state, and gender. 

By not being aggressive, the company gets some extra information about visitors and makes a good impression. 

If you want to create a similar quiz, segment leads based on demographics so you can send people highly personalized email messages.

5. Buildtoday

If you’re running a mortgage service company, it’s good to give visitors a pre-approval quiz. This way, you’ll get a snapshot of their financial picture, including their assets, debts, and income. Buildtoday does a great job of creating this quiz. 

The quiz is at the bottom of their website homepage.

Buildtoday quiz button at the bottom of the page to get prequalified

Visitors click “Take The Quiz” and land on the page below. Here, the company gives a short explanation of why they should do the quiz:

explanation of quiz on quiz landing page

Visitors will also find the quiz on this page by scrolling down or clicking “Let’s Get Started”. It includes about 15 short questions. 

quiz question with progress bar

To make the quiz engaging, Buildtoday uses a mix of multiple-choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank questions.

quiz questions about current financial and living situations

After five questions have been answered, a multiple-field form appears. Note that the number of fields shown depends on how the questions were answered. 

For example, if you have two dependents, the form will include two additional fields in which you enter their names.

contact information as last quiz question and when you want to be contacted

Buildtoday also asks what time quiz-takers prefer to be contacted. 

Although asking too much carries the risk of low completion rates, Buildtoday’s quiz is different. The company provides home construction support. So, the more information they have, the more accurate their consultation. This is exactly what their customers need.

6. Better Mortgage

Better Mortgage is an online lender dedicated to making homeownership faster and simpler. It offers a wide range of mortgage options and loans, making it easy for homebuyers to choose a service that fits their needs. 

When visiting their website, you won’t see a take-the-quiz button. To access it, you need to click “See today’s rates.”

better website with button to see today's rates in the header

Not every visitor landing on a site knows what they want. That’s why Better Mortgage gives two options: Are you buying? Or refinancing a home?. 

question about buying or refinancing with buttons for each

After visitors choose, they’ll see the quiz.

quiz question about where you are in the process

Better Mortage’s quiz is clean, simple, and straightforward. It’s a branching logic quiz, meaning the next question depends on the previous one’s answer.

After answering all the questions, quiz-takers are prompted to enter their email address. As opposed to Buildtoday, Better Mortgage asks only for an email. Very straightforward! 

email to save progress

Notice how the company takes advantage of social proof on this page. It shows Google reviews and how much money they’ve funded, which gives visitors a little push to enter their contact. 

quiz questions

There are several ways to grow your email list using quizzes. Get inspired by these examples to create your first mortgage quiz, and you’ll convert prospects into lifelong customers.

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What you should do with a quiz lead once you have one

Once someone completes your quiz, you’ll get their email address. At this point, you should immediately follow up with a welcome email that talks about their result. 

Thank them for taking your quiz first. Then, go into more detail about their quiz results and introduce yourself. You can also encourage them to share the quiz with others.

Doing that will remind your leads that they’ve opted-in to your email list. It also helps assert your brand and start a relationship. 

Some tips for creating a perfect follow-up email sequence:

  • Personalize your email, including the subject line, sender, and email copy.
  • Write emails with a conversational tone to make leads feel like you know them personally.
  • Show new leads a clear overview of who you are, what you do, and your values.
  • Build trust with real stories, case studies, or testimonials. How do existing customers benefit from your service? How did you help them find their ideal house or escape from serious debt? Share your victories to make your company look good and let new leads know what it stands for.
  • Offer help. Ask your leads if they’re looking for loan officers or mortgage brokers. Tell them you’ll be happy to support them whenever they need it.
  • Offer a free consultation, guides, or videos. Give new leads your best stuff right off the bat—they just might love you forever.

Good follow-up emails are essential to nurturing new leads until you can finally convert them into customers.

Time to implement mortgage lead generation tactics!

There you have it—all the tactics you need to create a successful mortgage or real estate lead generation campaign. 

As you can see, some mortgage companies have applied these tactics to get qualified leads. They use quizzes to interact with visitors and then turn them into potential customers. If you’re ready, sign up for Interact and create your first mortgage or real estate quizzes. Free of charge and no credit card required. Take the next step to get more qualified leads than ever before.

What is the best quiz for you business?

Quizzes are super effective for lead generation and selling products. Find the best quiz for your business by answering a few questions.

Take the quiz