MarTech360 Interview With Phil Tidwell, VP of Marketing Operations, Cherry Creek Mortgage

“Marketing automation has impacted our business from a variety of angles. Automation tech enables us to keep customers up to date on the status of their loan thanks to loan-level triggers.”

Hi, Phil, can you tell us something about your professional journey? How has it been so far?

The journey into my current professional marketing role has been quite circuitous! After finishing up a master’s degree in experimental psychology, I began my career as a training professional doing instructional design work for a sales/tech company. During that experience, I learned a few things about professional selling, and I eventually transitioned into a sales role for a mortgage company. I expanded my skillsets within that industry by taking on operational roles including underwriting, and then I did a full circle return to my training roots, taking on a variety of training roles within the mortgage space.

From there my career path finally merged into the marketing field, beginning with a position as an internal communications manager. That role eventually evolved to include marketing communications, and from there I grew into a marketing director position and eventually settled in my current spot as VP of marketing operations.

Tell us about your role at Cherry Creek Mortgage.

I manage our internal and marketing communications efforts, our creative team, our client services (sales support) group, and I’m responsible for marketing projects. I also do a good bit of work with our compliance team to make sure our advertising efforts follow regulatory requirements.

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What sets Cherry Creek Mortgage apart from the competition?

There are several things I could point to, but I think the biggest components of our unique value proposition include:

• Our business model as an independent mortgage lender allows us to offer a broad range of products, and this empowers us to better connect a customer to a mortgage that meets their unique needs and circumstances. Additionally, our capital markets group is always looking for market-relevant program offerings to add to our ‘catalog’ (for example, we recently rolled out a number of rate buydown products in response to the current interest rate environment which has hurt affordability).
• We have a very active reverse mortgage lending group within our company. Reverse mortgages can be a great solution for customers who are over 62 years old, and we think that eligible home buyers, or home owners looking to refinance, should be given the opportunity to learn about the flexibility offered by this unique finance tool.
• We consistently focus on our purchase mortgage business (versus refinance), and we seek to create a great experience for both home buyers and the real estate agents with whom they work. Purchase transactions tend to be more complex due to the number of parties participating in the transaction and the timelines involved, so keeping our attention focused this share of our business helps us to consistently provide great customer service which is reflected in high review scores across the GMB pages of our loan officers.

How, according to you, has Marketing Automation impacted the BFSI sector?

Marketing automation has impacted our business from a variety of angles. Automation tech enables us to keep customers up to date on the status of their loan thanks to loan-level triggers. Email journeys help us to effortlessly deliver survey and social media review requests, and these create a powerful feedback loop to help more people find our loan officers online. And I’d also offer that reputation management tools play a huge role in our sector in terms of helping us to better control the accuracy – and compliance – of data that is found on our digital assets.

How are digital marketing technology trends shaping business strategies to effectively reach the target audience?

In our space we must consider this question through a different lens. Various regulatory laws guide our business and marketing efforts, and we simply can’t be too ‘fancy’ when it comes to targeting an audience. While it is fun to consider all the tech tools that are available which allow you to hyper-target your message to an ‘ideal’ persona, in our space we cannot take this approach. Both our regulators – and our company leadership – want to make sure that we are not excluding any potential home owners from learning about our products and services, so we avoid using demographically-targeted ads. That having been said, at the local level, we can use geofencing platforms to drive retargeting ads to home buyers attending an open house – that’s a pretty cool use case of marketing tech that doesn’t create any fair lending concerns for us.

According to you, how powerful of a tool is social media for marketing? And how will it impact the future of marketing?

That’s a big question that could be answered in variety of ways! Social media certainly is a powerful tool for marketing as it enables certain businesses to connect directly with their ideal customers, and it can be a cost-effective method to drive brand awareness and other marketing goals. However, the social media space – like customer preferences and expectations – is ever evolving. Marketers will have to constantly monitor new platforms that emerge, understand the UX expectations of the customers engaged in those platforms, and figure out ways to place their messages into those spaces in a way that ‘fits.’

An additional issue that I think must be considered, is marketing noise in these spaces – that’s why it is important to understand the needs and expectations of the consumers in the social media space within which you’re advertising or connecting with your audience. In an industry like ours where there can be a very long sales cycle – you must make sure you are giving potential customers a reason to engage with you by providing them with content that positions you as a caring and trustworthy subject matter expert.

What is the role business communication in marketing and how is it useful for creating effective marketing campaigns?

Our products are ever evolving, and good business communication practices are critical for keeping our sales team aware of what’s new and what’s changed. Since our team handles the internal communications efforts around our products, we work closely with our capital markets team which owns the product management side of our work. We have a great relationship with this group which is supported by ongoing meetings and cross-team communications, and our marketing team can leverage the content we develop as a part of our internal communications efforts for new products and programs to get a head start on developing the marketing communications for them.

How has mortgage marketing evolved over the years and what are the most used mortgage strategies that actually work?

Since a primary focus of our company has always been creating a great home purchase experience for both home buyers and real estate agents, we – the marketing team – strive to support a great communication experience during the transaction. We use automation to support this focus, and then we follow up with a steady – but not too frequent – stream of email communications to keep us top of mind with both our past customers and those real estate agents who referred the customers to us.

Can you recommend someone that you would like to see featured on our platform?

I’d love to see you check in with our Digital Marketing Director, Emma Fee. She’s got a broad range of experiences with digital marketing across a variety of industries, and she’s sharp as a tack!

What would you like to advise all the aspiring marketing professionals out there?

I think in ANY professional effort, it is important to communicate well – and honestly – with your team members and your customers. And be a great team member – we are all in this together, and work is a lot more fun when you care about the folks who are in the trenches with you. Lastly, in the marketing space, it is obviously important to keep up with evolving technologies and practices, but this can get overwhelming in a hurry because things are changing so fast. So don’t let FOMO and shiny object syndrome get in the way of doing the work that’s in front of you – to the best of your creative abilities – using the tools you have today!

Thanks, Phil!