KeyBank
Mortgage Conditional Approval Campaign
How might we increase the amount of conditional approvals by optimizing the current conditional approval journey through research, user testing, and iteration?
Role
Researcher, Strategist, Writer, Designer
Timeline
3 months
Tools
Figma
UserZoom
Confluence
JIRA
Deliverables
7 emails, 2 call scripts, 4 conversational modals, 5 messaging tiles, 2 interstitials, 5 SMS, 5 SMS landing pages, 7 educational article landing pages, new contact module functionality for key.com
Project Brief
The goal of this project is to increase the conditional approval pull through rate from application start to submit. The desired end result is an increase in complete mortgage applications. Our market is the full home lending market while testing 70% of our clients with the new, optimized journey and 30% with the original conditional approval journey.
Business Needs
An optimized journey to increase mortgage applications.
Client Goals
A streamlined conditional approval process with educational content and professional help to assist clients throughout the entire home buying journey.
Problem
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KeyBank stakeholders in the home lending line of business need an optimized conditional approval journey so that they can increase the pull through rate from conditional approval to mortgage application.
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KeyBank clients need an easy way to get conditionally approved for a mortgage while getting the answers to any questions they may have along the way.
Research
Discovering the problem
Methods Used: Survey to clients who have been conditionally approved in the past, surveys to current home buyers, competitive analysis, analysis of current journey.
Not all of the methods we used will be discussed in this case study.
Expired Conditional Approval Survey
In order to understand our current clients who have already been conditionally approved, but have recently let their conditional approval expire, we sent them a short survey.
The main reason why clients let their conditional approval expire was either that they haven’t found a home yet, or they went with another lender.
Understanding the current home buyer
Due to the volatile nature of the housing market, we wanted to ensure that we better understood the current home buyer. To do this I developed two different surveys:
Conditional Approval Survey
Goal: Understand what’s most and least important to home buyers to create a more robust persona of our target audience, especially while keeping the current housing market in mind.
Survey Audience: Current homeowners and those looking to buy a home within the next 5 years.
100 participants
Results
Most important factors for buying a home:
Saving money for a down payment
Finding the right home
Waiting for the right interest rates
Qualifying for mortgage payments that will fit my monthly budget
Most important factors when choosing a mortgage lender:
Interest rate
Monthly payment
Minimum down payment
APR
Conditional approval knowledge:
52% of participants know how much they can pre-qualify for
Out of those participants, most used online calculators to figure it out
Quote from the survey
Home Buying Tips Survey
Goal: Determine what types of tips are most helpful to existing homeowners and first-time home buyers.
Survey Audience: Current homeowners and those looking to buy a home within the next 5 years.
100 participants
Results
Top 3 home buying tips from both segments:
Start saving early
Decide how much home you can afford
Start working on your credit score as soon as possible
Mapping the Journey
Next, I laid out the client communication journey map and used all of the research we’ve collected to inform my decisions of what kind of touches to use and when.
Client Communication Journey Map
We knew we were keeping 30% of the audience with the control cadence of 3 emails for all 17 weeks, while 70% of the audience would be getting the new journey with an increased amount of touchpoints, channels, and content.
Design
The key for designing these assets was to build out the content strategy first, using all of our research so that we could design assets that addresses both client needs as well as business needs.
Emails
Leveraging educational content
Over the course of the 5 emails, I wanted to make sure each one had a simple headline and imagery to draw people in, a quick message about the status of their conditional approval and what they can do from there, as well as an easy way to email or call their mortgage loan officer, and finally leveraging our expert, educational content at the end.
Landing Pages
Educational articles
In order to further position KeyBank as a thought leader in the housing industry, I created 6 different educational articles, and a general landing page, that we leverage throughout the journey to help our clients through the home buying process.
Contact Module
Mortgage Loan Officer
I wanted this journey to be a seamless experience so that clients could not only access our educational content, but also then reach out to their mortgage loan officers (MLO) easily from any point in the journey. I worked closely with the development team to design and implement a new functionality on key.com for a mortgage loan officer contact module.
This module allows clients personal MLO data to populate a module on all of our campaign landing pages on key.com. I designed mobile and tablet versions to anchor to the bottom of the page, while giving the client the option to minimize it if they want to continue reading with an unobstructed view.
This module gives clients the option to call or email their MLO with the tap of a button.
It was also important for me to create a version of the module for clients whose personalized MLO data cannot be fed into key.com, such as if they are not coming from email or SMS. This way, the module can be used in many different cases as well.
This version of the module allows clients to use the search for your MLO fucntionality on key.com so they can find the contact info for their specific MLO. Alternatively, clients can directly call the mortgage center and be helped from there.
The goal of all of these modules was to always have them easily accessible, so for the desktop version, I put it on the right rail of the page. This way, it doesn't obstruct the article, but is still very accessible and visible to clients.
This module was such a success that other teams have started implementing it and either using it for its intended functionality, or using the design and adapting it to fit their specific needs!
Online Banking
Interstitials
For the two interstitials that bookend the conditional approval journey, I wanted the first one to be an attention-grabbing, congratulatory message. For the last one, I wanted it to be more of an alert to the client so that they are urged to renew their conditional approval.
Messaging Tiles
I created 4 messaging tiles that live in our clients online banking app on the home screen until the next one in the journey replaces it, or the client dismisses it.
Conversational Modals
We also have conversational modals sprinkled throughout the journey to act as a direct line of contact to the client's MLO in case they have any questions, if they found a house, or need to renew their conditional approval.
SMS Experience
SMS and SMS Landing Pages
I designed a customized and personalized SMS landing page for each of the 5 SMS throughout the journey.
I designed the pages in figma initially, then worked closely with the development team at Relay to build out the working pages.
Direct Mail
To compliment the digital touches, we wanted to send clients a physical piece of mail. The mailer features similar imagery and messaging to the rest of the campaign, as well as a QR code which links directly to the general landing page where all of our educational content is housed.
Call Scripts
For our Mortgage Loan Officers
The last asset I made were call scripts for our mortgage loan officers and bankers in branches to use when on the phone with clients. There are two different versions of the script, one for mortgage prospects, and one for existing KeyBank clients. I created these last so that I could be sure to include any information that might be helpful to them throughout the campaign. I also ensured that all assets were sent to MLO's and bankers so they could be as well informed as possible.
These call scripts were so widely appreciated that I was asked to templatize them so that other teams could use them as well. These call script templates are now used bank-wide.
Early Results
The early results for this campaign versus the control cadence are very promising, with completed mortgage applications trending higher for the new, optimized journey!