"Email is dead." I hear this every year from some LO who just discovered TikTok. And every year, email continues to generate the highest ROI of any marketing channel — $36 for every $1 spent across industries, and even higher in financial services. Email isn't dead. Your emails are just boring.
The difference between an LO who generates 3-5 deals per month from their email list and one who gets zero responses comes down to three things: what they send, when they send it, and whether they've earned the right to show up in someone's inbox.
The Four Email Types Every LO Needs
1. The Nurture Email (For Active Leads)
These go to people currently in your pipeline — leads who've expressed interest but haven't applied yet. The goal isn't to close them via email. It's to stay relevant until they're ready. Drip campaigns handle the cadence; your job is to make the content worth reading.
What works: short market updates, quick tips about the buying process, and "just checking in" messages that feel personal. What doesn't work: long-form educational content nobody asked for.
2. The Database Email (For Past Clients)
Your closed clients should hear from you monthly. Not weekly — that's too much. Not quarterly — that's not enough. Monthly keeps you in their consciousness without becoming noise.
These emails should feel like they're from a friend who happens to know about mortgages. Share market updates that affect their home value, seasonal home maintenance tips, or local event recommendations. Slip in a "know anyone thinking about buying or selling?" naturally, not as the primary purpose.
3. The Rate Alert Email
When rates move significantly — up or down — your entire database should hear about it from you, not from CNN. This is your chance to be the expert. Keep it short: what happened, what it means for buyers, what it means for homeowners considering a refi.
Rate Alert Template
Subject: "Rates just [dropped/jumped] — here's what it means for you"
Body: 3-4 sentences max. One specific number. One action they can take. Your phone number. Done.
4. The Referral Partner Email
Your realtors and financial planners need different content than your borrowers. Send them co-branded market reports, success stories from mutual clients, and updates about loan products that help their clients. This is relationship maintenance disguised as useful content.
Subject Lines That Get Opened
Your subject line is 80% of the battle. Here's what works in mortgage email:
- Questions: "Still thinking about that move?" (42% avg open rate)
- Numbers: "Rates hit 5.75% — here's what that means" (38% avg)
- Personal: "Quick update for you, [Name]" (40% avg)
- Curiosity: "The one thing most buyers get wrong" (35% avg)
What doesn't work: "Monthly Newsletter from [Company Name]" — that's a fast-pass to the archive folder.
Timing and Frequency
Best days for mortgage email: Tuesday and Thursday. Best times: 8-9 AM (catches the morning inbox check) or 7-8 PM (catches the evening scroll). But honestly, consistency matters more than perfection. Pick a schedule and stick to it.
Frequency guidelines:
- Active leads: 2-3 touches per week (mix of email and SMS)
- Warm prospects: Weekly for the first month, then biweekly
- Past clients: Monthly, plus triggered emails for birthdays and anniversaries
- Realtor partners: Biweekly or monthly
Building Your List the Right Way
Your email list is only as good as its opt-in quality. People who explicitly gave you their email convert at 5-10x the rate of scraped or purchased lists. Every lead form, every closing, every open house sign-in sheet — those are list-building opportunities.
Clean your list quarterly. Remove bounces, unsubscribes, and anyone who hasn't opened an email in 6 months. A smaller, engaged list outperforms a big, dead one every time. Deliverability is a real thing — too many bounces and Gmail starts sending you straight to spam.
What Not to Do
- Don't send HTML-heavy "newsletter" templates with stock photos and multiple columns. They look like marketing. Plain-text-style emails get higher engagement because they look like personal messages.
- Don't buy a generic drip and send it unedited. If 50 LOs in your area are sending the same content, you're not differentiating — you're blending in.
- Don't blast your whole list with the same message. Segment by stage, by loan type, by timeline. Your CRM should make this effortless.
- Don't forget the call-to-action. Every email should have one thing you want them to do — reply, click, call. Not three things. One.
Measuring Success
The only metrics that matter for mortgage email:
- Reply rate — Are people responding? This is the gold standard.
- Click rate — Are they engaging with your links?
- Appointments booked — The actual business outcome.
- Unsubscribe rate — Keep it under 0.5% per send.
Email is a long game. It compounds. The LO who sends consistently for 12 months builds an asset — a database of people who know, like, and trust them. The LO who sends three emails and gives up builds nothing. Set up your automation, write content that sounds like you, and let the system run.