January 15, 2020 – We just logged our best month ever in both dimensions, new vendor partner SIGN-UPS and site TRAFFIC from industry searchers.
How can this be, given the Holidays are always a historically slow period for just about everyone?
Top Three Reasons:
- No longer considered 'New'; We celebrated our 2-year anniversary a month ago
- Expert content marketing from our pundits; Industry articles, blogs and email campaigns that deliver value-added and actionable content
- Announcing that over HALF our site traffic now comes from Google, Bing and Yahoo via earned media (not paid ads)
If these internet search engines trust our content so much, we hope you will too.
Nobody Out-Vendors the Surf !!
We proudly announce the addition of these four new vendor partners trusting Vendor Surf to be their brand ambassadors:
- Ainsworth Advisors
- Transformational Mortgage Solutions
- Adwerx
- Capacity
Here is a brief summary of each of the four partners.
These first two are both companies led by David Lykken (e.g. Lykken on Lending), already a user (searcher) of our search engine across his daily duties.
Ainsworth Advisors & Transformational Mortgage Solutions
His energy is unmatched and his passion legendary, backed by over 40 years of lending, technology and consulting experience, earning David recurring appearances on FOX and CNBC.
Ainsworth Advisors ("AA") – With over 300 years of combined experience, an impressive “Who’s Who” of industry rock stars, AA delivers top-shelf guidance to C-suites and Boards of Directors. Their goal is to offer strategic and tactical advice, help improve efficiencies and develop strong leadership. Every area of mortgage banking is represented by highly respected business leaders, including:
- Past President of Ginnie Mae
- MBA – Past Chairman, Board of Directors member; Past Chief Economist; Past Chairman of multiple MBA and GSE committees and task forces
- Attorney defending clients against the CFPB, HUD, VA, DOJ, FTC and others
- Past CEOs, Presidents and senior executives of mortgage banks/lenders and vendors
Transformational Mortgage Solutions (TMS) is a consulting firm with a full-range of advisory services to owners and C-suite executives of companies in the U.S. mortgage lending ecosystem, vendors included. Key focus on consulting, coaching and communications.
- Origination growth strategies
- Operational “health checks” and efficiency reviews, from loan origination through servicing
- Strategic and tactical direction
- Help clients to discover, define and articulate their marketplace messages
- Effectively, affordably and efficiently communicate those messages to target audiences
- Weekly “Lykken on Lending” podcasts
A true trailblazer within our industry with a state-of-the-art digital advertising platform that is innovative, savvy and customizable from enterprise level to individual loan officer, depending upon what you need.
Adwerx has leapfrogged everyone by combining consumer experiential behavior trends and data with digital marketing best practices. Each loan officer can target their leads with customized options on the TYPE of digital ad, and VENUE most likely to produce results, such as social media, mobile devices, news sites, online and get this… even streaming TV ad rates have become more affordable.
Digital advertising can be foreign to many of us, however, Adwerx has really scored a trifecta;
- Building an amazing platform with an intuitive and powerful design
- Standardizing the process for consistency, management approval, compliance and adherence
- Structure at a company level, yet incredible flexibility at the loan officer level
Lastly, you know you have something special when your lender clients begin talking up your platform in loan officer recruiting and retention discussions. Well done Jed Carlson and team!
Formerly known as 'Jane.ai," and actually in our own backyard... St. Louis area. I have visited them a few times and continue to be thrilled by their solutions (AI, Machine Learning, Natural Language, etc.) and their mortgage client list.
Capacity draws in your company’s experts to democratize the population and curation of the knowledge base. Capacity connects to your apps, mines your docs, and captures the tacit knowledge of your teams so you can easily capture and connect all organizational knowledge. Browse, search, and chat in one simple interface. Capacity boasts five key capabilities:
- Enterprise Search – Their AI-powered support automation platform, connecting to all apps/databases that house critical data needed by your support staff. “Is the rate locked on the Jones loan?”
- Cloud Drive – Break down and make documents quarriable… Lord knows we have our share of docs on each loan file. Host docs inside their app and use Capacity’s proprietary mining technology. Ask questions about doc contents, because it’s now data, not just an image.
- Knowledge Base – Put structured and unstructured knowledge (e.g. tribal knowledge in underwriting, etc.) in a designated and useful place.
- Co-Pilot Console Helpdesk – Example: So many functions (e.g. MLO, processor, underwriter, etc.) are often led by manual processes and email inboxes. Capacity can write rules to route, categorize, tag and ultimately hand off to the appropriate role/person for action.
- Workflows – Leveraging all of the above capabilities, Capacity can automate custom workflows by accessing all of the disparate apps and add/complete tasks, issue alerts and required actions sent to specific roles/people, etc. Examples: Go into CRM, look up a contact and add a specific task. Or, use a bot to go through checklists.
My proposed use case… having spent years inside a Top-5 mortgage bank, engage Capacity to eliminate all of the riffs between Sales (MLOs) and Processing. Loan applications cannot ‘pass GO’ until deemed fully complete via automated toll-gates. Clearly, not the only use case, as virtually every single role and department can be simplified and revolutionized, improving quality, cycle-time and cost.
CONCLUSION
So, there you have it... some damn impressive brands, leaders, innovation and technology to take your business to the next level on almost every front – from marketing and advertising through the entire life cycle. Engage these market leaders to see what they can deliver for you today. Advice from fellow Missourian, Mark Twain:
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”
Thanks for reading.
Co-Founder
