Mortgage broker email sequence

Some proportion of the people who contact you will never answer the phone. They are not rude and they have not necessarily changed their mind. They are at work, they hate phone calls, their circumstances shifted, or the purchase they were excited about fell through and they feel silly about it.

Email is how you stay useful to that group without ringing them eleven times. A sequence is not a substitute for a conversation; it is what runs alongside the conversation you are trying to have, and what remains when that fails.

Decide what the sequence is for

Before writing anything, settle the purpose. A sequence aimed at getting an appointment booked this week reads completely differently from one aimed at being remembered in six months.

For enquiries that have gone quiet within days of arriving, the goal is modest: make it easy to restart, remove whatever is in the way, and find out where they actually are. Anything that reads as pursuit will fail, because the person already declined to pick up.

Shape and spacing

Four messages over about three weeks is enough for most firms. Sending daily is the commonest error and it converts a helpful adviser into a nuisance.

A workable rhythm is: one immediately, one after two days, one after a week, one after another ten days or so. Then stop, and move anyone who is still silent into a slower keep-in-touch list if they have agreed to that, or out of your active pipeline entirely if they have not.

Stop the sequence the instant they reply, book, or say no. Nothing damages a firm's credibility faster than a client who booked an appointment on Tuesday receiving "I noticed you never got back to me" on Wednesday.

The first message

Sent within the hour, ideally straight after a failed call attempt. Its job is to be recognisably a real reply from a real person.

Reference their own enquiry with a specific detail. Say what you tried, what you would like to do next, and give one clear way to sort it: a link to your diary, a couple of time options, or an invitation to reply with a time. Attach or link your terms of business and a short list of what to have ready, because that is genuinely useful and it signals that you work properly.

Keep it under 150 words and do not put a logo, a banner and four social icons around it. This message should look like an email, not a newsletter.

The second message

Two days later, and this one should be shorter than the first, not longer.

Its job is to reduce the perceived cost of replying. Say plainly that you know people go quiet because they are busy or because the situation has changed, and that either is fine. Ask one closed question that is easy to answer in six words: are you still looking, or has this gone on hold?

Do not add pressure by inventing urgency about rates. Rate movements are real, but using them as a prod is exactly the kind of communication that fails the standard your promotions have to meet, and clients recognise the tactic.

The third message

A week on, change the mode. Instead of asking for something, give something.

The best material here is specific to whatever they told you at the enquiry. For a self-employed applicant, a plain explanation of which years of figures lenders look at and why they differ. For someone buying with a friend, an honest description of how joint borrowers are assessed and what happens if one wants out later. For a first-time buyer, what actually happens between offer accepted and keys.

Write it yourself, keep it short, and make it useful whether or not they ever use you. If it is only useful as a route into a sales pitch they will feel that.

The last message

Ten days or so later, close the loop cleanly.

Say that you will stop emailing about this enquiry, that they are welcome to come back at any point, and give one line about what you would need to pick it up again. Offer the alternative: would they like occasional updates instead, and if so, ask them to say yes rather than assuming.

This message gets a surprising number of replies. Some of them say "sorry, yes, can we speak Thursday". It works because it is honest and because it hands control back.

Subject lines

Short, lower case, specific, and written as though a colleague sent them. "Your mortgage enquiry" is fine. "Quick question about your Leeds flat" is better. Avoid anything with an exclamation mark, anything implying an offer expires, and anything that promises a number.

Do not reuse the same subject across the sequence. Reply-threading the second message onto the first is often better than a new subject anyway, because it gives the reader context.

Deliverability, briefly

None of this matters if the messages land in spam. Send from your own domain, not a free address. Make sure whoever manages your domain has set up the standard authentication records for it, because sending broker email from an unauthenticated domain is now the main reason legitimate mail disappears. Keep images and links few. Do not import a list of addresses you did not collect. And send from a real mailbox where replies arrive with a human, never from a no-reply address.

Permission, opt-out and record keeping

Someone who submitted an enquiry asking for mortgage help has plainly invited you to respond about it, and messages progressing that enquiry are service communications. Once the content shifts to promoting your firm more generally, the direct marketing rules under PECR apply and you need an appropriate basis, which for a prospective client normally means their consent.

Practical consequences: every promotional message needs a working unsubscribe and an unsubscribe must be honoured quickly and permanently. Keep a record of what each person agreed to and when. Keep the sequence itself on file too, since these are communications about a regulated service and a supervisor should be able to see exactly what a prospective client was sent.

Write the whole sequence as though the person will eventually become a client and will one day read all four messages in a row. If that thought makes you want to soften a line, soften it.