Citywide Home Loans Maintains Brand Compliance with MarcomCentral
Citywide Home Loans is a mortgage company that was founded 22 years ago. Since 1998, they have grown across 36 states with 79 physical branches in the United States. The company now employs over 350 loan officers and 800 total employees in the US.
Financial Services Marketing: The Challenge
A good portion of Citywide Home Loan’s growth has taken place in the last 7 years. While this rapid growth was very exciting, it also put a lot of pressure on the brand to remain compliant in such a highly regulated industry. The company continued to hire banking professionals and loan officers as they grew, but the marketing team remained small. This team was responsible for tackling custom projects, materials for the 350 loan officers, and marketing collateral for the entire company.
At a certain point, they were unable to keep up with the high demand of requests and realized they needed a more efficient solution to streamline their marketing efforts.
New Growth, New Approach
In 2015 Citywide Home Loans decided to end their advertising agency relationship and bring all marketing in house. They quickly grew their marketing team of 3 employees to over 10. Alongside the new team additions, they made the decision it was time to invest in a technology platform that would help their team support the customization needs of loan officers across the country.
While evaluating several Digital Asset Management vendors, Citywide Home Loans established their goals for investing in this type of software: Simplify the process of customizing marketing assets, ensure easy access to all marketing collateral, and reduce the burden on the marketing team.
Above all, they needed something that allowed them to maintain control and compliance over the brand.
Highlights
- 8,892 total marketing materials downloaded in 2018
- 84% of marketing materials are customized for individual use
- 55% direct digital download
- 45% of direct download went through channels for printing or physical production
MarcomCentral + The Results
In the process of evaluating software solutions, MarcomCentral stood out because it was able to address Citywide Home Loan’s compliance concerns better than others that were presented. MarcomCentral allows users to establish licensing rules per state, which was critical to remaining compliant across differing state laws. These rules are controlled through unique user profiles to ensure all loan officers are only seeing assets that are compliant within their state. Additionally, the cost of the tool and responsiveness of the Client Service team set MarcomCentral apart from other solutions they were considering.
Citywide Home Loans has had great success since they made the decision to invest in MarcomCentral for their financial marketing management needs. They’ve been able to keep all marketing collateral in line with compliance regulations, while making approved content readily available and customizable for employees across the country. Not only has MarcomCentral made loan officer’s jobs easier, but it has significantly reduced the amount of one-off requests the marketing team receives on a daily basis. It frees up the graphic designer’s workload so they’re able to focus on more important initiatives.
Citywide Home Loans has seen a 55% higher rate of adoption with their new trainees and a 50% increase in adoption from one year ago. The daily use of the tool has improved the efficiency of their marketing team and has also helped as a recruiting tool for loan officers.
The best part – MarcomCentral is a platform that is scalable for the company as they continue to grow!