Ep #13: NextGen Video Marketing with VidVerify

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey there, loyal listeners. This Jeff Zinfrager host for Mortgage Marketing Radio. I am coming to you from sunny 7th, California, where I'm preparing for the long weekend, the 4th of July holiday. What are your plans for this weekend? Get away with the family doing something fun. I hope you are. I wanted to get this podcast off to you, though, real quickly. I'm giving you an opportunity to listen to it over the next several days. Maybe we've got a little downtime. So if you're tuning in, you've got a very special episode this week and I'm very excited about it featuring a company called Vid Verify. So Vid Verify. What they do is they provide next-generation video communication for Mortgage Banking and real estate markets. Now, I know a lot of us out there, law and officers were looking at, hey, how do I leverage video? Incorporate it into my business. I think you'll be pleased to hear what Vid Verify can do for you. Not only that from a marketing standpoint, but as I chat with Laura Hopkins, she's the VP of Marketing for Vid Verify. She's also going to reveal the platform they've got that I thought was very, very impressive when it comes to automated compliance using video to communicate and engage with your clients as they go through the loan process. So all the various requirements from the CFPB and Trid and Ranked Out and all that fun stuff that's happened to us over the last several years. We know compliance is a very important issue and how do we disclose, how do we ensure that we've got compliance. Well, Vid Verify has created a platform that is really stellar, professionally done videos. These are not animated videos. These are professional actors, actually. So they're done very professional, very high quality. You'll discover that the platform is actually very affordable, gives you tracking and analytics, allows you to customize certain portions of the video as well. So it's an alternative to things like bomb bomb and things like that. But also what's great about is it includes the compliance, the automated compliance video portion of that in addition to you being able to make your own videos. So I hope you enjoy this session. If you do like these podcasts, do me a favor. Just take a moment, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, maybe leave a quick review, the more ratings reviews we get, the better it helps us show up in the finance so we can help more people. And again, have yourself a great fourth of a July weekend. If that's the time frame you're listening to this, if not, enjoy the interview with Vid Verify. Bye for now. Hey, Laura, welcome to the show. Hi. I really appreciate you being here. I know you're very busy. You've got a lot on your plate, especially as we're moving into an upcoming long weekend, you're probably trying to get the last minute stuff done in the office before we all head out. So appreciate that. As the listeners heard in the intro, what your company Vid Verify is all about is compliance, video marketing, and why that's the future. And so I want to take a moment if you could just do a real quick brief overview of who and what Vid Verify is all about, and then we can unpack right that topic of compliance video marketing. Sure. Sure, absolutely. Just really basically we're an automated video platform. So just in the simplest form, we deliver videos throughout the loan process in conjunction with the LOS system. We're able to explain to your borrower throughout the loan process what they're signing, what they're going through, the loan process is very complicated. So helping them go through each step via video is very helpful. And we do that through delivering videos throughout the milestones and we integrate with the LOS system. So it's automated, nobody has to trigger anything manually, and everything's explained in layman's terms in short digestible increments. The other piece from a compliance standpoint is that everything is tracked, so you can go back to who watched what, and that's a big piece of Vid Verify. Yeah, and hearing that, it sounds like a no-brainer who wouldn't want to do that. And we'll talk about the adoption of video in compliance marketing and video in general, because you and I talked about this before, before we started recording this in terms of video adoption in the mortgage real estate market. But why do you think, last time we talked, you and I talked about why video, what's wrong with animated videos and stuff, and if people go to your website, they can definitely see a sample at vidverify.com, I mean you guys are clearly, as it says, next generation video communication, because you've got live actors on there who are professionally scripted, and so this eliminates the concern you and I talked about, which is with loan officers not wanting to be on video camera, because of how they look. Right, right. But you also give companies and loan officers an opportunity to still customize it and maybe do kind of like a front-end welcome video or something like that on that, correct? Yeah, absolutely. So yes, we all know how popular videos are. People love using videos and there's lots of different YouTube channels and a lot of these animated videos out there, which are cool and entertaining. However, the mission isn't to entertain the borrower, it's really to educate and make sure that you have a little CYA there, and as the challenge is really to make sure that people understand what they're doing, and really the general public is starting to get numb to a lot of that animation because it's being used everywhere. So when we talk about what we're doing with vidverify, we want that to be able to hold up in court when a borrower says, hey, my loan officer never told me that and your loan officer knows they told the person that and they may have had a cute video on their website or wherever out on YouTube, but using a real-life person really helps deliver the message in a different way and does capture the attention of people and we have found it and there are statistics out there that if people really do have a higher retention to material being delivered in that way and there is a warmth in that type of delivery even with using a video and absolutely a loan officer can replace any of our videos with their own thank you, with their own welcome, with their own description of, hey, here's what you can expect during the loan process with me so they can definitely add their own touch to it. Very cool. So, let's paint the picture here. So I'm a loan officer. You guys integrate with different LOSs out there. How does this work if I'm a loan officer and I've got somebody going through the process? What do I need to do on my end to make your videos integrated through the whole process? So the company, the lender says, okay, these are the videos we want to go out with every loan. So no matter what from the top down, every loan officers, borrowers are going to get the same sequence of videos. Now that's going to be automated centrally with the LOS system. So a loan officer, if I'm a loan officer, I don't have to do anything. I just originate the loan, I tell my borrower, hey, we really want you to know what's going on in the process. So you're going to get videos throughout the loan process. Look out for them. If you have any questions, of course, let me know. But just so you know, you're going to get these videos. I can also send videos ad hoc if I, you know, my borrower asks me, hey, what's another type alone I can get? Or what's the difference between APR and interest rate? And I don't really know the best way to explain that. I can send videos ad hoc, or if I want to send a happy birthday video or something, I can use the system. But if I never want to use the system, and I just want to know those videos are going out, I don't have to do anything, I just know they're going out. Yeah. So there's a library of videos based on the situation. Yes. So there's, sounds like there's two tracks, right? There's the one track, which is the compliance, which is fully automated, and you know, what is that a matter of just like clicking a button in the LOS once the integration happens from the company? Well, it's mapped, it's, it's mapped initially upon setup. So your company will have it all set up when they sign up was bid verify, and they say, okay, when our loan officer, you know, in their LOS completes this field ID, we want this video going out explaining the LE. So they don't have to explain the LE or whatever. And is the schedule or the cadence of videos set by triggers in the LOS or just by a calendar timing? Either one, whatever the, whatever the company decides. Usually it's an LOS field ID or milestone, but they can do it either way. And so there's obviously a series of videos, you know, once that process happens in the field ID, but did they correspond with, you know, let's say we know we're sending disclosures from the LOS. Is there a video that? Yes. Okay. So it sees that. It knows what's happened. It's intelligent. Exactly. Artificial intelligence. We're, we're finally. Exactly. The robots are taking over. Well, not yet, but. Very interesting. So you've also, you know, it's funny. You mentioned birthday videos, and you've got me curious now what those look like because I haven't seen one of those. Is it like an actor wishing you happy birthday? Is it a jib jab kind of thing? Well, what we suggest is really at this point, you can have, you can make your own and set it up to go on, to deliver on the Bar Wars birthday. We've had requests for, you know, like you've said, a lot of people haven't the intention, hey, I want to do all my own videos. Then they see themselves on camera and say, I don't want to do any of my own videos. So, you know, we can have somebody do a birthday video, but something like that instead of sending a postcard or a birthday card, something like, hey, I hope you have a great birthday video. You can do at your desk, you know, on your webcam, and that's a lot more personal than sending a generic email or postcard, and they can do that. The first day they meet the Bar Wars, set it up for six months from now, and just set it and forget it, and know that it's going to go out. So, can they also do like these one-off videos, such as, hey, it was great meeting you? Sure, absolutely. They can also do a video with their realtor that says, hey, we loved meeting you and have it send out six months after they move in. Hope you're having, you know, great time in your new neighborhood, and you're all settled in, and keep us in mind if you want to refer us to anyone, I've had people do that as well. So they set it to go out six months later, and companies like this, because we do have a compliance feature in our system that any videos they make, go to the compliance department first, get approved, and then if they set it to go out a certain date, then it just sits there and then it goes out that date. What does that include, like the one-off birthday, or you had a great meeting videos that they had for you? Right. Anything. So, who's setting that up, that it's required to go through compliance, is that on the LL? It's part of the initial setup, so they can set up as many compliance officers as they like or a team, just, you know, it's part of the setup with VidVerify. Okay. Right. So, on the birthday videos, right, I don't know what you're feeling is on that, that may or may not need to go through compliance, that might be an individual company decision. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They can decide to bypass, and we can set up a bypass, so. So, are you guys, then, I'm just down the topic of these one-offs for a moment, because a lot of people are looking at ways to leverage video, there's the compliance side, which is the one track, then there's the how do I communicate with my borrowers and partners. Are you guys, then, an alternative to something like a bomb bomb, for example? Yes. Absolutely. And the biggest difference is that compliance feature, because, really, I got to tell you, we've been to the CFPB. They love what we're doing, and, unfortunately, and I know, loan officers don't love this, but there is such a huge liability for owners of companies that take on a risk of just having people do and say whatever they want. And for the most part, it's usually okay, but there's got to be some kind of compliance feature, and we do have that feature plus, we work with a law firm that that's all of our scripts. So, if there's a loan officer that wants to do their own LE video or loan products, we'll share the scripts that we already have bedded through attorneys in the industry. So we'll share those scripts with the loan officers and with any of our clients, and they can use our scripts, they know they're compliant, and again, they can bypass that compliance feature, but once it's approved, it's approved, it's in their library and done. That's very interesting. As you say, that puts the owners at ease to know even the scripts of the clients approved. Yeah, and they can get approved in a matter of 60 seconds or three seconds. It's immediate. It's not like it takes a day. Right. Okay, so then talk to me a little bit about the analytics reporting. I imagine as a loan officer, if I'm sitting at my desk, do I have like my own dashboard? Yeah, yeah. A loan officer has a dashboard, the company admin has dashboard. You can see pretty much to any extent whose watch to video, admin has a little bit more detailed reporting, and we can pull anything, but you can see which video they watched, when they logged in, how many times they logged in, how many seconds they were on a video. So again, if you ever end up in litigation, we can get down to the nitty gritty as far as even seconds that they watch. So if they don't make it to the end of the video, we can even give you that type of detail. But yeah, they can look, they can see unwatched videos. We also track reminders, so intervals of how many times they were reminded, and you can change that. You can remind people if they don't watch it in three days, remind them again, X amount of days before closing. You can give them a list of videos, they didn't watch, and that is also audit ready for you as well. Yeah, it's a great opportunity for the loan officer to just track that engagement and use that as an opportunity to maybe put out that timely phone call. Absolutely. Because if somebody's not watching the videos, right, you want to kind of make sure that they are. It's interesting, this is really what I thought about this, and I first came across a bit verifying you guys. It really is, and you know, this is as well, so in today's market, right, there's a lot of what I have, sameness and clone marketing, and we really need to differentiate ourselves and provide this great, you know, user experience. So I'm thinking about this from two angles. One is, it's a great differentiator for the user itself, the individual borrower, obviously, because I mean, you know, who else is really doing this, right, at scale, right now, nobody, so it's a chance to get in on that and differentiate yourself. But also different yourself amongst your realtor partners, if you have a chance to talk to them about, hey, why should I choose you as a realtor partner if I'm going to send you my business, Mr. Mrs. Loan Officer, well, let me just, you know, kind of walk you through the process that, you know, that we do for a user experience and not really dwell so much on the compliance side, because the realtor gets that, but they're not going to be the big thing for them. They're going to really, I think, be wowed by, oh my gosh, we've got these professionally done high quality videos. Yeah, and the realtors can use them too. So Loan Officers send them to their realtors. The realtors have them on hand too, if the realtors want to say, hey, you know, explain something to their borrower, buying versus renting and things like that, they can use them as well. So, you know, tell me tell me how that would work. Well, a Loan Officer can put realtors or any referral partners in their database. They can send them videos and then a realtor has a video, you know, on their own dashboard, so they can use that, you know, in front of a borrower, or a Loan Officer can go to a realtor's office, they have access, they have the whole video library, they have access to that, so they can use that in presentations as well. And I've had people do that as well, so they definitely have, I've gotten, and this was another thing I wanted to say too, we've gotten feedback from realtors and borrowers just saying, wow, this is just a really great service that you've provided, or, you know, ABC Mortgage has just really gone above and beyond, thank you so much. We give our Loan Officers options to recap their realtors on what's going on with their borrower. So, these are the videos your borrowers have received this week, so they can know what's going on with their loans, and, you know, they can see what's going on. Can you actually publish a report of those video views for the individual borrower? For the borrower? Sure. The borrower. The reason I'm asking is because you just triggered a thought on my head about, you know, I could send a report to my realtor on these two or three borrowers, it's like, look, hey, man, here's where they're at in the process, they're engaged, they're watching the videos, so we're clear to close, you know, so far, kind of thing. Yeah. Well, you can, the Loan Officer can opt in to that, they just click a box, or the company can say we want all of our Loan Officers realtors to get a weekly report, and they do. So we have some companies that do, some companies that don't opt into that, we also have the option for Loan Officers to get copied on everything that their borrowers get, again, some Loan Officers like to know, some Loan Officers don't. So yeah, we also give them that option as well. Very cool. Very cool. I'm liking this more and more. Okay. The other thing I was going to say is what we've started to notice and our clients have noticed is it's really starting to stimulate activity and expediting responses that helped the Loan Process move along because, again, people are so numb to emails that now that they're saying, oh, I'm getting a video and it says, your loan is approved with conditions, it kind of catches their eye, and they're writing back some unrelated things, but things that are related to their loan and they're getting paperwork back faster, and it's just interesting because it's stimulating the Loan Process because they're communicating in a different way. Yeah, it definitely increases engagement, which maybe thought I should have asked this question earlier, in terms of the email that the borrower receives with that video, what does that look like to get to the video? Is it a screenshot of a video? Is it just a hyperlink in a text email? It's, well, each lender can revise the email. It's very short. It shows the title of the video, but it shows a play button. So again, we're just really going very visually, and each lender can really decide what they want it to look like, but we've really made a big play button that they click on and that is really... Okay, and it takes them to a destination page, and is that branded? Yes, it's branded to the company, can have the Loan Officer picture on it if they have a picture, and it has their logo, their colors, and then the video has the logo of the lender on it, and the Loan Officer information. Right, so it's a continuity of brand there. And the Loan Officer, as you said, with the email, they can adjust its meaning. I can change the subject line if I want, add text body. Right. Okay. Very nice. That's great because it'll really allow you to personalize it, which is, I think, you know, the video in and of itself is powerful, but it becomes that much better, right, when we can adjust it for our tone of communication, or things we want to say around the video, and that kind of stuff. Very nice. Okay, so naturally people are hearing this and they're thinking, wow, this sounds great. How much does it cost? So I know it's, you know, varies, obviously, a variety of factors, and as you shared before, it's usually a company that probably invests in this, but just give us some ideas on it, so people can get a thought in their head. And by the way, the Loan Officer, like, you know, they want to take this to their broker owner or whatever, just say, hey, you know what, guys, we need to look at doing this. Yeah. So basically, we'll charge a monthly fee. So an enterprise account fee, it's based on, you know, the size of your company, your average, closed loan. If a company wants to pay by user or per closed loan, we'll do that as well. It's nominal, you know, as compared to a CRM, it can range anywhere between 10 to $15 a closed loan, but if you pay enterprise pricing and a company charges back to their Loan Officers, it'll be a lot less than that. And, wow, you know, that's pretty affordable. Yeah. So really, I mean, most of our clients are paying enterprise pricing, which they end up not really charging anything back to their officers. It's a flat fee. Yeah. Right. And it's a great value ad for, you know, the company and officer loan officers and it's recruiting tool and things like that. Yeah. And they just use the whole system. They can communicate with it. They use all the videos and, you know, wow. Platform. Can you share anybody who's, I know you mentioned you guys worked directly with like CFPB, but any endorsements you have or lenders that you want to share you've got on your roster? Well, we've got lenders that, you know, we've got some big contracts in the pipeline with some very large lenders, which maybe by next week I can, I can, but we've got companies, you know, on, in Arizona, in the Northeast, we've, you know, the CFPB doesn't endorse anyone, but they definitely have, you know, given us that good faith, effort, stamp of approval. We've got, you know, we've got companies like Suburban, Norcom, Delmar, CNN, gosh, you're putting me on the sky. No, I know. I apologize. But you don't know. No, it's fine. I should have. I set my list. But we do. We've got some of the, the bigger guys, which I can't mention their names yet are you'll probably, it'll probably, too, but I will also tell you some of the better, you know, attorneys out there off at Kerman, American mortgage law have endorsed our product and a lot of those people are in the courtroom litigating for companies out there and they have endorsed our product as well. So that's, um, so what was the, let's take us to take us before we close out here. What was the genesis of vid verify, what was the inspiration to start this? Well, the, the former owners of lenders, one mortgage cooperative, which is the largest cooperative in the country of independent mortgage bankers and financial institutions started vid verify. And so we're very familiar. I worked there for 10 years. We're very familiar of, you know, the experiences in 2007 and 2008 of, of lenders and rules and regulations of the CFPB and all the compliance factors and, and everything, all the hoops that lenders have to jump through in terms of accountability that they have and everything that they have to prove of what they're doing to educate borrowers and everything that they have to do throughout the loan process. So what we wanted to do was to say, okay, we're going to give you something that you can show the CFPB, your auditors and the borrower and, you know, put some accountability on the borrower that, hey, here's what you're buying, here's what you're agreeing to, here's the all of our transparency, we're not, you know, there's no more guessing. And then you've got to be part of the loan process, here's your skin and the game kind of thing. You can put in 20 minutes of watching videos so that nobody can ever turn around and say, I didn't know this, you know, and so this was, this was our way, originally when Vid Verify was born, we really wanted to videotape the closing and videotape all of that, but people are still not ready for that. That's a little bit too much accountability for everybody, but, you know, we still have people ask us about that and ask us, hey, can, can people, you know, not move on to the loan process unless they watch every single video, we're not making that decision. We do have people who are paying part of their borrower's closing if they watch all the videos and things like that, but, you know, I mean, there's a ton of amazing, awesome loan officers, then there's, there's a few people who, you know, say a little bit and just want to get the loan closed. This kind of just helps owners sleep at night to know everybody's getting the same message. There's no, there's no gray area, they can always say, hey, our borrower's get the same message on everything and a borrower, you know, doesn't really have an excuse that they didn't know something when they're being told, they're being sent e-disclosures and they're being sent very simple videos. So you kind of get to a point where our attorneys and these attorneys that endorse product like this are saying, what more can a lender do? What more can a loan officer do? Right. Yeah, because you have tracking ability of whether or not somebody, you know, at that recipients email opened and watched the video, you also show like duration, meaning how many members you do. Right. Mm-hmm. Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like way around, right? Yeah. It seems like way around, right? You have to be objective for compliance, so they can rest easy from the user experience, the loan officer, it's a great kind of partnering tool with realtors as well. So it's one of them. Fortunately, you know, we have to have products like this. It'd be nice if everybody was. If we don't have it, it didn't have this history in our industry, but unfortunately, we get to have stuff like this. Plus, it's fun. And it really, you know, we got it, we got to add some fun and- Well, seriously, I think, listen, I think, you know, so the CFPB and, you know, all we could go on forever about all the issues that that happened in Frank's and all that. But I think, ultimately, this example for me is a positive one because it is a better user experience as far as- Yeah. And it's an education process, and I think when it comes to referrals, this is going to be a differentiator, you know, when it's like, look, if I get these series of videos for my loan officer in my last, you know, experience was, hell, I didn't know what was going on. Exactly. I'm going to be more likely to refer you, you know? Yeah. And, you know, not to mention millennials, but let's face it, they are going to start buying houses and they hate talking to people and they love videos, they love their phones. And at some point, you know, we're going to just be communicating in a different way to people and in other industries we already are. So, you know, there is, we could talk about this for days and I'm sure you do, I mean, you do. So- Well, so what is coming down the pike, any stuff around the corner for development? Well, we're doing, we're definitely going to be adding SMS so that we, you know, we're going to be doing this through text messaging and then we're adding, we're beta testing the prospect video automated campaign. So you'll be able to reach out to any leads and help, you know, get them in and educate them on before they start even originating loans. So you'll be able to get them in video wise and then we'll do two way communication. So there's a lot of, a lot of things that we'll be coming. What do you mean by two way communication? Well, when, when you get into actually talking to someone live video chat, yes. Okay. Nice. Very cool. Yeah, I would love to see the interface and see what that looks like in terms of, like you said, it's right now, it's right now it's right now it's in front of your desktop. Right. Not, not mobile available yet, right? Right. Okay. Very nice. Cool. Very cool. So where can people learn more about vidverify and- Well, we have our website vidverify.com and then my information is L Hopkins at vidverify.com. And every Wednesday we do a demo, 15 minute demo, which you can sign up on the website as well. And that way, you know, you're incognito and you can just watch a demo and then if you want more information, you can contact me through there. So the best place to go is to our website or contact me directly. Is the demo something we register for every Wednesday? Uh-huh. Yeah, you can just go on our website and there's a red rectangle. I see it. Yeah. Point weekly demo and you can just click on that and register and we'll, we have those weekly and you just hop on and watch the demo and- That's great. Yeah. It's right above the- Yeah. It's right above the sample video that you guys have there without professional looking gentlemen. Yeah. Yes. Very cool. Well, I'm a big fan of this and you know, encourage everybody who's listening to check this out as for all the reasons we mentioned, right, as a competitive advantage and from a compliance standpoint and everything else, it's- And especially- Yeah. And now it's a great time to get in at the- Yeah. The starting of this. Absolutely. After. Well, Laura, listen, I know you're busy and we got to get back to our day. So I thank you for sharing this with our listeners and we're going to post it up and put all the links in the show notes so people can check it out, attend that weekly webinar and hopefully start contacting you to learn more about Vid Verify. Well, thank you so much for having me. Fun. Well, talk about it. My pleasure. So listeners, thanks again for listening and at this week's session of mortgage marketing radio. If you like today's podcast, please hit the like, give us a comment on iTunes, subscribe on iTunes, download it, whatever you need to do. And this is it once again, Ben Jeff Zimper. And look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Bye for now. One more truth in mortgage marketing. Get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com. That's a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. 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