Welcome to the mortgage game. I truly, truly believe that building a mortgage business, a successful one, is like playing a game. There's winners, there's losers, there's certain things you try. Some of us are playing checkers while others are playing chess. I've had the ability to coach and mentor hundreds of mortgage brokers. I myself built a very nice business.
So now I want to distill all that information, all the things I've learned from that and bring it directly to you in a simple to understand way. I hope you enjoy. Okay, welcome to the Mortgage Game Podcast. West Coast Wiley here. We have a special guest today. For those listening, you're walking around on your podcast, you got Wiley We have here. a special guest For today. those listening, you're walking around on your podcast, you got your earbuds in, we're going visual.
So I'm trying to show more and more stuff on social media to show you, you know, how the sausage is made type stuff, that authentic content. And so I'm starting to record all of these podcasts. So you will be able to find this video here, along with many others moving forward on a YouTube channel. We're going to slice and dice and using content. It's absolutely something you should look at doing, repurposing all the content you already do as well.
So this is the first or second time we've recorded this. First time in this software with Riverside.fm. And today I have a special guest. This is the second person i've ever had on the podcast very important the first was my wife a lot of you said that was your favorite episode ever so without further ado i want to introduce michelle donahue michelle say hello hello hello she's like what am i doing here, Ryan? Why are we doing this? And this is a different format this week.
So just give you some frame what your expectations are for everyone listening. The purpose of this podcast today is, so Michelle is the VIP of the VIP club. For those of you who don't know what the VIP club is, it's a database marketing company that I own, me and Jason Henneberry own. Michelle has been brought in to fix things, make it better, take the VIP club to new levels we haven't been at before. And she's been doing that and crushing it behind the scenes. And a lot of you use the service.
A lot of you have reached out and said, this service is awesome. It's gotten better. I don't know exactly. Can't put my finger on it, but something's changed. I feel it. it's because Well, of Michelle. yeah, So I wanted to introduce you to Michelle. We're going to have a conversation with Michelle she has about, a very interesting perspective on what we're doing here. She brings a lot to the table. We're going to ask her a bunch of questions and this will probably be 20, 30 minutes.
And then we're going to get into like, where was the VIP club? Where's it going? What did we fix? What did we not fix? What can we get better at? What do we actually do? How are top brokers using it? So it's going to be informative. And my main goal here is for you to just hopefully get a sneak peek behind the scenes of what we're doing at the VIP club and who Michelle is, because she's the one pulling the strings.
It's not Jason and I. Okay of you believe that that is not the case Michelle it's funny that she laughed she's like okay so uh Michelle a bit about yourself you are a mortgage broker okay level two in Ontario sorry yeah Ontario sorry yeah I guess Ontario Ontario. And you're out of Barrie, Ontario. Ontario Yeah. I've been an agent for, I'm in my 10th year. I wouldn't say I'm like a top producer, like a medium, small. But I pretty much have been, I love the mortgage industry.
So the VIP is actually a really good fit because it allows me to kind of take kind of the creative side of, you know, stuff that we learn as being as an agent and be able to apply it and help other agents grow their business and apply kind of all this other learning that I have from various different things that I do. And yeah, no, I'm just an agent and was working with Canterbury first. I wouldn't say just an say just an agent. I would say, you know, you're not, you're much more than that.
And so you have a very unique perspective and the VIP club is lucky to have you. And those who use the service are lucky to have you because you get a mortgage agent's perspective on things. Plus the, so you can bring in the creative, like, what would you do for your own business type mentality and why you you, why it's why you appreciate the VIP club so much. So can you tell me, how did we hire you? How did you get involved with the
VIP club? So I actually had posted a post in Facebook or in the I Love Mortgage Brokering Facebook group. or in the I Love Mortgage Brokering Facebook group. I was kind of just looking for something in addition to what I was already doing. And so I was very detailed in my post and had a few interviews and got connected with Jason Henneberry and basically worked with him, kind of assisting him. I started off actually helping more at the strategy hub side.
I created two of the strategies over there. And then we kind of discovered that there was a need over at the VIP club. Just things were transitioning over there. And my skills would probably be better suited over at the VIP club. And I was looking for a challenge. So that basically allowed me still to be a mortgage agent.
I didn't realize how much of a challenge, but I was, I was excited to kind of dive into something where I could put, you know, all these other skills that I have that you just can't really utilize as an agent. There's only so much we can do as an agent, but yeah, I was able to kind of hop over to the VIP club and started there October of last year. Love it. So okay. Yeah, October of last year. Okay. I remember when Henneberry, Jason, he saw a post in a Facebook group.
And he's like, Oh, I like the way that's written. And I'm looking for someone and he goes, I'm going to reach out. And then he's like, I hired a rock star, man, partnering with a rock star, And it was you. And to get those words from him, that praise, I'm like, okay. Cause he, you know, he crosses his T's, dots his eyes. He knows what he's doing. He's built a lot of things. He, he sees talent, recognizes talent, knows it when he sees it. So you came on, you came in the VIP club.
And I remember the VIP club had some, let's say, it wasn't getting the attention it deserved. And it had a lot of blind spots and pretty much threw you in the deep end, okay, we had some other staff that was in there where it wasn't really working anymore and you had to come in and learn.
And so I want, I want you to walk us through first couple of weeks in the VIP club and sort of when you realized, oh my God, I like the product, love the product, but oh my God, there's a lot of things we need to fix here. But my oh, there's God, a lot of things we need to fix here. here. Yeah. So when I first came into the first thing it, I kind of initially saw was that it just wasn't as organized as it maybe could be. Give me an example. Give me an example.
Just, you know, so we have a ticketing software program, Intercom. And so when anyone requires any sort of support, be it, you know, adding something to a list, changing a banner, help with their campaign, they would send a ticket. These tickets were sitting just way too long. And so that was the very first thing that I addressed. What I will say is when I kind of first came in the first three weeks, honestly, we're just learning exactly what we did at VIP club.
Because there's these, you know, there's two different tiers of things that we do for people, either a broker or a realtor. And just trying to understand the difference between the two and getting to know, you know, who was creating the content and things like that, and trying to just basically just get it organized and just understand the platform itself. Because our dashboard, we have a client facing version, and then we have our admin version of it.
And it took a little bit of time just to even just learn the technical side of it. Because there's a lot that actually goes into creating these campaigns, building the campaigns, you know, allowing people to preview and modify their campaigns and then sending them and then fulfilling the gift distribution at the end of it. There's a lot that happens on a one month cycle and then you start all over again the following month. So right away, the main thing was we need to get organized.
And communication you as a if we do not communicate with our clients, was, know, broker, we lose them. It's just that simple. And so that was the very first thing that we had to fix was how and when and how fast we communicated with people.
And then from there, we started to kind of address other needs that were you know all the layers all the layers of the onion back and you start seeing you're like oh man and so one thing i want to point out is what michelle referenced there all those things if you don't know what the vip club is it's a once a month we send out a completely done for you newsletter with a kick-ass article in it to your database on your behalf, branded to you. You have the ability to put videos inside of it.
You have the ability to customize it however you like. You can put call to action, book to your calendar, social proof, reviews. And the way we get engagement is people enter a contest because you're given really good prizes, anywhere from a $25 gift card up to $1,000 gas cards. And so that gets people entered into a contest and then they answer questions and engagement.
So there's to you, the broker on the outside looking in, you're like, oh, it's a newsletter with a contest with blah, blah, blah. But to run a business behind, and a lot of people don't realize this, there's a lot of moving parts.
You're dealing with software, human beings, databases, brokers who aren't tech savvy uh sales support team on our side like there's a lot of moving parts okay so you understood the support thing we weren't getting back in a timely fashion on the support side what was the next thing you saw honestly the first six months were just fixing things so i just i really just took a deep dive into our data and cleaning up the data so that it was something, if we're going to provide stats, we needed
to be able to depend on the data that we had. And then just from there, identifying, just from working within the tickets, I'm like, oh, here's another issue I see. I don't like this process. So then from there, it was building processes so that, you know, if someone wanted to change their banner, here's the process. Like, it's quick now. Like, it's in and out within a couple hours now. Whereas before, you know, people would sit and not know if their banner was updated.
Now, you know, there's that quality assurance part of it that was also lacking. So now people have to approve their banners before we can actually send out their campaigns. And the thing is, the way I kind of looked at it was, we have a huge responsibility, we are going into people's databases on a monthly basis.
There's compliance that has to be adhered to, like, especially if you're in Ontario as a broker as realtors they have certain compliance that they have to adhere to as well as we're representing them we are literally pretending to be them and so we had to make sure that what we were sending out was 100 accurate was exactly the way they want it to look. And, you know, it was educational and high quality.
And so the things that we fixed were billing issues, you know, banner issues, processes, who does what, you know, and we clean on the backend side, our developer had to put in place a lot of different code to be able to make sure that certain issues wouldn't happen again or mistakes that were being made in our end wouldn't happen again in the future because now we have a process for everything. And so things are always double checked again because we are going into people's databases.
So everything has to be perfect. And very rarely is it ever not because it's very important that we get it right every single month. So your attention to detail, everything you just said there, I always simplify things. I go attention to detail. I go you saw a support I go you saw a support problem. You came in and fixed it. Turn around time on Then support. you saw an attention you problem, came in and fixed Turn around it. time on support. Then you saw an attention to detail problem.
And you said, we need to be better than this. You need to come in here. And so those of you, if you're not using the service or if you are, like there's a lot of work that goes into making sure your campaigns go out and they're like tip top shape, like they should be, like you thought they were going to be we like, I hope you can feel it through this podcast, how much we care about getting that right. And that wasn't until Michelle came along and recognized it because she's an agent herself.
And she's like, this needs to be right. We're doing this on behalf of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of mortgage agents and brokers. Like, oh, my God, we need to get this right. And we weren't. We were hit or miss. It was hit or miss. And so now 100% confident that we got that right. So support, attention oh, my to detail. Was there something else that was standing out when you came in and did your six month where you saw
what we were doing? I think just just cleaning up the feel of it as well. Refreshing the branding on the newsletter. Like the brokering community is small. Everyone knows everyone, although there's thousands of us across Canada. We all know everyone. So I wanted to make sure it was something that I could be proud of. If I see people out at, you know, events and conferences, I need to feel proud of this product and the service that we have.
And so 100%, we've been like working on templates, we've been working on, you know, the ability for people to modify and things that they can do, which we'll dive into later.
But I would say the first nine months, quite honestly, was just simply fixing the foundation from a technical standpoint, making sure that everything functions the way we say it's going to function, you know, better communication, or improving the client facing dashboard so that people have access to not just their campaign, but social media stuff, which again, we can dive into that later.
But it was just really about building the foundation so that everything works as we are telling people it's going to work. And then putting like a fresh look at it. And again, I have a as an agent, my perspective is when we're mining our database, we want to be informative, yet be able to kind of speak in a way that is maybe going to generate leads as well. So the content had to match what is currently happening in the market that particular month.
Although we kind of plan our articles for the year, whatever is happening that month or is trending or is being talked about, the articles will shift gears and be more about that. Whatever is more relevant. relevant. Yeah. Yeah. More. Build the foundation. Now we're good to go. So let's switch gears a little here. I believe email marketing is the most number one underutilized tool as a mortgage broker in our industry. I think most of us have fallen asleep at the wheel.
We don't understand the power of owning that list and what you can get from that list. can So what are your thoughts on that, on email marketing versus other mediums? Where do you stand on that? So I think all of it is important and all of it has a specific on email marketing versus other function. mediums? Where do you stand on that? So I think all of it is important and all of it has a specific function. Social media obviously is going to be really important to get your face out there.
That's how you can maybe make new connections with other people. However, you don't really own your social media. You own your database and you own your emails. That is something that you do have control over. Email marketing to me and like what VIP to me really represents is our ability to reach our clients in our database on a monthly basis in a fun because there's only so much one can do to make mortgages seem interesting. There's only so much we can talk about.
So we need something else that's going to be engaging and have people actually wanting to open your email. So that was number one. So why email marketing is a little bit better is because we get into people's inboxes every single month in a fun and engaging way. We teach them something, hopefully, but then the engagement from the contest marketing portion of it allows you to have that personal connection on a monthly basis.
So on social media, to have that personal connection, maybe in your stories, someone's able to send you a private DM. Whereas with our marketing campaign, because of the way the contest someone's works, able to send you a private Whereas DM. with our marketing campaign, because of the way the contest works, someone has to, in order to enter the contest, they have to answer a question. And that question is between you and your client that's in your database.
And the questions ideally are posed in a way that are going to be not just a one word answer, but more something trying to draw a conversation from the person. That particular piece is what allows you to have that personal connection with your database on a monthly basis. And some people are really great with their questions and ask things that are very personal. And they get very personal responses back from people, I see the responses.
And it allows you to really grow that relationship with your database from like a personal standpoint. And, you know, as we know, people do business with people they know, like and trust. So on a monthly basis, you're solidifying that relationship through personal interaction. That's not social media related. So that to me is why VIP is so successful is that piece right there. Yeah, I agree.
Giving out those contests, giving a thousand dollar gift card for a gas, you know, gas card, we'll get an email open. That's why we're around 44, 45% open rates, which is over double the industry standard. And it's not the same old boring stuff. And so it's interesting though, we ask people questions in the VIP club and they give you these personal answers. And I remember I used this service for many years, probably seven, eight years in my own brokerage. And I'd get these responses back, right?
I would start knowing more about my clients than I did about my friends because they were telling me about their first dates. And because these were the questions because I wanted to connect on a personal level. But the part that a lot of people are missing out on and a lot of people listening to this who actually use the VIP club are missing out on is it were has to come full circle. So someone enters the contest and they give you this awesome response. You need to acknowledge the response.
It comes right in your inbox. It's just a quick reply back. However you do. By doing that, it shocks me how many people are always trying to form relationships. And they're out on social media starting from scratch, from cold, starting to get these people to pay attention to their posts and getting comments and likes. And yet you have these people answering very personal questions over here, coming right into your inbox, and you're not bringing it full circle.
You're not closing the loop on that and continuing on with that engagement. So part of that broker is just not You're not not connecting the two. And the other part is us not educating them and showing them you need to go do this. So we're going to fix that. What do we have? What have you and I decided to do? We are going to do a webinar series. So monthly, we are going to get together and we're going to highlight.
We're going to do a better job of showcasing just all the different things that you can actually do with your email campaign. I don't think most people realize how much they can customize this and how much they can inject their own things like video, you know, testimonials, their own like copy basically into these campaigns on a monthly basis. So we're going to teach people how to really utilize the service so that they're getting a better return on investment.
And just also highlight some of the things that our top brokers are doing, because we say our open rate is around 40 to 45%. But we have brokers who are like around 55, 60%. And we have engagement, which is, you know, where someone is actually clicking and having a conversation with you. So yes, we're getting everyone to open the emails. But what's really important is the engagement piece. And that's the part where our people are talking with their database.
And that's hovering around 20%, anywhere from 14 to 20% just depends really honestly on the size of the database. And that's hovering around 20%, anywhere from 14 to 20%. Just depends really honestly on the size of the database. But we're also going to teach people how to grow your list because the more successful you are at growing your list and your database, the more successful we are because you're going to want to continue to use our service. Love it. Love it.
Yeah, we decided, we said this is something I've been wanting to do for a while. I just never got to it. And now me and Michelle are going to do that. So once a month, 30 minutes, call the webinar series. Sure. We're going to come in and educate. We're going to show you best practices of other top brokers. And then Michelle's going to actually physically show you, go into the account, show you in the portal, click here, do this, do this. This is why you do this. We're super excited.
That'll be a library of best practices we're going to build up. It'll let you get way more open rates and higher open rates, more engagement out of your database. We're super excited. Here's the thing. Email marketing is not dead. It's just not being done right. And most of you who are staying in touch with your database, you're sending the same old boring shit that your network sends you, your brokerage gives you.
And it's like the blah, blah, blah, fluffy, fluffy, fluffy, same old boring stuff. And I fall asleep before I even get to the second paragraph. And there's no engagement. So we've cracked the code on it. We've done a really good job of cracking the code on how to get engagement from your database. What we haven't done a good job at is explaining to you exactly how to get the most out of that. The blueprint on how to crack the code.
We've given you pieces of it with the service, but we haven't actually held your hand and showed you. We're going to change that.
we haven't actually held your hand and showed you we're going to change that so we're super super super proud of that um okay let's shift gears off of that let's shift gears off of why the vip club so awesome stop talking about that um we were built on it is a proprietary software that was built on top of mailchimp and so early on MailChimp was free for your first, I think, thousand contacts that you see to upload your database to MailChimp. It's your MailChimp account.
We were built on top of it. And then MailChimp started to raise the prices. And they started just going, hey, now we want 20. Now we want 30. Now we want $70, whatever that is, based on the number of contacts. So our clients would foot the bill for MailChimp. And we said, this isn't right. We need to get full control. So MailChimp just can't pull the plug on us. And we need to take that cost off your play. So what were we planning to do there? I know what we're planning to do.
I want to hear in your words. And where are we at on that? So we are in the end of beta testing broker mail. So broker mail is the new platform. So for anyone that wishes to move over, so this is really great for people who are paying for MailChimp currently. We can, with the click of a button, move you over to a new platform and it would be completely free for you. We're picking up the cost. Like it's not free. Free for that, not free for us. Free for that, not free for us. Yeah, yeah.
We're paying for it. Okay. Yeah, it's quite a bit. But what's great about it is there are some little features that are going to be available over there that are not available on MailChimp. On the broker side, I'd like to be able to add periodically some economic updates. So there's like a little couple little extra spots that we can add different pieces of content that are more graphics, or like images.
Broker mail, for those who are connected with Strategy Hub, and you're a Strategy Hub elite member, you actually then can also have access to BrokerMail to do your own mailouts as well. So that's another feature. To build your own drip campaign, To build your own drip campaign, your own one-off Bank of Canada thing. So you can house your database and all your marketing efforts in BrokerMail, which is what we built. Yeah, exactly.
And it's a really like,'s um the look and feel of it is really nice it's very clean um what i use it's it's what i use to any of you if you're getting emails from me i use broker mail that's what i do yeah yeah and it just has less glitches um we actually like vip marketing is actually i believe the eighth largest account with MailChimp worldwide. That is how many emails we send on a monthly basis. yeah basis. We're huge.
But despite that, our clients, some people have really large MailChimp bills on a monthly basis. And so we need this to be affordable for people so that they'll want to continue using the service. And so this is a really great option for people who want to make the switch. Some people won't because they have a whole bunch of other stuff. It's a business expense for them and they might stay over at MailChimp and that's okay. We can, it's business as usual for them.
But any new customer coming on, we automatically are setting them up over at BrokerMail. And then we are going to open it up to everyone. We just wanted to beta test for a few months with, you know, 50 or so people just to make sure that we didn't have any glitches. And if anything came up that we were able to address it on a smaller scale versus a ton of people. So are you comfortable with where we're with where we're at on that transition over broker mail?
Yes. Yes. We, Phil, there's just one more month where Phil... Phil's our developer, by the way. Yeah, Phil, we have some new things coming in that are going to be new features for our clients. Those won't be live until the September campaign. So I do want to have one more month of those particular features to make sure that we are solid and then we can fully open it up to everyone. Love it. I hope it's coming through the podcast here. You're listening, you're watching.
I hope you're feeling something. What I mean by that is I hope you're feeling the love. I hope you're feeling that the effort and energy that we're putting on our end to reduce your cost, get better open rates, more engagement, different angles to market, stronger quality articles, more graphics, more timely information. Like, I hope you feel that because we were there, we're just an okay company. And we were coming along and people used it because the service was good.
Now we're on a next level. And that's not because of me. That's not because of Jason, although it's more Jason than me. It's because of you. And so like, I just hope that's why I wanted you to have you on the podcast. I wanted to let people know, like, this is a real business and we're just getting started. And not a lot of people know about us, even though we have hundreds and hundreds. And I don't know how many people use the VIP club right now. Do you have an idea? We're around 700 or 700.
Okay, so we have 700 people relying on us to market to their database. relying on us to market to their database. That's not a small, it's a million dollar company, right? And we're a company, we're just getting started. But I wanted, that's the whole purpose of this. I want you to walk away going, okay, the money I'm spending, I'm getting it. It's only going to get better. Or if you're not using the service going, wow, what I'm sending is quite frankly, I'm getting it.
It's only going to get better. Or if you're not using the service going, wow, what I'm sending is quite frankly, I'm kind of embarrassed to even mention what I'm sending compared to what you're talking about. And we're not going to get into all the bells and whistles we're doing in the VIP club. We'd be here forever. We're not going to get into that on this thing. We're going to save that for webinars and stuff like that. But I just want you to feel love.
I want you to know it's a living, breathing thing with people behind the scene, busting their going their ass, working crazy hours, meeting deadlines, having all the stress on their shoulders. And that's you. And that's the team we've surrounded you with. And so that was the big purpose of this. And so I know Jason feels the same way. Jason, I'm just looking at you going, thank you, Michelle. Well, as much as I did take all the credit, like Helen, Jason's son, who's like a super kid.
as I did He's he's like incredibly creative and has some really amazing ideas. So it's really been Helen and I that have done this jointly. So it's really been Kellen and I that have done on a monthly basis. But it's that the people behind it genuinely care. We like your success is our success, because if you're not successful, you're going to leave us. So we need to make sure that we are making you successful.
And that's what the webinar series is going to be about is how do we help our agents utilize this better to be more successful? And yeah, so maximum maximum ROI. Yeah, yeah. Love it. Well, I've ROI. I've got, I've got a list of all bunch of things I want to talk about. And I didn't know where this was going to go, but I also want to keep this at 30 minutes. We are at 30 minutes. And so I think we're good for now.
So like I said, we could talk all day about this, but you and I have a lot of passion about this. The average broker is just like, okay, I get it. You guys are awesome and you love what you do. And it's a great service. I'm sold good enough for me. And then they carry on to the next thing in their business. And that's cool. That's actually what we want you to do. We want you to do that and leave this stuff to us. So Michelle, is there anything
else that you want to say? Anything else about what's coming in the pipeline or any last thing you wanted to leave the listeners with before we go? I would like to say like if anyone who's like left VIP, keep an eye on us because we have, we've really turned the corner and the quality is substantially better than it was in the past. And we have such great ideas that we're going to implement. It all takes time because there's beta testing that goes along with everything.
And but over the course of the next six months, we have some really neat ideas and things and improvements that we're going to make to the dashboard. And I really honestly, it's it's it's such a great service. It's such a great service. And for people who you can either set it and forget it, or you can use this as part of your marketing strategy, especially going into 2025, considering that, you know, 2023 and 2024 kind of were slower for us as brokers.
And if you're looking for like a unique way to really get new business and you need help with it and you don't want to start from the scratch and build everything yourself, well, we've built it for you and you just reach out and it, you don't want to start from the scratch and build everything yourself. Well, we've built it for you. And you just reach out and we get you started. Love it. Love it. Okay. Well, much love. Michelle, appreciate it. I appreciate you taking time to do this.
And for those of you listening, I hope you got something from there. Switched it up, interviewed someone today. I'm only going to throw these in there once in a blue moon. I just thought it was definitely warranted. And so Michelle, I appreciate you coming on for everyone else listening. Hopefully you got some out of that and peace out until next time.