Problem
When users contact an agent on Zillow's home listings, they are given an option to check a box that says "I want financing information." This used to trigger a transactional email that was simply an upsell for our mortgage products that didn’t really give the user what they ask for.
Zillow has a quality score metric that helps determine lead quality. While this email drive lots of revenue, the quality score told us that the users weren't actually ready to convert. This email's quality score was ~15%. Our target is 25% or higher.
User Pain Points
In user research we have learned that home shoppers often feel overwhelmed by the mortgage process because they:
Don’t always understand how much they need to put down on a home. Many think they need 20% and don’t know that the minimum amount is 3% (or even 0% in certain cases).
Aren’t always aware that PMI is required if they put less than 20% down, and they don’t realize how much it can add to their monthly mortgage payment.
Don’t always understand that mortgage rates are different for every scenario.
We've also learned that they are strictly house-driven. They care about one particular home and aren’t interested in general mortgage information.
And finally, we learned that they don’t want to talk to a lender until they feel more confident.
Solution
Armed with this information from user research and email metrics, I knew this email needed help. The quality score of the email told me that users weren't ready to talk to a lender. And the user research helped me understand that it's most likely because they don't yet feel confident enough and they needed some helpful info.
So I created a new email that gave users the content that they were looking for: the Home Loan Report. It included financing information about the home that they inquired about (because home shoppers are house centric, remember?). The email also educated users about the mortgage process by showing them:
- Different loan options for the particular home they are looking at.
- Different down payment amounts so the user can understand her options.
- The impact of different down payments on her interest rate and PMI.
- The current interest rate for each down payment.
Unique Challenges
As always in the mortgages world, legal compliance is the number one challenge. There were several trigger terms and many legal requirements that came with it. I worked very closely with the legal team and went through several rounds of revisions with them. I took their feedback and worked with my designer to come up with a organized layout and short enough content that met the legal requirements while also being easy(ish) to read (hey, it's mortgage content).
Results
Because the current version of this email had such high visibility and drove a lot of revenue, we A/B tested my new version against the current version. Here are the results:
Quality Score: 41.8% (178% increase from control. Target score is <25%)
Revenue: $1.2m/year (20% increase from control)
These results tell me that not only is this email giving users the content that they want, but it is educating them enough that they feel confident about talking to a lender.