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Launch of Cornerstone’s One Easy Fee Home Loans
New Online Mortgage Website, www.OneEasyFee.com

Overview

Cornerstone Mortgage, a successful 16-year-old San Diego-based mortgage banker, decided to introduce a new online loan product that included one all inclusive and transparent fee that covered ALL closing and third-party costs. Clearpoint Agency was hired to plan and implement the launch and manage ongoing PR and marketing activities for the new loan product, called One Easy Fee.

Challenges:
The mortgage industry was experiencing its first decline in years. One Easy Fee’s online competitors such as Ditech and E-loan are established and spending hundreds of thousands on offline and online ads, in addition to PR. Cornerstone Mortgage could not match their budgets to launch its new online product. Plus the website, its tools and back-end all proved to be much more complex for the web development team, delaying the launch several times. Clearpoint Agency maintained flexible responsiveness and continually adjusted to the moving launch date and modified budget.

Research

To assess One Easy Fee’s positioning and to develop a cohesive and high-impact PR/marcom strategy for the new product release, Clearpoint Agency conducted intensive research. It first monitored media for trends in the mortgage industry – specifically online mortgage products and fixed-fee models. The agency conducted a mini perception audit of the business media, calling key editors for feedback, and analyzed press coverage. Clearpoint also conducted extensive interviews and data gathering with Cornerstone executives and staff to gain further insights.

Clearpoint also conducted secondary research in the form of the following:

Audited competitor communications of online mortgage lenders Quicken, E-Loan, Ditech, and Homeloancenter.com, including websites, press coverage and analyst reports
Gathered data on competitors’ broadcast ad buys
Analyzed demographic info for target publics
Searched for and duplicated articles and reports on the fixed-fee mortgage model and onine mortgage trends, analyzed and presented to client
Searched for paid lead generation sites, presented to client
Searched mortgage key terms on Google and Yahoo! to access challenges/opportunities for online promos, gave info. to web dev and SEO teams and the client

Planning

Drawing upon its research and competitor communications audit, Clearpoint Agency facilitated a half-day Positioning Workshop with Cornerstone staff. From that workshop, Clearpoint Agency developed the following:

One Easy Fee’s positioning
Key messages
PR/Marcom plan

Clearpoint determined that an integrated campaign including PR, online pay-per-click, radio advertising, celebrity endorsement and direct mailed postcards would be the best way to meet the client’s communications objectives with the budget provided by One Easy Fee.

In addition to the overall key messages by audience and the PR/Marcom plan, Clearpoint created the following:

Developed a news release plan
Created Website navigation plan
Developed contributed article topic list
Identified organizations for speaking engagements
Created custom media lists – local, SoCal, Industry trades and business press.
Developed concept and proposal for radio personality endorsement
Recommended One Easy Fee establish relationship with analyst to validate low rate and fees
Co-created advertising plan with Clearpoint’s media buying partner, Z-Zone

Execution

Upon approval of the plans by the client, Clearpoint began executing the plan to launch One Easy Fee using the following tactics:

Secured endorsement with Bill Holland, financial talk radio personality on CASH 1700 Radio
Wrote all website content
Created reciprocal web content for celebrity endorsement agreement
Wrote contributed article
Wrote client letters
Wrote Good Faith Estimate (GFE) letter
Secured talent for radio spots
Wrote four 30 and 60-second radio spots, and 5-minute vignette and adlib scripts • Supervised radio spot production
Pitched local, trade and business media to gain coverage
Created concepts and wrote copy for four postcards
Coordinated post card mailings
Provided key word guidance to web dev team
Continually reviewed progress and plans with the client to ensure program is on track

Evaluation

One Easy Fee continues to increase its website traffic and leads to new business. Company spokespeople tell Clearpoint Agency that they are well on their way to reaching company business goals thanks to the strategic PR/Marcom program developed by Clearpoint Agency and the successful launch of www.oneeasyfee.com.