Mortgage leaders have long seen marketing as a prime use case for artificial intelligence, but today's rapid technology advances are opening opportunities few could have imagined just a few years ago.  

Thanks to the rapid pace of AI development, mortgage tech providers are responding in kind with marketing platforms today that can combine online scraping with large-language models to help lenders scale personalized outreach that bolsters relationships with borrowers and business partners. 

A longtime valued marketing tool in the mortgage industry, newsletters are a tried-and-true method of communication that are now seeing enhancements from AI.

"Marketing departments love them. It helps them stay top of mind. What AI has done is move the needle significantly. A generic newsletter, which is basically just like a merge-field email, is now noise," said Garrett Locklear, CEO and founder of Nashville, Tennessee-based fintech Candid.

"It's not meant for the reader. Now, with artificial intelligence, plus a couple of other little tools on the side, you can completely upend that idea of what should be a newsletter."

Last month, Candid introduced what it says is the first mortgage-industry AI-powered newsletter, with a platform that taps into personal data available in its cloud and ties it to information available through scraping social media and other online sources. It then is able to aggregate and quickly write a newsletter, or several, for a loan officer, by also drawing in publicly available data pertaining to specific housing markets or customer bases relevant to them.    

"If you get a newsletter from our platform on behalf of a loan officer, there is literally no other newsletter in the world like that one."

The opportunity to tailor correspondence and provide relevant data to loan officers is not new. Customer-relationship management systems like Salesforce, Surefire and Total Expert, as well as proprietary tools offered in wholesale lending for brokers all possess generative AI-assistive processes that quickly comb through data to help loan officers craft emails and texts. 

How artificial intelligence is changing strategy

What AI offers now compared to a few years ago is a way of breaking through the noise of generic emails that puts the LO on offense, said Locklear, a former loan officer himself. The newsletter can become an LO "market playbook" thanks to the level of personalization it produces at high speed and delivers to a targeted segment — capabilities that only became reality  in the last few years.

"If you're a Realtor in New York City, would the same newsletter that really hits home with you also hit home with a Realtor who does suburban Nashville real estate?" he asked.

"The national real estate landscape continues to evolve, and those who adapt fastest will capitalize most effectively. This is an idea of what you can do with an AI newsletter." 

The focus on personalization comes at a time when customer retention has turned into one of the mortgage industry's top themes, a key factor in the 2025 wave of mergers and acquisitions. With today's homeowners now less likely to move compared to previous generations and new policies also changing the rules of marketing lead generation, lenders emphasize that outreach to existing customers is a priority.

While the borrower and partner database has always been available to them, artificial intelligence opens it up to originators for quick, scaled engagement. In an industry that emphasizes relationships, communication today takes on heightened importance now that loan servicers may also be in competition for the same customers, Locklear said.

Compared to other use cases, the mortgage industry appears willing to introduce artificial intelligence in marketing tasks. In 2024 research published by National Mortgage News, 64% of industry professionals said they would allow AI to perform marketing and promotional tasks if regulations did not exist.

While they still do, many mortgage professionals generally felt comfortable with AI as a marketing enabler thanks to the lower risk of noncompliance compared with other tasks. 

In the years since the research was published, generative AI has developed to such a degree that it can perform challenging human tasks at a speed many could not imagine just a few years ago. 

The rise of AI has also paved the way for mortgage fintechs like Candid to build on their platforms' original abilities. Locklear first developed the tool as his own internal resource to help him grow production in the pre-AI era. As his volumes took off, peers recognized the value and asked if he'd be willing to share it with them. 

The interest among other originators eventually led to the launch of Candid in 2019, with AI now expanding its scope across multiple aspects of origination. 

"Fast forward: Candid has grown from a CRM-focused platform to what I would describe as an operating system for mortgage sales," Locklear remarked.  "We call it a mortgage marketing and sales operating system."