Summary

Saffron Building Society set some ambitious strategic objectives for its mortgage business,seeking to:• Define a premium margin product range, allowing Saffron to offer consistently competitivesavings rates to members.• Clearly differentiate Saffron, enabling intermediaries to understand where it’s offering sits inthe overall mortgage market.• Offer borrowers genuine added value products and service and a compelling reason tochoose Saffron.To achieve this, the mortgage proposition was completely revisited. To drive more businessthrough intermediaries, an intermediary facing product range, identity and website weredeveloped for ‘Saffron for Intermediaries’, launched via an integrated awareness campaign.

Key challenge

With the mortgage market dominated by ‘the big six’, accessing cheaper funding sources,Saffron needed to establish clarity in its market positioning. As a smaller lender, entirelydependent on expensive retail funding, Saffron’s challenge was to develop a proposition for amarket space where it could leverage its product offering and core strengths – skilled humanunderwriting, flexibility and short lines of communication – in order to meet its objectives.

Key insight

Saffron had consistently attracted higher margin business, particularly through its bespokemortgages. Some common themes emerged within the bespoke loans, enabling Saffron tocategorise shared characteristics and shape these into specialist products.Market research indicated that no one lender was offering a full range of such specialistmortgages. This presented the opportunity to position Saffron as the leading lender forspecialist situations, with a comprehensive product offering and the market space required toachieve planned growth.

Strategy

These themes were commoditised into a range of products for specific situations thatcreditworthy borrowers were facing, but left unable to borrow from mainstream lenders withinflexible products and criteria; and distribute via a selected panel of intermediaries to achievethe right volume and quality of business.With the range designed for specific situations the word ‘situations’ held weight, but littleclarity. A client could present a ‘difficult situation’, but few would describe themselves asfacing a ‘mortgage situation’. The term ‘Special Situations’ was coined to encapsulateproducts that might otherwise be described as specialist or non-conforming.‘Saffron for Intermediaries’ was launched to position Saffron as the ‘go to’ lender for brokerswith clients facing a special situation and to:THINK – Saffron for Intermediaries specialise in mortgages for situations outside the norm.FEEL – confident that Saffron offer the right product for their client.DO – contact Saffron or visit the website.

Execution

This strategy was executed across mixed channels to gain maximum awareness and clarity- positioning Saffron as the ‘home of special situations’, whilst providing the knowledge andtools to enable intermediaries to place business quickly and easily.

Building on the existing parent brand, a standalone logo and strapline for Saffron for Intermediaries was developed to set it apart from the consumer division. As a 160 year old building society, it was important to maintain visual heritage to build trust and reassurance.

The logo execution allowed the name ‘Saffron’ to be enlarged within the identity to enhance this connection.The strapline ‘Special Situations. Everyday’ was developed to encapsulate the nature ofthe range, whilst clearly articulating that Saffron deliver on this - day in, day out.

A distinct intermediary palette was used, based on the corporate mortgages colour.

A responsive intermediary site was built, allowing brokers to view and use on a number ofdevices. The site architecture considered the common user journeys brokers take, makingthe site clear and easy to use. Brokers can view products and criteria, make mortgagecalculations, download documentation and submit key facts illustrations and agreements inprinciple. They can also sign up for email updates and view latest news posts. The home page includes a promotional banner, allowing for campaign integration.

A specific intermediary product guide was developed, designed to offer at-a-glance,key information for all products.

A series of interviews were arranged with financial journalists to raise awareness and announce the launch of Saffron for Intermediaries, backed up with emails introducing the new range.

An email template was developed for product communications, with clear calls to actionmirroring the website, helping to create familiarity and recall.

To support this activity, a launch campaign creative was developed to engage brokers andclearly position the Special Situations range within the market. The engagement idea for thiswas built around the question ‘What’s so special?’. This provocative question allowed Saffronto communicate their proposition on a number of levels:• what does Special Situations mean?• what makes the individual products and overall range special?• what’s special for brokers?• what’s special about the borrowers themselves?This was delivered across a range of press and online ads, leading with a brand positioningad, placing the range into market context and followed with a series of product ads matchingspecific borrower situations with a Saffron mortgage.

Controls

Throughout the campaign information was monitored and analysed:• Weekly sales funnel activity detailing actual figures against targets for applications made,value of applications, value of offers etc.• Weekly analysis of website stats detailing number of visitors, hits per page within the siteto assess user journeys• Weekly analysis of call volumes to broker helpline• Weekly analysis of email sign ups• Weekly analysis of click through rates to site from online advertising.

Results

Sales funnel increases against the same period in 2012.• Total applications made up 280%• Value of applications made up 220%• Value of offers made up 18%saffronforintermediaries.co.uk web statistics, against previoussaffronbs.co.uk/intermediaries site• 161% increase in weekly unique user visits to site• 80% increase in page views across site• 32% increase in average time spent on site• 16% increase in organic traffic from search engines• 35% increase in new visitors• Daily call volumes rose, averaging a daily increase of 288% and peaking at nearly 800%• Email sign up has grown, averaging a weekly increase of 129%• Online advertising responsible for 7% of all site traffic.

In the 4 weeks since launch testimonials received suggest that the strategy is answeringintermediary needs and, coupled with sales funnel increases, indicate that Saffron forIntermediaries will significantly contribute to mortgage business growth:

‘New website looks good and far better than previous.’Doug Hall, 3mc

‘Haden Morris of Abacus called to congratulate the Society on our website.He said it’s user friendly and one of the best he has come across.’Diane Spark, Underwriter’s Assistant, SBS

‘mark-making* have cleverly interpreted the business challenge of sellinga more unique set of products into a largely vanilla volume driven market.The programme included an inventive and holistic communication strategyincorporating advertising, PR and emails, with focus too on functional assets thatdeliver to the needs of brokers. By telling customer stories and relating these tothe Saffron product solutions, the campaign has created fabulous cut throughagainst the rest of the market and the results to date have been stunning.’Sarah Howe, Chief Marketing Officer, SBS

‘The integrated approach of this campaign has really paid off - the combinationof new brand identity launch, functional website with targeted PR andadvertising campaign has been very effective in both positioning the Society asthe go-to lender for special situations and generating leads cost effectively.’Carol Harrison, Marketing Manager, SBS

‘We do not want to simply pay lip service to brokers, we want to show them we mean business. Saffron for Intermediaries is not just a new brand, it’sa new way of dealing with broker-introduced business. The identity andcampaign communicate this fantastically, demonstrated in the dramaticincrease in enquiries.’Jon Hall, Chief Executive, SBS