E-mail Can Be Powerful Customer Relationship Tool.

Even as mortgage lenders spend millions on complicated loan origination and servicing technology to make their operations run better, cheaper and faster, the killer application may already be in their arsenals: e-mail.

According to a roundtable of mortgage industry experts who spoke at Thomson's recent 4th Annual Mortgage EC Conference here, e-mail has awesome potential if the industry is careful about how it is used.

The power comes from using e-mail as a tool to disseminate information to your existing customers, says ABN Amro senior vice president Garth Graham.

"When you can expand a relationship by e-mailing them information they want, the results can be dramatic," he told the audience.

But he cautioned lenders not to spam their customers, but rather to use opt-in technology to allow borrowers to determine what information they will receive.

Ed Jones, CEO of ARC Systems, Austin, Texas, agreed that it was important not to abuse e-mail.

"E-mail will continue to be a viable way to communicate with and sell to people," Mr. Jones said. But if lenders overuse it or violate the privacy of their customers, it could do more harm than good, ...