RU Support Hour: February 6, 2026

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Summary

Alex Hernandez, Marc Gilman, and Tana Atwood opened the meeting by discussing their locations and recent cold weather events, followed by Tana Atwood's inquiry about accessing past live event recordings, to which Alex Hernandez provided instructions for locating them within the "classroom" section and content tab of the LO Accelerator community. Alex Hernandez announced the deployment of a new, custom-subdomain email sending infrastructure featuring a 20-step lead validation process and a two-stage guardrail system (4% bounce rate and 1% complaint rate limits) to maximize deliverability and protect domain reputation. Discussions with participants, including new user Dave Zulinke, covered the details of the lead validation process (categorizing leads as active, unknown, or failed), the importance of list cleaning for failed and bounced emails, and Alex Hernandez's advice to Dave Zulinke to import all leads immediately for processing before deployments begin next week. Alex Hernandez also shared successful real-time email delivery results and the importance of tracking client engagement, outlined a sales strategy of leading with aggressively quoted, often buy-down-achieved, low-rate options, and listed future product development plans, including a non-QM digest and SMS digest functionality.

Details

• Introduction and Attendance Alex Hernandez started the meeting, mentioning a technical difficulty with their mouse (00:00:00). Alex Hernandez and Marc Gilman discussed their locations, with Alex Hernandez being in St. George, Utah, and Marc Gilman in southern New Hampshire (00:02:59). Tana Atwood was also present, joining from Fort Collins, Colorado (00:03:49).

• Discussion on Weather and Travel Alex Hernandez recounted a recent trip to Orlando for Mortgage Con, where they were surprised by the freezing temperatures in Florida, mentioning it was even colder than in Utah (00:02:59). Marc Gilman noted that the cold snap was a 20-year deep freeze affecting honey bell oranges. Tana Atwood confirmed the generally warm winter in Colorado but noted the morning was chilly (00:03:49).

• Accessing Support Hour Recordings Tana Atwood inquired about the location of past live event recordings and introductory material (00:04:41). Alex Hernandez provided instructions, demonstrating that recordings are housed in the "classroom" section of the LO Accelerator community, accessible from the rateupdate platform (00:05:41). Alex Hernandez also mentioned that recordings are uploaded to the content tab on rateupdate.io (00:06:44).

• New Email Sending Infrastructure and Validation Alex Hernandez announced the deployment of a new sending infrastructure where every user receives a custom subdomain to protect their professional email reputation. This system incorporates a two-step validation process, starting with lead validation and followed by a guardrail process, designed to maximize email deliverability (00:07:42). The new "domain health" tab, showing verification status and the 20-step validation results for leads, is planned to go live early the following week (00:08:50).

• Lead Validation Process Details The 20-step lead validation process determines which leads are "active" (passing grade and safe to send to), "unknown" (valid but slightly riskier), or "failed" (not allowed to send to, usually due to bad emails). Alex Hernandez explained that every bounce adversely affects domain reputation and the system company-wide (00:10:48) (00:13:13). They emphasized that they do not charge for this validation process, unlike many other CRM or email companies (00:14:19).

• Managing Failed and Bounced Emails Alex Hernandez noted that their system currently had 43 failed leads and explained that users would soon be able to delete all failed leads at once (00:13:13) (00:26:22). Alex Hernandez demonstrated how to clean the list using the lead activity section, noting that one client's email bounced due to the inbox being out of storage, and another had unsubscribed (00:18:18). This list cleaning is crucial due to the natural attrition rate of emails (00:20:09).

• Email Delivery Performance and Engagement Tracking Alex Hernandez shared real-time test results, showing 602 deliveries out of 606 sent emails with only two bounces, demonstrating significant improvement (00:18:18) (00:28:06). Alex Hernandez highlighted the importance of viewing the "activity" tab to track client opens and clicks, allowing loan officers to prioritize outreach to engaged clients and referral partners (00:21:06) (00:24:47). They shared the story of Todd Shaw, a past client who engaged with the emails 86 times over a year before reaching out for a refinance, illustrating the tool's effectiveness in maintaining mindshare (00:25:33).

• Guardrail System Implementation Alex Hernandez detailed the new guardrail system to protect the overall sending environment, which includes pausing deployment if a user exceeds a 4% bounce rate (aiming to be more conservative than Mailgun's 5% limit) (00:29:06). The second guardrail is a 1% maximum complaint rate, defined as someone marking the email as spam (00:31:06). This system is intended to prevent a small number of users from negatively impacting the sending ability for everyone (00:29:57).

• Advice for New Users on Lead Import Dave Zulinke, a new user, asked if they should prioritize importing closed loans before leads due to concerns about bounce rates (00:32:19). Alex Hernandez advised him to import all leads immediately, as the new validation process would filter out failed emails, allowing them to delete the bad ones before starting deployments next week (00:33:05).

• Strategy for Quoting Rates and Sales Alex Hernandez discussed their strategy of aggressively quoting lower rates, often achievable through point buy-downs, to attract clients (00:33:52) (00:35:39). Alex Hernandez explained that they always quote high, middle, and low options, leading with the lowest rate option to engage the client and educate them on the cost of buy-downs and seller concessions (00:35:39) (00:38:15). This strategy focuses on meeting client payment expectations and being aggressive in the market (00:39:56) (00:41:24).

• Discussion on Buy-Down Options and Payment Sensitivity Alex Hernandez emphasized that the rate itself is not the ultimate factor, but the ability to achieve a desired payment through buy-downs. They also mentioned the use of Mortgage Insurance (MI) buyouts for conventional loans to further lower the monthly payment (00:36:33) (00:38:15). Alex Hernandez shared success using programs like Utah Housing Corp., which facilitates buy-downs for first-time home buyers using seller concessions (00:42:12).

• Future Product Development Alex Hernandez outlined future priorities, including the development of a non-QM digest by the end of Q1 2024, which will include bank statement, P\&L, and DSCR rates, and eventually jumbo rates (00:46:27). SMS digest functionality is also planned for release in the future (00:47:21).

• Appreciation and Conclusion Alex Hernandez expressed appreciation for users who have supported the platform while they worked to fix the email delivery infrastructure (00:43:10) (00:45:02). They confirmed that the new system is performing well, with emails landing in the primary inbox (00:44:01). Alex Hernandez projected that the new system would be fully live and deployments enabled by early the following week .

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