LoanPro’s Smart Mail House simplifies the process of printing, mailing, and tracking first-class mail directly from our loan management system (LMS). It's one of the important customer communication options that can be an invaluable part of a lender's collections strategy. 

Smart Mail House supports both manual, one-off mailers and automated, rule-based mailers (using LoanPro's trigger and event-based notifications), where rules determine when and to whom mail is sent.

Here are the basic steps for sending mail through Smart Mail House:

1. Individually select or search for the group of loans that you want to receive mail.
2. Once selected, send those loans to Smart Mail House for processing. 
3. Choose an existing mail template or create a new one tailored to your needs.
4. Track the status of the mailer to see its movement and ensure it reaches its intended recipient.

Creating address blocks and templates

Before selecting or searching for a group of loans to send mail through Smart Mail House, you'll need to first create an address block and at least one mailer template.

Creating address blocks

Address blocks contain the sender’s and receiver’s addresses, which will appear on the outside of the envelope. While addresses can be customized within individual templates, you can set default values to streamline the process.

1. Navigate to Settings > Company > Smart Mail House Communications > Address Blocks.
2. Review your current address block defaults. Click 'Edit' to change the 'From Address' to your desired sender address.
3. The ‘To Address’ lets you choose between sending mail to the primary customer and secondary customer's address. Remember, these settings are defaults—actual addresses are controlled within each template. 
4. When you're happy with your changes, click 'Save'.

Creating templates

Templates define the structure and content of the mail you’ll send.

1. To create a template, navigate to Settings > Company > Smart Mail House > Templates in LMS, and click 'Add' in the top right corner. 
2. Enter the following details:
   1. Template name: Choose a name that clearly distinguishes this template from others.
   2. From name: Enter the sender's name (e.g., the lender’s name or company).
   3. From address: Provide the return address, including zip code, city, and state.
   4. Zip code, city, state: Zip code, city, and state of the return address.
   5. To address: Mail will be sent to the primary address of either the primary customer or secondary customer. Specify whether the mail will go to the primary or secondary customer’s address. You can select between individual and company addresses.
3. Provide the content. You have two options for providing the text of the document you will mail: HTML and Microsoft Word (.docx). 
   1. HTML: If you know HTML, you can customize the template's look by editing the source code. If not, use LoanPro’s built-in editor, which has simple formatting tools, similar to a simple word doc. 
   2. Docx file: The .docx file option lets you upload a Microsoft Word file as your template. Make sure that your Word file is a .docx and not a .doc as the older .doc does not work. To upload a file, drag and drop it to the drop zone. Save the template and you are ready to go.
4. Enter variables. Variables allow you to merge customer or loan information into your mail.
   1. For the list of available variables, click ‘Help Variables’ at the bottom right of the page. Variables are organized into categories, based on the information they represent. For instance, if you wanted to include the customer's name, you would need to locate the 'Customer' category. Click 'Primary' then 'Customer Personal' to find the customer name variable.
   2. To include a variable, click its name for more information, then use 'Help Variable ID' to insert it into the text. Alternatively, you can copy and paste or type it directly.
   3. Repeat the process with any other desired variables. Once you're done, click ‘Save.’
      1. Here is an example of what a variable in a template might look like: Hello, [[v('customer.primary.first-name')]] [[v('customer.primary.last-name')]].

Select and send loans to Smart Mail House

Once your address block and template are ready, you can select the loans that you want to receive mail. The Account Manager makes searching for and selecting recipients easy. You can either select individual loans in bulk, using the checkbox at the top right of your loan results, or you can select loans individually by checking the box to the left of the listing. This allows you to send mail to one loan or to every loan in the group. 

When you select loans individually, you can send them to Smart Mail House by clicking ‘Send to Smart Mail House Communications tool’, a link that appears at the top of the list of loans resulting from your search. 

If you don't want to select loans individually, but would rather just send all the loans that result from the search to the tool, click the three dots at the top right of your search results and choose ‘Send to Smart Mail House Communications tool’ from the dropdown menu. 

The page should redirect you to the Smart Mail House Communications page within Customer Communications.

Choosing a template

Now that the loans have been loaded into Smart Mail House, 

1. Click the 'click here' link in the information section at the top of the screen to select the template you will use (see screenshot above).
2. Choose the template you'd like to use from the template dropdown. Note that templates specify whether mail is sent to the primary or secondary customer, so select carefully. 
3. When you've made your selection, click the ‘Confirm’ button to send the mail to the queue. If you need to cancel a piece of mail, click the chevron icon next to the listing, then hit 'Cancel'.

Once queued, mail pieces will move through the process automatically, updating statuses until delivery. The statuses associated with each piece's move through the process will update as it goes. Continue reading for more information on tracking statuses.

On average, mail is expected to be delivered 4-6 business days after it is sent through LMS.

Tracking the status of you mail

Once you've sent mail through Smart Mail House, tracking its status is straightforward. Navigate to Tools > Customer Communication > Smart Mail House to view all the mail pieces you've sent. The tracking statuses provide real-time updates, showing each mail piece's progress through the delivery process. To narrow your search, you can also use various filter options.

• Loan ID
• Status: Mail piece status
• Date: The date the piece entered the queue
• To: The name of the recipient
• Address: The recipient address
• Source service: The way the piece was sent (e.g. Smart Mail House, trigger-based notification, event-based notification, etc.)

The primary view in Smart Mail House shows each piece of mail on a separate line. 

Here's a description of each column:

These are the tracking statuses shown in Smart Mail House.

To view a history of statuses, click the chevron icon on the right side of any listing. If it's been less than 60 minutes since the mail piece was sent to the queue you should see a ‘Cancel' button. Click this if you no longer want to send the piece.

You can export the list as an Excel file by clicking the ‘Export to Excel’ button in the upper right. Click ‘Generated Reports’ to view a history of reports exported. There, you can download or delete reports. 

Customer communication history

A view of mail pieces sent to a single customer can be found in Communication History > Smart Mail House inside of a specific customer. The customer communication history view for Smart Mail House gives similar information to the view inside Smart Mail House.