Ethan Andelman, Chief Marketing Officer with Lendmark Financial Services, LLC, understands the power of business mapping software. As Lendmark strives to make borrowing "easy, convenient, and affordable" for their United States consumer, Ethan's job is to make sure that Lendmark’s solutions are conveniently available to consumers.
A graduate of James Madison University, with an MBA from University of Baltimore, Ethan started in direct marketing at Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing and then transferred that experience to the client side at a large financial services company. During his time there Ethan managed a large direct marketing organization. Direct Marketing experience often leads to an appreciation of business mapping software as a tool for digging deeper into results. The old adage holds true – a picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case, a map is worth a thousand spreadsheets.
Because Ethan has a background in GIS mapping services, he recognizes how digital maps can provide unique perspectives on business-generated location data - views not possible from an Excel spreadsheet. His experience using MapInfo (now Pitney Bowes) and Microsoft MapPoint helped Ethan realize business mapping software's unique commercial advantages, such as:
At Lendmark, Ethan needed to find the optimum geospatial software tool for Lendmark's loan-focused business, one that would support their marketing service requirements and fit within their software budget.
MapBusinessOnline, a cloud-based mapping software, included the advanced mapping features required and fit within Lendmark's budgetary restraints. Ethan decided to use MapBusinessOnline to develop a comprehensive location-based loan portfolio analysis – essentially a business map of Lendmark's entire USA-wide operation.
The loan map analysis would need to encompass these crucial components:
Using MapBusinessOnline Pro, Ethan developed his USA-wide loan portfolio analysis map. The overall '30,000 ft analysis view' is saved as a map template. Once an overall map template was in place, one-off investigation maps could then explore targeted areas. Over time, additional market analysis overlay data was added to the loan analysis. The current template map includes more than a dozen location datasets of relevant resources.
Lendmark's marketing map displays a growing customer base of US households optimized by variables such as market share and population density located in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
Ethan developed ZIP code-based trade areas or territories, each associated with one of the almost 400 Lendmark branch locations. He then appended each ZIP code-based territory label with the five most crucial elements supporting Lendmark's loan portfolio analysis:
Lendmark's market analysis map touches on almost all aspects of Lendmark's marketing processes. MapBusinessOnline supports critical Lendmark marketing and sales processes with zoomed-in or wide-angle views of the overall market.
Figure 1 - Tracking Direct Mail by Territory
The Lendmark MapBusinessOnline loan portfolio analysis map now supports a variety of marketing and general business processes including:
Ethan explained, "MapBusinessOnline allows me to quickly collaborate with the field as well as make sure that our marketing programs are successful."
MapBusinessOnline Pro allows Lendmark to expand their data import allowance to support additional business data layers in its market analysis. He has generated sizeable center-point drive time queries, which are used in part to expose accurate drive times around natural or human-made barriers, which further optimizes locations.
Ethan puts MapBusinessOnline to the test constantly. He is an advanced business map user who applies MapBusinessOnline as a whole platform, combining the power of map layers with demographic analysis and large location data imports to generate a comprehensive market analysis that helps keep Lendmark at the forefront of the loan solutions market.