Framing the Problem

Mortgage lenders and real estate agents live in constant fear of losing clients to competitors. Even when they’ve captured a lead, nurturing that relationship over the long and often quiet journey toward a home purchase or refinance is difficult. CRMs and marketing tools help with transactions, but they don’t provide ongoing value to consumers in between.

Our opportunity: Could we build an enterprise offering that helped lenders and agents nurture and retain their clients - while also serving as a Trojan horse for Digs, allowing us to distribute our consumer products through trusted partners at scale?

Approach

To deliver on that vision, we focused on deeply understanding what lenders and agents needed to nurture and retain clients, then designed Digs Pro as a co-branded extension of our consumer apps, giving partners visibility, insights, and integrations while preserving a trusted, consumer-first experience.

1. Understanding Enterprise Needs

• Conducted interviews with lenders and agents across national players and regional brokerages.

• Uncovered key pain points: losing visibility during long decision cycles, lack of consumer engagement tools, and reliance on generic drip marketing that didn’t build trust.

2. Designing the Trojan Horse

• Positioned Digs Pro as a co-branded version of Digs Saver and Homeowner — valuable enough that consumers wanted to use it, but distributed by lenders and agents.

• Gave partners the ability to apply their own branding, stay visible within the app, and connect their existing systems.

• Balanced customization with guardrails to protect the core UX.

3. Building the Enterprise Layer

• Co-Branding: Logos, colors, and messaging that made the app feel like “theirs” to clients.

• Consumer Engagement: Buyers saw saving milestones and lender rewards; homeowners saw equity tracking, mortgage health, and maintenance tools.

• Insights & Data: Partners could see anonymized engagement signals (e.g., average savings balance, milestone completions, equity tracking usage) to identify who was most ready to transact.

• Integrations: Data flowed into CRMs and marketing tools, turning insights into action.

4. Piloting & Iterating

• Tested Digs Pro with regional brokerages and mid-size lenders.

• Validated that partners saw Digs as both a retention tool and a differentiator in competitive markets.

• Refined reporting dashboards and onboarding flows to fit seamlessly into existing workflows.

Product Evolution

Digs Pro grew into three pillars:

• Co-Branded Consumer Experience: Partners gave their clients a trusted, value-driven app while staying top-of-mind.

• Enterprise Insights: Dashboards surfaced meaningful engagement signals, letting partners nurture clients proactively.

• System Integrations: CRM and marketing connections made it easy for lenders and agents to act on those signals.

Outcomes

• Signed partnerships with leading lenders and brokerages, including Rocket Mortgage, Guaranteed Rate, Loan Depot, and others.

• Expanded distribution dramatically by leveraging partner databases instead of relying solely on direct-to-consumer acquisition.

• Enabled lenders and agents to retain and nurture clients more effectively, with visibility into engagement long before traditional CRMs surfaced signals.

• Established a strong enterprise revenue stream while simultaneously driving consumer adoption of Digs Saver and Homeowner.

Reflection

Digs Pro proved that a well-designed enterprise layer could unlock distribution for consumer products. By creating value for lenders and agents by helping them nurture and retain clients, we created a scalable path for Digs to reach more consumers at the exact moment they needed saving, planning, or homeowner tools.

For me, this case study highlights my ability to:

• Design enterprise products that serve both sides of the market.

• Balance customization with consistency, ensuring co-branding didn’t dilute consumer experience.

• Use design strategically, not just to solve UI problems, but as a growth lever for the business.