The 3 Secrets Of Successful Mailing Campaign Every Agent And Investor Must Know

Direct Marketing can be very effective in generating solid leads. Unlike advertising, direct marketing allows you to pin point who you want to market to, thus increasing the success rate.

The term Direct Marketing refers to many forms of marketing. It can include Letters, Post Cards, Yellow Letters, Lumpy Mail, and so forth. But for Direct Marketing campaign to work, you must perfect three key secrets.

Secret #1 - Market to those who want to do business with you only!

You cannot sell to someone who does not want to buy, so why waste money and time marketing to them? you should only market to list of people who are interested in selling for example. You can compile such list yourself, buy it, rent it, or find it.

Lets take a quick look at some examples of each:

Compile It Yourself
While there are some advanced techniques that I will not get into due to the time it would take to explain, let me just say that the best customer is an existing customer! They can refer people or they themselves become repeat customers. Marketing to existing customers is extremely cheap and extremely rewarding if done right. Existing customer already paid you to market to them.

Another form of compiling lists yourself is to go to the public records and compile the list yourself. Now the issue here is the time it takes to perform this task, but that is a judgment call on your part to see if it will generate enough revenue for you to pursue. You can pay someone to compile the list for you and pay them minimum wage. Now a days many counties has these records online as well.

What type of leads can you get from public records?

- Divorce
- Probate
- Out of town owners
- Investors
- People being foreclosed on

Buy It, or Rent It
Besides the list above, you can also buy or rent the list of home owners who are most likely to want to sell, and who are in the specific price range and sqft you want to work with. For example, you want a list of home owners who lived in their house between 3 and 8 years, 3 bedroom 2 bath, 1500sqft house in a certain neighborhood where the home owner is a credit card user.

You will need to do your homework as to what characteristics you are looking for before you buy the list. There are many websites that sells list and allow you to filter based on various parameters. I usually use one of the following three websites to get my lists.

- Melissa Data
- USA Data
- Info USA

There are other type of lists as well. If you are interested in the preforeclosure market, there are companies that sell the foreclosure notices list as soon as it becomes available by the county clerk office. I would highly recommend a local company over a national company when it comes to time sensitive lists.

You can also find it!
Where do you find lists? well, MLS for example has Expired Listings, and Houses for Rent. Newspapers and FSBO websites and magazines have lists of landlords and those selling on their own without an agent. If a home was listed and did not sell, then it is most likely to still be for sale. Same goes for houses for rent. People rent for various reasons, they are investors, want to be investors, or could not sell their house so decided to rent it.

Secret #2 - Tell Them What They Need To Hear!
You need to communicate with your prospects using the right message, your mailing should be a targeted one. For example, if you are an Agent and wanting to market to Expired Listings, then you need to come up with a better message than just "I am a professional Agent. and I would like to meet with you to discuss listing your house."

How about saying something along the lines of "Frankly I am puzzled! I have noticed your house did not SELL! We have sold many houses in your area. Would you mind meeting up to see why your house did not sell? we have few buyers interested in your area and we could get it SOLD!" Notice how the content is conversation like and targeted to Expired Listings? It is not a generic one. The letter started with "Frankly I am puzzled" which is a phrase successfully used in Direct Marketing for many years. I swiped it to come up with this example.

It does not matter if you market to motivated sellers if your marketing piece is not convincing. If they are not compelled by what you have to say, they wont call you. In fact, they will most likely go with someone else. Dont be too generic, try to come up with targeted content whenever you can.

Secret #3 - What You Send Them Is As Important
Lets face it, if you send them a letter and they never open it, then what is the point? What you mail them, and the frequency of your mailing is extremely important. So lets look at both:

What To Mail
There are various types of mailings. You could send them a Professional Letter, Handwritten Letter, a Post Card, a Lumpy Mail, a Package and so on. You need to test to see which one has the best return for you. A friend and a mentor of mine loves to combine and mix mailing types. His argument is that some may only respond to Professional letters, some respond to Post Cards, and some, to handwritten letters so why not send them all types? His strategies work great but you need to factor in your budget, and time and remember, TEST TEST TEST! find out which works best for you!

When To Mail
You should mail to the same person at least 3 times. There should never be an exception to this rule, never even think of violating this rule. In Marketing, there is a little known secret that prospects tend to respond after the 3rd mailing. Many ignore the first one or two or three letters. In fact, some may not respond till the 8th mailing.

Each type of prospect sources has its own mailing frequency. In general, you can mail them as frequently as daily, or as infrequently as monthly or quarterly. You need to find the right balance where you want them to always remember you.