Direct Mail Marketing for Real Estate Investors – in this article we are going to explain why it’s still an effective marketing strategy and how you can get the best results from your direct mail campaigns.
Why Direct Mail is Still Effective
In the digital era, it may seem old fashioned to be talking about direct mail but it can still be an effective part of your overall marketing strategy, especially when combined with your online marketing initiatives.
In his article, 13 reasons why direct mail isn’t dead, Neil Patel makes the point and backs it up with statistics. Direct mail has a significantly better response and conversion rate than email.
Interestingly the article also argues that because it is becoming less common, and it has a certain romantic quality to it, people tend to highly value a piece of direct mail.
Now that we’ve put to bed any prejudice you may have against the medium of direct mail itself let’s cut to the chase and talk about how you can make it work for your real estate investment business.
A Quality, Motivated Seller, Mailing List
To be effective a direct mail campaign must begin with a good mailing list. You don’t want to waste a lot of time and money chasing down a property owner that is not the right kind of motivated seller.
So what makes for a good mailing list?
The key is to have a list that is as targeted as possible. The target for real estate investors is usually a genuinely motivated seller.
As far as possible it’s good to put together a list of potential sellers that are motivated on more than just one level.
What do we mean by that?
Well, a seller might be the owner of a home that he no longer lives in, the property is vacant. At any given time across the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of vacant homes.
If you are new to real estate investing you might think that this would be a lucrative target group but in isolation, absentee ownership may not be a powerful enough motivating factor for him to sell at a price that is attractive to you.
The key is to add layers of motivation. Without additional layers of motivation, you will be dealing with a seller that is determined to get market value or above for their property.
To give an example beyond the obvious ones. You might try to narrow down that list to absentee owners that bought the property between 2010 and 2012.
Why is that significant?
It’s likely that the property was purchased at a very low price during that period when the housing market crashed.
This added filter will add a layer of motivation and narrow the target from hundreds of thousands to more like 50,000.
Keep adding additional layers of motivation and keep narrowing the target until you have a list that has a great chance of delivering an awesome deal for you.
How to acquire that list is a subject for another blog but you can either hire a techie to track down and gather that kind of data for you or you can buy a list.
There are many online data companies that are list providers. Investigate what kind of data they might be able and willing to provide for you.
Getting the Most Out of Your Motivated Seller Mailing List
Since gathering your own data or purchasing a list can be expensive, and the cost of direct mail itself is also significant, you want to make sure that you get the most out of that list.
How can you do that?
You might assume at this point that we would go on to talk about the quality of the content in your mailing postcard or letter but it’s actually not the most important thing.
As a content writer myself, it certainly pains me to say that but in this particular case, it’s only perhaps 10% of the issue.
The reason is that a motivated seller is a motivated seller. For example, a person who is dying of thirst is so motivated to drink a cup of water that he couldn’t care less what kind of cup or glass it’s served in, he just wants the water.
This is the kind of seller you are looking for.
The real key to success is a combination of two things, seller and situation. You need the right kind of seller and you need that seller to be in the right situation.
If you’ve been reading this blog carefully you will understand that the right mailing list and the way you narrow it down will put you in front of the right kind of seller.
But how can you be sure that your letter will arrive when that seller is in the exact right situation that pushes him to sell?
Be There at the Right Time
Really we are talking about timing. The timing has to be right. Your mail needs to arrive at the right time when life happens to create the right situation for that individual to sell at a price that makes sense for you as an investor.
The only way to maximize that possibility is to make sure that you mail to that list frequently.
The biggest mistake that new investors make is to get a list, mail to it once, see that there are no results and conclude that their direct mail campaign did not work.
This is completely wrong!
You need to invest wisely in getting the right mailing list and then mail that list over and over again.
This kind of effort will ensure that you will be the one who is in the right place and at the right time to get that deal that is going to make your financial goals a reality.
As mentioned at the outset of this article a good marketing strategy certainly includes a professional online presence and this begins with a professional real estate investor website.
To get your real estate investor website up and running, connect with the DDW team here. You can also take a look at the powerful features we offer.