Direct Mail Marketing

[Willie Reid]

I've been doing research on this whole direct mail thing and I feel so lost. Who do we target? How do we find those targets? Things like that are not panning out for me. Any suggestions?

[Ben Davis]

Hi Willie, I haven't done any direct mail marketing myself but I've listened to and read many books and podcasts that talk about it. From my little understanding, it seems like who you target depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for multifamily, you might want to find out of state owned properties. Landlording from out of state is difficult and many get very burned out and want to sell. This is a good way to find motivated sellers. If you are looking for single family houses, there are different avenues to take. Maybe you want to find preforclosures, or tax liens, or somebody with some other motivation to sell. I have heard listsourse.com is a great resource for finding areas with varying concentrations of these exact motivations we talked about. You can punch in exactly the kind of owner you are looking for and it will give you a good idea of how many there are in a certain area. Driving for dollars, the act of driving around targeted neighborhoods to find distressed or vacant properties and writing down the address, is another great way to find leads. I wish I knew more on this topic but this is maybe a start. I encourage you to read more books and listen to the BP podcasts, there is an amazing wealth of information in those. Best of luck to you and I hope this helps a little bit! Ben Davis