Direct mail marketing

[Kazi Islam]

Hello all. I am a newbie in REI and planning on using Direct mail for marketing. For direct mail marketing, what size postcard is appropriate? Should I use 3.5 X 5 or 4.25 X 6? Thanks in advance.

[Cornelius Garland]

@Jeremiah Alston Of course! I like talking about REI and try to hop on BP whenever I can to help out. But man, oh man...I did that when I started out and remember those days well. I was initially driving for dollars and then once I had about 20 addresses, I would hop on the tax assessor and get their mailing addresses. It seemed like it took all day to write, stamp and send off 20 of them. The frustrating part is that I didn't get any responses. I finally just set the money aside and did a direct mail campaign. My first batch I sent off was to around 1500 homeowners.

In my opinion, I think it's best to save up some money and then do your direct mail campaign. On average, my yellow letter campaigns were getting 3% response rates on the initial touch and then it'll decrease about a half of percent for the following touches. I didn't' get responses from my drive for dollars campaigns because 3% of 20 is .6%, which is not even one seller response. These are just response rates, and the conversion rates will be lower. So, you need to be doing a large quantity of direct mail in order to get a response. As I mentioned earlier, you're best off hitting more people and spending less on the mail piece than spending more on the mail piece and hitting fewer people. There's really not that big of a difference between .5-3% in direct mail response rates to justify you spending your time and effort writing the letters. The real work starts after you send out the marketing and you begin talking to sellers, analyzing deals, finding buyers, and working with attorneys. You don't want to expend all of this effort on the first part when you have a few more steps to go. After you write the letters and send them off, you'll expect that the calls will start rolling in because you did a lot of hard work. The sellers don't know this and don't care (honestly). Your mail piece will look like the rest of them. Also, you need to be talking to sellers now and writing handwritten letters isn't going to change the quality of seller. Most sellers are hip to direct mail and fancy envelopes now. If they're going to read your mail piece and respond, they will. If they're going to trash it, they will as well. Essentially, you're "splitting hairs" by focusing on handwriting mail pieces. Take it from someone that tried everything under the sun when it came to direct mail. My conclusion is that volume and consistency is king when it comes to direct mail. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.