Should newbie go all in with DM? Have savings, lots of free time

[Mark B.]

Hi BP, I'm new (have been a BP listener since 2015 though) and I'm fully committing to RE now, through wholesaling. Still in school but finishing part time to be able to give more focus to RE. The goal is to hopefully gain real traction in this as a business before graduating so I can stick with it full time.

I have enough savings to do some heavy direct mail campaigns, but of course the fear of my inexperience leading to losing it all without a done deal is holding me off the trigger. 

What would you advise?  

A part of me is saying if I'm too scared to take the full leap on a 9-touch direct mail campaign with a couple big lists, then I don't have what it takes to make the risks necessary to succeed in real estate or business. 

The other part is saying don't be stupid, respect what's at stake here and try to go about it smarter. ie: leverage my free time more by curating the lists down a lot and hyper targeting the homeowners likely to be the most motivated. That I can viably direct mail a small list like absentee owners with code violations over and over and squeeze a couple deals out of it, without spending $10k or more. Supplement with time intensive marketing strategies like bandit signs to affordably increase deal flow, too. Then scale up the direct mail as I get more experience and funds. 

This ^ seems like the sensible approach to me but I lack the data to know if massive volume (thousands of addresses) is mandatory to statistically close deals through direct mail. Can deals be done with 200-500 addresses if they are highly targeted?

What say you BP members?