Direct Mail for Farming Areas in Los Angeles, CA - Question

[Geni P.]

Hello All My Bigger Pockets Agents,

I am a newly licensed agent in Los Angeles and I am looking for a bit of advice regarding my idea for direct mail. The book I am reading says I need 2500 people in my "haven't met" list to market to 12 times a year in order to achieve 50+ listings.

My idea is to get a list from Alesco Data and have it filtered for the surrounding cities where I live. The list will also be filtered for homeowners who have purchase 5-7 years ago and may be looking to move. I was also thinking to only search for properties that were purchased at $500k or more since the list is likely to be more than 2500 even at that point.

Once I have my list I was thinking of using yellowletters.com to put the mailings on auto pilot for three month stints or longer depending on how often I need to refresh my list of homeowners. In the mean time I will be working on my 8x8 marketing campaign to start funneling the people I "have met" into my lifelong 33 touch marketing campaigns.

Thoughts, comments and or recommendations greatly appreciated!

[Dev Horn]

We often hear in the industry that it's 7 years between moves.  But in some neighborhoods we're buying from people who have been there 20+ years.  So, I wouldn't use 5 to 7 years.  I'd use 7+ years (7 to 20 or 25 perhaps).

I don't know Alesco (it looks suspiciously like Click2Mail - same terrible data search interface).  They may be fine, but I would use Listsource.com which is provided by CoreLogic - probably the single biggest data provider to the real estate and mortgage industries.

YellowLetters.com is a good choice for the mailings; they've really expanded their options for agents.  Might use postcards rather than letters to keep your costs down.  Also, agents put their pictures on the postcards for a reason.  Look for an option where you can include your headshot in the marketing piece.  You'll get more calls if people can SEE you and get to know YOU over that 12 months of repeated touches.

One more thing.  12 touches is really over-kill, so here's a strategy to consider:  You could mail to 5,000 total instead - 2,500 one month and the other 2,500 the following month, and just rotate your list between the 2.  Over the year you will touch twice as many people 6 times, which is in line with the 6-7 touches we as marketers want to achieve with our highest potential prospects.