Direct Mail for Apartment Locating

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Hello all! Not sure if anyone on here has tried this but I'm thinking about mailing postcards to renters in apartment complexes telling them about my free apartment locating service. I have never done direct mail and was wondering what sort of response and conversion rate I might be able to get. Does anyone have some insight on this? Should I first mail to 1 or 2 complexes in town to test, or should I go all out and mail to 10+?

[Maggie L.]

While I defer to anyone with experience on this particular topic (I've never sent mail to renters for an apartment locating service) I will say it's a numbers game so the more the better.

The two important questions to my mind are 

1) Cost

- does your marketing budget have enough cushion to do all the apartment complexes if this experiment doesn't work out?

2) Desired target

- are you focusing your marketing in certain areas of town/certain individuals and do all these apartment complexes fit your criteria?

If you're happy with the mailer and you can afford to send out the ad to everyone, I'd say go for it.  If 1 and 2 aren't big check marks, I'd keep it small at first.  Personally, I find the moment I send something out the first time I notice something I want to change (possibly for the 7th time...) so small scale may be good for that reason too.

Out of curious, how are you making money off a free apartment locating service? Are you charging prospective landlords or are you hoping some tenants may try to buy a home instead? Something else?