Direct Mail to Motivated Sellers

[Jon Collins]

I am ready to start marketing to my target sellers.  I plan to market to vacant properties and out of town owners.  What should my criteria be?  50% equity, owned 7+ years, etc?

Any suggestions?  Also yellow letters or post cards and how often?  How big should my target area be?

Thanks

[Claire Trammell]

Hello @Jon Collins! Cool to hear that you are ready to take the plunge into direct mail!

You're going to hear a lot of different advice in response to your questions. That being said, here is my advice:

1. List- I typically recommend an absentee mixed with owner occupieds. I pull these kinds of leads from listsource.com. I am able to search my targeted are with specific criteria such as equity %,bedroom count, median price, etc. In fact, here is the criteria I recommend:

• 1-3 Bedrooms
• 30%-100% Equity
• 4 yrs. Ownership
• SFR
• Median Price Range
• Absentee
• Owner Occupied
• No Corp
• No Trust

2. Yellow Letters vs Postcards- I recommend BOTH! Direct mail tends to work best when you send a campaign of 5-7 different pieces, 4 weeks apart from each other. Follow ups are key as the average person takes 3-5 touches before picking up the phone to respond.

For reference, It might help you if you had an idea on what to expect in respect to the response rates. Here are the average response rates we have seen based on our customer feedback as well as our own mailings throughout the years:

Yellow Letters- average response rate of 8%-9%, all kinds of calls (angry calls, curious calls, tire-kickers, quality calls)

Postcards- average response rate of .5%, mostly quality calls.

Zip Letters- average response rate of 2%, mostly quality calls. (Great for follow ups)

Greeting Cards- average response rate of 2%, mostly quality calls. (Great for follow ups)

I hope this is helpful as you start your direct mail journey! Feel free to reach out if I can help any further. Keep us posted, I'd love to hear about your success!