Help on how to do Direct mail correctly

[Brandon Daughtrey]

I have bought a real estate course, opened up an S-Corp, joined BP, read tons of the info on here and saved up about 2K. I know a lot of ways to market to whole sale but I don’t know how to do it. I have a friend who has a buyers list already but he wants a commission of 25% of the gross. So all I have to do is find a house, I know direct mail is great, I hear that over and over but I have some questions. How much do you usually pay for a list? I was thinking about mailing Absentee owners and bankruptcy. I’ve seen lists that cost $6,000 and some that cost $70. And once you have the list how do you mail them? I’m sure you don’t type out each and every letter, maybe you copy and paste most of it and fill out the rest. Any help would be great!

[Shane W. Chapin]

@Brandon Daughtrey Full disclosure here Brandon, I am a new investor myself and have not purchased my first property yet. With that being said, I am excited to say that I did just buy my first direct mail list yesterday through Listsource.com I was able to come up with a list of just over 2000 potential properties that I can mail to and it cost me about $300. If you have trouble with the list, you can call them and they will help you build it to exactly the property types you are targeting.

My plan is to use 5x7 post cards with my general message and contact info on the front. You can get 2500 custom post cards on Vista Print for about $188. My wife and I are going to split the list and try to get out 300 post cards per week over the next 7 weeks. By breaking up the list, I am hoping to control the number of calls that need to be taken and be able to analyze any deals that come our way.

Of course you can set up a template letter and copy and paste in to the letter accordingly to save some handwriting but that is why I am going with the post card (doesn't have to be opened to receive the message).

We may try to identify our "top" 300 properties and send a handwritten letter to them but that may be easier said than done.

Whatever you do, I hope it works out. Good Luck!