My First Direct Mail Marketing Campaign

[Alex Witte]

Hello all!

2019 is an exciting year so far! I hope you all are crushing it!

One of my goals this year is to try my hand at wholesaling. I have a good network of both buy and hold investors as well as flippers, so I figured they would be my "buyers list" to start. If that doesn't work then I would post my deal on Facebook groups I am a member of. 

From what I have heard it is easy to sell a deal if you truly get a good deal...so I am not worried about the buyer's list right now. 

Up until now I have only been a buy and hold investor, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to find deals that hit my numbers through other wholesalers or on the MLS. Why not negotiate directly with motivated sellers?!

I am starting small. I have targeted absentee owners with 50% or greater equity in C/C- class neighborhoods in the greater Milwaukee area. 

My first mailing is to 400 property owners. I am doing post cards 3.5 x 5 black and white. 

The image I have included is my first go around at this... I have an engineering background so making things "pretty" and understanding what attracts the eye is not my forte. 

I was hoping to get feedback from you seasoned mailers out there! 

What works?

What doesn't? 

What do you think?

How soon do you do a second mailing to the same list? Every quarter?

I currently have a freelancer working up business logo concepts, so I do not have a logo for my company yet to include on my mailers. 

[Marcus Auerbach]

I have done 6000 letters total over 6 months using a professional ressource from BP. I would recommend that, because then you know what you are sending out is prooven to be successful, and you are not questioning yourself months after months after months.

Here are a few things I have learned:

1.) it takes several months to build momentum; people will first get to know you and then a life situation happens which makes them motivated, not the other way around.

2.) you get a lot of angry calls. I had been threatened with the FBI, people missunderstand what a cash offer is, the BBB (a file against me now) and the police - a cop called me to tell me I have to stop mailing, but was unwilling to give me the name or the address of the person. "Sir, I am happy to remove that person from my 1000 name list, if you'd tell me which one...." He gave me the block, which did not help ;-)

3.) mail to one quarter every week - this way your work load is more even. It takes a lot of mental energy to field these calls and get appointments, spread them out over 4 weeks.

I had some success, but I was a bit underwhelmed - over 95% of my buy and hold's are from MLS. Maybe that's because of the a little higher price point? However, to be fair, that's also where 95% of my efforts are.