Reason to abandon yellow letters list?

[Brian Stieler]

I took the advice of the forums and dove right in to sending yellow letters. I have a list of ~500 absentee owners, and everyone has now received at least 1-2 mailings. At the beginning, I was using a handwriting font that looked kind of fake and I was printing them on regular yellow computer paper. They looked cheap, and my response rate reflected that. I received 6 calls out of 750 letters (only 1 with potential). 

I decided to the time to completely re-do my design and now have very authentic looking letters and handwritten envelopes. I'm proud of these ones.

My question is:

Can I continue mailing to the same list, or did my first letters ruin my credibility? Should I stay the course, or buy a new list? 

[Pratik P.]

Here's my advice: If you're going to mail such a low number of letters, it has to be a distressed list. Absentee owners are rarely distressed. Distress is code violations, tax delinquent, divorce, eviction. 

I personally mail to as many distressed leads as possible and then fill in the rest of my letter quota with owner occupants (rarely distressed). 

The great thing is, these distressed lists are usually free to obtain but may require some time and effort on your part building them.