Cost effective direct mail

[Joe Thompson]

Hello everyone,  

I have secured my list to mail to.  Now I am looking for the most cost effective way to get started with mailings.  As of now, I want to plan out a 4 mailer program.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance

[Joe Davalos]

I've done direct mail in house for the last 3 and a half years. I realize now that was a mistake.

I was able to buy 6 or 7 houses a year. If I would have gone through a mailing company I probably would have bought more.

Why. Because I had budgeted 1000 mailings a month. Due to time constraints instead of sending 12000 a year I sent 8 to 9 thousand. I know this by the amount of postage I had spent.

Also I did 1 and done and hit another area The mailing company might have suggested otherwise. I am now on track to send 6 mailing and then move on to the next

I've sent about 1800 a month in June and July. I plan to get that to 3000 by year end

I would recommend going with first class postage. That way you get the returned not deliverable mail. Why send 6 mailings to a bad address than 1. Better yet you get to see the mail not being delivered and have a new source of potential leads

Once you get the return mail the fun begins. You have potential with a little detective work to find a good address for the seller. You then have a seller getting a few pieces of direct mail a month instead of several. It's not always possible but you won't know unless you try.

Sometimes the post office writes vacant on the postcard and or deceased. They at times also have the forwarding address printed on The return label when the forwarding address has expired. All good intel

With good leads condensing those leads down based on the distress factors you can then hire a skip tracer for addresses and better yet phone numbers.

I read the mailing companies can scrub your list for bad addresses. I recommend against it Those bad addresses can be gold.

Will be signing up with a direct mail company myself for my August mailings. Just sent a recommended skip tracer 20 leads I plan to send 200 a month. I have come to realization you got to go the extra mile to make it in this competitive market.

Anyway best of luck on your marketing endeavors. Happy mailing.