Anyone ever use Postcardmania.com ???

[Ceasar Blackman]

Hey

I called them up to ask some questions about using them for a few mailings of postcards and their rates were good. They work with you to design your own card and etc. I just want to know has anyone had any good or bad experiences with this company ? I believe they are based out of Clearwater Florida

They also mentioned they build list that fit my criteria exactly like Listsource and they claimed to be updated more frequently then Listsource. I can use the exact same criteria as with LS, but the price per name was nearly half. Also I have noticed a few people mentioning LS not being the best source to build list. Any input would be greatly appreciated

Thanks guys

[Jack Bobeck]

@Ceasar Blackman I use Postcard Mania, I would not recommend them to newbies. I don't trust lists created by a mail house. I only prefer to use the USPS lists. You can use the USPS and their Every Door Campaign to touch all doors in a route for about 16 cents, then add the postcard 6 x 9 created at a local printer, mine run me about 14 cents each, and you have a full 4 color 2 sided piece in the hands of the consumer in your target area for about 30 cents each.

If you need a list, try a list broker, start small and see how good the list is. If you need MLS data, partner with a Realtor who can send you a list of all the items in a Zip Code. Plenty of ways to get a good desired solution.

I do not like Postcardmania because they CLAIM to be all you ever need in the world of postcards. I have not had good results with my work, and all they are is pushy, pushy, pushy to get my cards out, so they can make more money on postage. Not what I call customer friendly. My 2 cents. I'd see if you can get a quote from them, then take it to someone local in Orlando to match. You get better service from a local firm than one further down the road, and the results may be better!

Jack

[Jessica Lalau]

Hi Caesar,

I’m with PostcardMania and couldn't help but respond to this thread!

I read your comment and thought you might be interested in checking out our online testimonials (http://www.postcardmania.com/testimonials/?list=9) and case studies (http://www.postcardmania.com/casestudies/) for more feedback on our services.

We actually have 3,073 real estate customers as of today (I just checked our database!), so we must be doing something right — providing great design and mailing services being just a couple of them.

And yes, we do provide mailing lists at what we find to be a very competitive price. The thing with list brokers, we've found, is that they frequently order a large list and then resell it over time. We wait until right before your mailing to order your own personalized, completely fresh list to ensure that your prospects are as current as possible.

And, as a mailing house, we've actually found that our prices are more affordable than most list brokers, since selling lists isn't our only form of income. In fact, both mailing houses and list brokers actually get their data from the same place: list compilers. Of which there are only a handful nationwide! So there really isn't variability in list content, only price.

And as for using the USPS for Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), it is certainly cheap, and we can provide those services. However, with EDDM, you’ll end up hitting every single business and residence in your area — not just homeowners — which will create some wasted effort. This is just one advantage to using a list, which would allow you to target homeowners of a certain income, a certain length of residence, etc.

PostcardMania is different from any other printer in that we are actually a full-service marketing company that happens to print postcards (and a lot of them — 4 million per week!). We are constantly analyzing our clients' campaigns to determine what designs, offers and mailing lists are working best for what industry, and you benefit from all of that information when you work with us.

Feel free to reach out to your marketing consultant (David Scott, 800-628-1804 x258) with any additional questions that you may have. He has a great deal of marketing experience and will be happy to answer any other questions you may have!

Best,

Jessica Lalau

[Kelly P.]

Ceasar Blackman I used Postcardmania. They create a very slick looking piece but depending on your viewpoint, that can be good or bad. I did not buy a list from them. However, be forearmed that if you provide a list Postcardmania will charge you extra (without telling you) for addresses that don't appear correct. I stopped using them and got better results with a different postcard - mailing to the same list.

[Ceasar Blackman]

Thanks for that breakdown @Jessica Lalau I just got the samples today

@Kelly P. who might you be using ? if you dont mind sharing

[Kelly P.]

@Ceasar Blackman I use Click2Mail.

[Scott Costello]

I also did a trial run with postcard mania. I thought everyone there was friendly and helpful. They designed a very nice postcard for me and i sampled a batch of about 1500 postcards to a list I provided to them.

My results....7 responses (0.46%).

The list was Out-of-State owners I pulled from the tax records, of which I got about a 13% response rate using yellow letters.

I'm not going to say anything bad about them, I just don't think postcards work well for finding motivated sellers in my area. Maybe they were "To Nice" or maybe my message wasn't good (although it's the same message I use in my letters).

In the end I'm not a believer in postcards.

Hope that helps

[Dev Horn]

Interesting! My results would be exactly the opposite. For us, nothing beats a postcard with excellent design, branding, and messaging.

I hear that Yellow Letters get the phone to ring. But are the callers qualified for what we offer? If they are not motivated sellers with distressed properties, those calls are nothing but money and time wasters.

And I can send 2 full color 8.5x5.5 postcards for the cost of 1 letter. Way more productive.

We use letters (nice white professional letters with letterhead) for probates, where the added expense is worth it due to the value of the target. Otherwise, postcards drive a TON of well-qualified calls for us.

[Lamar Cannon]

@Dev Horn what is your response rate with the postcards you use?

[Dev Horn]

hey @Lamar Cannon - it's a hard question to answer - here's why: Your response rates will vary with each mailing - might be 0.5 - 2% on the first mailing and closer to 3-5% from your 6th mailing to the same group. Research published here on BP suggests that 80% of your contacts from a list will come after 3 to 5 mailings. So, where you are in that cycle will dramatically effect response rate.

The other factor is location. The same card mailed to the same type of list from the same source might generate a 2% response rate in Dallas, and only a 0.5% response rate in Los Angeles.

We focus on response rate and # of calls because those seem like reasonable ways to measure performance, but they can be misleading. One guy gets 10 well-qualified leads and closes 2 deals. The other guy sends out a letter that gets 25 people to call but guess what - none are motivated owners of distressed properties. So, more calls, higher response rate... but ZERO deals. Which guy would you rather be - the one with the deals or the dude bragging about his above-average response rate?

Ultimately, our better measure of performance is efficiency of marketing - we invested $1000 in direct mail and got 1 deal that netted $5000. So we have an efficiency of 5-to-1 ($5 rev for every $1 advertising/mktg). But even if we can get to that understanding, it will still vary a LOT by market.

FINAL THOUGHT - I just think marketing is like dating. BE SPECIFIC about who you want to hook up with so when they read your material (PC or letter) they will think "that's me, that's MY situation - I should call them...". People will SELF-SELECT based upon your message. If you have misguided or disceived them in any way, that's not a great way to start a relationship.

[Blair Halver]

@Dev Horn - thanks for your comments. I especially appreciate the last part of your last comment about the message. I believe the message is probably the most important part of the mailing. Sure the medium dictates whether they read it or not, but if it's not a compelling message, they're not going to call.

I also totally agree with what you said about response rates varying by market. L.A. has had the worst response rate for us in terms of qualified leads generated per mailing. While Memphis probably had the best, or one of the best.

Is this due to the varying climate of each market, hot or cold (in terms of home pricing), or could it be due to cultural mismatches with the message?

@Ceasar Blackman , to your original post - I know @Sharon Vornholt is a big fan of Postcardmania. She always spoke highly of them to me in terms of quality and service. I have not used them myself, yet, though, so I cannot say.

[Sharon Vornholt]

I will jump in here. I love, love, love the company PCM. I even did a video interview with owner Joy Gendusa that is on my blog. It is a great company with great products. They have awesome marketing materials and great articles on their site. It's a great place to learn about postcard marketing and marketing in general.

However, I also got terrible results with their postcards. I spent the money to have 2 PC's designed. I got 4 or 5 calls off of several mailings. Never did I get such dismal results. I referred a number of folks there that also got the same results.

I think their PC's work great for Realtors, Dentists and other professionals.

I have come to the conclusion that it has nothing to do with that company, but absentee owners and possibly some of the other niches just don't respond to that slick, beautiful glossy postcard. It is simply too nice and too pretty for these folks. These sellers just don't trust folks (real estate investors) that can afford to send those types of mail pieces; it's just the mindset of the person receiving the mail piece.

These niches need a simpler, "uglier" mail piece. The best results I ever got from postcards were from yellow cardstock with ugly black lettering. The entire PC was just ugly. The whole reason I switched to PCM was because of their mail pieces; they are just beautiful.

I know folks that get a lot of calls from yellow letters, but my experience was that I got a lot of calls and none of those sellers were motivated at all. I put my money on the yellow postcards for all the niches except probates.

Listsource has great lists in my opinion; you can get that equity piece you can't get most places. I also got a good list from PCM, but I know they don't use Listsource. In the end, your results are only as good as your direct mail campaign and your follow up.

Sharon

[Lamar Cannon]

@Sharon Vornholt what type of marketing are you using toward probateds?

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Lamar Cannon

@Lamar Cannon

@Lamar Cannon

[Brad Chandler]

@Ceasar Blackman - I have gotten quotes from postcardmania and they were considerably hire than other providers. Check out directmail.com for better rates.

[Michael Quarles]

this one is working. 5.5x8.5 added color.

[Karen Margrave]

I need lists of owners of vacant parcels of residential land. I am an agent with access to MLS, but there's no good way to search for vacant parcels. I've tried the getting the title company to pull them, but end up with every vacant parcel including landscaping medians! DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY GOOD WAY TO GET LIST FOR VACANT PARCELS?

[Jerry Puckett]

If I were to use Postcards on a regular basis, I think cheap2mail / yellowletters.com wins hands down in price, ease of use and quality. I'd use them in a heart beat.

In the mean time the yellow letters seem to be working just fine.

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Karen Margrave -

The person you want to talk to is Seth Williams here on BP. I just did a podcast with him on this topic. My podcast channel won't be up and running for a couple of weeks but Seth can help you; that is his specialty. His site is RETipster.com.

I agree with @Jerry Puckett. Yellowletters.com has great yellow PC's and their prices are good. Those types of PC's have always worked well for me.

Sharon

[Dev Horn]

Originally posted by Sharon Vornholt:

@Lamar Cannon

@Lamar Cannon

@Lamar Cannon

This is exactly our strategy for probates. We send professional white typed letters to probates - a series of them (in plain white envelopes with scripted font addressing, no return address, first-class stamp). They get opened and they definitely generate calls, PLUS they don't p*ss anyone off. I read one time that a guy tried sending SYMPATHY CARDS to executors/PRs - whoa, that did not go well. Treat them with respect and be professional. Postcards are inappropriate for those interactions.

Back to Postcardmania. Good company, too expensive.

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Dev Horn

@Dev Horn

@Dev Horn

[Dev Horn]

@Sharon Vornholt I'm always delighted when I discover that we have the same strategy. I have high regard for you in this area of marketing and RE investing in general. =)

[Sharon Vornholt]

Well thanks @Dev Horn . Great minds think alike. Have a great day.

Sharon

[Bill Mitchell]

@Dev Horn Why do you keep saying postcard mania is expensive? Its .25 for first class postage and .045 for printing thats .295 a peice. I don't think even click 2 mail can beat that.

I just checked click 2 mail for color postcards 5,000 it would be .22 printing and .26 postage per card thats .48 per card, much more expensive than postcard mania.

[Dev Horn]

Click2Mail is also too expensive. I only use them for mailing lists. But we use large 2-sided full-color glossy cards. What I see at Postcardmania is those cost 26 cents a piece and you must purchase 2,500 at a time:

Plus, all our printing now is VARIABLE PRINT allowing insertion of the investors name, local number, photo, plus details regarding the property, etc. We only print the number of cards that we mail. So Postcardmania is not a solution for US, but could be for others.

If you see a place on their site where I can print large 2-sided full color PCs for 4.5 cents, please post the link. I'd sign up for that deal!

[Seth Williams]

Thanks for the heads up @Sharon Vornholt

I just send you some video instructions on how to do this @Karen Margrave - check your inbox and let me know if you need any more help.