Yellow Letters: Do what works for you!

[Matthew B.]

I just thought I'd share a conclusion I reached after sending out my first batch of yellow letters about a month ago...

Like most new real estate marketers, I wanted to make sure my mailing was perfect and would give me the most bang for my buck. I got caught up in all the little details - handwritten font, yellow legal pad style paper, red colored font, handwritten font on the envelope, etc. Like a new parent, I wanted to give my child (or in this case, yellow letters) the best possible chance of success.

Well, I found out quickly that, especially for a new guy, this ideal mailing takes some expertise and a lot of trial and error to pull off correctly.

First of all, you need a color laser printer for the scientifically proven red handwritten font. Secondly, if you do have a color laser printer laying around, it has to be able to print on 16lb paper (which is very thin i.e. legal pad paper) without hiccups. Your printer also has to be able to handle lots of printing (envelopes included) without overheating and melting its innards. Not only that, but you'll have to get the lines of your letter spaced with NASA-like accuracy so that it looks like the words are written on the lines of the paper.

More complicated than us new guys first realize, right?

Well here's what I ended up with for my first yellow letters mailing which gave me a nearly 5% response rate and 1 pretty sweet deal.

I wasn't about to go out and buy a new color laser printer for a mailing that I didn't even know was going to work, so settled for my old black and white laser. I also used regular yellow copy paper (no lines) after the legal pad style paper kept jamming. I printed my envelopes 15 at a time over the course of the day to keep the printer from overheating (for some reason my printer overheats when printing envelopes but not when printing on copy paper).

And that's it. Yellow copy paper with black handwritten style font in plain white envelopes. And to my surprise it worked. So my point is, just because other people are doing something a certain way, that doesn't mean you can't deviate from the norm. Tweak things and do what works for you.

Would I have gotten 2 deals if I had followed the standard exactly? I'll never know. I do know that I probably would have smashed my printer with a baseball bat before I even finished.

Hopefully this helps some of the newer guys like me!