Marketing to Free & Clear Absentee Owners in a High End Market

[Saim Chaudhry]

I am looking to market in the Bay area to absentee owners that own their properties free and clear. The catch, the neighborhoods I am targeting are high end. I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions as to the content of the initial and follow up letters to stand out and for the owners to make the phone call, and how the content of these letters may differ from marketing to an "average" metropolitan city. 

Currently, all my marketing is handwritten envelopes, handwritten signatures, typed custom letter with address on it. I have gotten a decent response rate from marketing locally in an average metropolitan city, but no success using the same letters and strategy in a higher end market. Granted, I have only been marketing a little over a year and have much to learn. 

[J. Martin]

@Saim Chaudhry ,

2 suggestions:

1) Put on envelop or inside: SAVE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS IN TAXES WITH IRS-APPROVED STRATEGY. Rich people HATE paying taxes. Then include your message, and state that due to the flexibility of your investors, they can wait in contract while the seller finds a replacement property for a cash-flowing 1031 to retire on.

2) Are you using the exact same stationary and envelops for the ho-hum as you are using for the high-end? Maybe higher-end potential sellers want someone who they feel will treat them with the "white glove" experience. Try higher-end stationary & envelopes, w/ script writing? (These people are older if they've owned that long, and probably appreciate hand-written script on nice stationary & envelope). Of course, this will have a cost.

I don't market to these folks. But I have met some of them here in the Bay, so there's two crazy ideas to maybe inspire you to something else..