New Direct Mailing Campaign Advice Wanted

[Jarrett Ferris]

Hi all!

So to start, I am somewhat new to real estate investing as I have yet to close my first deal, but have been an avid consumer of all real estate investing knowledge for over a decade, and have recently decided what better time than now to really get actively involved in investing in real estate. I come to you all today for some advice. I am planning to begin a direct mailing campaign as my first leap into this business and have been doing a lot of research about direct marketing and targeted mailings, but before I begin I thought I would get some opinions from my friends at BiggerPockets.

Basically, as of right now, here is my plan for my first direct mailing campaign:

1.) Generate a list of non-owner occupied and absentee owners within a 10 mile radius of the zip code I am looking to invest in using ListSource.com.

2.) Utilize postcards as my marketing vehicle, beginning with sending out 1000 of them to my target audience per mailing to start with.

3.) Wait for the phone to ring.

4.) Analyze, inspect, negotiate, and do my first deal.

I know this is by no means a very in depth plan, but it is enough information right now to give you an idea of how I want to proceed.

As for the advice I am looking for, I wanted to know how successful some of you are when it comes to direct mailing, and if you think this would be a good marketing vehicle for a first time investor (Oh yea, I should probably say that I am planning to start my career in real estate investing by wholesaling to help generate funds to do bigger deals)? I remember reading an article on here not long ago, can't recall the title, but the main idea of the article was that with direct mailing campaigns, you can expect to receive about 5% of the amount of the initial mailing to contact you and that you will only close on about 2% of those deals. Does this sound accurate to anyone who's done their split testing? Also, I am not 100% sure what I want the message on the postcards to be, so if anyone has had good or great success with a specific message I would love to know what that message was; right now I am leaning towards: "I BUY HOUSES" along with my contact information... And finally, any tips, tricks, opinions, or any comments about this would be incredibly appreciated. 

Let me know what your thoughts are, and thank you in advance to everyone here. Cheers to a bright and wonderful future.