Direct Mail / Marketing Campaign Critiques and Advice

[Brian Smith]

I've just started my first direct mail campaign to find rental and flip prospects, but the results so far have not been great. I'm targetting 3 zip codes with 4+ year owners, 30%+ equity, <140K purchase price. First mailers went out 7/9 (540 total), second set 7/23 (180 total), and latest set was 7/30 (180 total. The entire list is about 1,500 pieces so I've broken it into 8 waves and I'll continue each week until I get to the end of the list. The marketing piece for this first wave is a typed business letter mail merged with owner name and address. Hand stamped and mailed local with a local return address. 

The problem is my response rate is terrible so far. 12 calls from the first mailing and 3 from the second, none so far from the 3rd. I've budgeted to hit each owner 6 times over the next 8-10 months, and I'm in the process of creating a website (a few callers have told me they looked into my company and couldn't find any information).  I'm considering a small facebook ad to create some brand awareness. I keep reading that consistency is key so I'm going to stick with it and see the whole campaign through, but no lie it's tough! Any pointers moving for would be greatly appreciated! Also, does anyone have suggestions for which types of mailers I should send next? and if internet marketing would be better spent with google ppc/adwords or facebook? I'm budgeting $500 to mail pieces and $500 to internet marketing each month. Should I allocate the budget differently? 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Brian Smith]

@Claire Trammell & @Jeff Rappaport thanks for the replies. I'll try to update this post as often as I can and hopefully it ends with a few deals! I try to answer each call live or call back in minutes... no serious sellers yet, but I'm just now getting comfortable talking to leads so hopefully the conversions will come. I'm excited to see where this goes and thanks again for the replies!