New investor doing first attempt at direct mail

[Matt Shope]

I have a long question but please stay with me. I'm a new investor and I have a family member who offered to pay for our fist direct mail campaign. I'm comfortable with the the messaging but the part that's holding me up is that I don't know how many to send. Our current plan is to do about 5 months at 1,000 postcards per month. That's what we can afford. Is that a good start? Should I do all 5,000 at once or is batching 1,000 at a time a good idea? Also should I mail to the same 5,000 addresses once, 2,500 addresses twice, or 1,000 five times? Should I expect to get a deal within the first month or should I plan on fine tuning for a few month before getting any response? We are building the criteria on listsource.com and basing it on certain zip codes, homeowners age, home equity and some other criteria. I have read the BP post on setting goals and actually achieving which suggests 800 postcards to get one deal but could use some advice on how to structure those mailouts. Thanks in advance for any advice you might have. 

Matt Shope

Albuquerque, New Mexico