Direct Mail Budgeting - Help!

[James Gilpin]

Hi All, I am looking at potentially doubling up on my marketing but want to hear some feedback in regards to budget. My plan is to direct mail (yellow letter) landlords in my area with the proposal of a long term lease (master lease) or to buy as-is for cash. I have 800 properties to begin with which I plan to mail every month for 6 months. This coming out at $4,272 through yellowletter.com My question, is this too much or too little? I have a decent amount of savings but can't afford to just blow $4,500 with no return. Does anyone have any experience with master leases or offering multiple options in one mail campaign? Thanks all!

[Joe Davalos]

Depends on where you obtained the 800 owners data. Is there some elements of possible distress. Property tax issues Code violation issues vacant property registration list. If so then 800 for 6 monthly hits would be quite doable. You mentioned some specific terms long term lease and such that would limit your seller Pool as many would prefer cash but not all
I am a postcard guy more bang for the buck. If you raised your list to 1000 you could quite possibly pay half of what you had proposed. Better yet instead of 800 send 1600. I just sent 2300 postcards with Resimpli for a great price. Mail hit last Thursday and I have already received a few potential seller calls. My list is 40 percent list source and 60 distressed sellers. By next month I will be up to 3200 if Those 2200 are distressed sellers

Whatever you do don’t get disappointed if your first mailing doesn’t get any real seller responses. My first mailing had 3 not motivated not even remotely serious about selling sellers. It consisted of no real distressed sellers though. I was bummed but from the encouragement I saw on BP to keep mailing I did. I added to my list and After about 3 months I saw results. You might consider Reaching out to Ray Lai from Resimpli. His partner Sharad helped me greatly. It was my first outsourced direct mail campaign. Before doing it in house w postage and labor costs I was paying double and always had a hard time getting my list out.
What ever you do Just Do It Yellow Letters Postcards which I call Golden Tickets they all work as long as you are in it for the long haul and work that list.