Wholesale Marketing

[Ryan Young]

I'm just starting to market for motivated sellers and I have a question regarding the amount of people and areas I should target with my direct mail campaign. Here is what I have done so far:

Mailed first 100 yellow letters to absentee owners with 40-100% equity, 3 br sfr, with last sale date of more than 7 years ago.
Received 5 calls so far - 1 from a listing agent, other 4 not really looking to sell.

In my county there is 3-4 cities that have alot of investor activity and many buyers, these are the locations I used when compiling my list so through my filters I only came up with 200 houses. With my marketing budget I would like to send around 150-200 letters per week. I feel like I should be sending more letters and reaching more people to get my phone ringing.

How do you guys determine the size of the net you cast, so to speak? Do you think it is better to expand my areas and send to surrounding cities, such as going by zip codes, or maybe loosen my filters and just search for any absentee owners? Or maybe target a different list in addition to the absentee owners I have already sent to? Just looking for ideas to reach more potential sellers, any help is appreciated!

[Jerry Puckett]

Ryan Young,
I hit my list every 4 to 6 weeks. I have a cycle of four letters and a post card that I send. Each piece builds on the one before it. It takes 5 to 6 months to go through the cycle.

At the end of the cycle, I "recycle" my list (rerun it, same criteria - some folks have moved out in the last 6 months, some new names show up because they've moved in to my criteria - bulk of the list stays the same)

Once the list is recycled, I start over....rinse and repeat as they say.

It can take several months and several mailings to build momentum, but once the machine is in full swing, it should start filling up your pipeline.