Direct mail postcards

[Jen Senecal]

Going to start our first direct mail campaign! Trying to decide between yellow letter or postcard.

Does anyone have experience in putting out post cards and yellow letters ? Which one had the best outcome / most leads ??

Any company you recommend ?

Thank you !

[Braden C.]

Originally posted by @Jerryll Noorden:

Originally posted by @Braden C.:

@Jen Senecal It really depends on your market. In my market, a professional letter has always outperformed postcards and yellow letters. I know other investors around the country who say the exact opposite. We spend five figures a month on mail and we're always testing to see what's working best. Your market might be different than mine so it's best to test different types of mail and see which one works best for you. Postcards are tempting because they're less expensive but you might end up having to send a lot more out in order to get a deal. 

it does NOT depend on your market. It does NOT depend on the color of your card, nor on the letter being hand written.

Sooooo many get this wrong. Often they even back this up with claims of research and data... The problem is that people see in data what they WANT to see. 

Look, some people trust a hand written letter... some find that amateur and shady. (you claim you can buy my house in cash but you can't even afford a damn printer and some clean white printer paper? Are you not even TRYING to come across as a professional if you want to have me believe you are capable of buying my house?)... right? 

Hit or miss!

So if you claim it depends on your market...

I find it laughable that somehow the majority of folks that psychologically prefer hand written letters ended up living in the same area and the other people that like post cards better, ended up living in an other area... doesn't make much sense right?

So here is a basic refresher on effective marketing...

ANY marketing's success is based on just 3 things.

1. How well does your message resonates with your ideal audience
2. How credible are you to your ideal audience
3. And how efficiently can you have your message be seen by as many of your perfect prospects as possible.

This makes sense so far right?

OK so... you can already see that whether the mailer is handwritten or a post card, doesn't fit in any of these 3 points. So it has nothing to do with that.

Now, lets look at 1).

How well your message resonates... doesn't have much to do with your market or whether you use post cards or a letter right? Sure, if you are in a state where pre-foreclosures are in abundance,  you need to tweak your message to fit their pain point. But this is not really market dependent, this is message resonance dependent! It is not about the location  it is about making sure you hit your traffics pain point!

Now point 2)

How credible do your ideal audience see you as? Well it is pretty much unheard of to the normal public for people to have 300 houses. It is not normal for the general public for people to buy a house in all cash. You sending them some postcard or hand written letter, inherently is not very credible. PERIOD. So now you will say.. "yeah but monkey butt, I have made countless of deals with DMM so you are full of poop". .. to which I will say.. yeah but hold on seabuscuit.. not so fast. You can't just look at how many deals you have made... you need to look at the amount of letters/postcards you sent VS. the amount of deals you made. If you have sent 100d's of thousands of mailers and you just made 300 deals... those are HORRIBLE numbers by any standard (except  for the DMM standards, which again proves my point). Why is it absolutely not OK for anything else to have these low numbers but for some reason it is acceptable for Real Estate Investing?! It makes ZERO sense.

Now look at point 3):

How can you have,... not just your ideal prospect... but ALSO as many of them as possible see your message? Definitely not through lists, or mailers.

Why not?

Well 1) 

Lists are NOT your ideal prospects. These are just people filtered by the illusion of wrongfully assuming that the filtering of a general list separates motivation from non motivation. And that is ABSOLUTELY not the case. Think about it. Not because someone has 2 houses means they are more likely to sell one... AND for below market value right? How about them having 3 houses? What about 300 houses? Don't you agree that if someone has 15 houses .. they have ENOUGH money to buy 15 houses? Don't you agree that if someone has 15 houses they actually WANTED 15 houses? Why would you assume they would sell one and for below market value?

"Ohh but I am filtering the list by more than just 1 filter". Well it doesn't matter how many filters you use, you are playing with calculated luck. Yes it is still luck!

and 2)

With a DMM open rate at 0.5% to 3% (this 0.5% to 3%, INCLUDES all the people that yell at you to friggin "REMOVE ME FROM YOUR GAADAMN LIST"), you are obviously not reaching as many of your ideal traffic as possible. 0.5%?! Really?? 

No no, the best thing you can do is SEO, PPC and facebook ads. These 3 methods satisfy all the 3 criteria mentioned above.

Now comes time for proof:

Look Jen, before you decide on anything...

Have you done your Cost/Deal Calculations? if no? STOP! 

You don't make a decision based on "other people's " experience. That is the unwisest thing you can ever do. You need to look at actual data.

Want to do DMM? FINE do it,  want to do Yellow letters? DO IT Fine.

BUT before you actually do it find out what the actual numbers look like. Ask your local investors that just do yellow letters how much they spend on marketing before they land a deal.

Ask those that do postcards how much THEY spend before they land a deal. 

Cost/lead is the dumbest thing ever invented. Forget cost/lead. It tells you absolutely nothing! Cost/ deal is the ONLY thing that matters.

Now when you do a bit of actual research you will come to find that you are way better off, changing your entire marketing choices.

Good luck!

I am a big believer that when my competition zigs we need to zag. If I have four other competitors in my market who send DM and they all use yellow letters, I am going to be different. So yes, it does depend on your market or more specifically the competition in your market. 

I know you absolutely detest DM, you make it very clear daily with your posts and infamous screen shots. I also know that for every $1 I spend on DM I make $7 from the deals we get, that works just fine for me. 

"You can't just look at how many deals you have made... you need to look at the amount of letters/postcards you sent VS. the amount of deals you made. If you have sent 100d's of thousands of mailers and you just made 300 deals... those are HORRIBLE numbers by any standard (except for the DMM standards, which again proves my point). Why is it absolutely not OK for anything else to have these low numbers but for some reason it is acceptable for Real Estate Investing?! It makes ZERO sense." 

To this point you made, you say sending out hundreds of thousands of letters to acquire 300 deals are HORRIBLE numbers, let's look at the HORRIBLE numbers. I'll even make it worse for you, let's say you send out a million pieces of mail to acquire 300 deals. A million letters would cost around $680,000, meaning you would need to profit a whopping $2,266.67 per deal just to break even. Let's go with a very conservative $10,000 of profit on average per deal though, $3,000,000 in revenue, $680,000 in expenses, $2,320,000 in profit. Yep, you're right, HORRIBLE. 

Nobody should ONLY do DM, or ONLY do online marketing, that would be silly. If you can do both and have a positive ROI on both, that would be a lot less silly.

You're a great marketer for your product Jerryll and I don't disagree with you at all about the importance of SEO. You have one of the best websites I have seen for an investor, actually it's the best. We can just agree to disagree about DM and maybe become best friends?