400+ by hand? There has to be a better way!

[Michael Ford]

Hey BP Community!

So I have my list and marketing tools ready to send, but I have one question. Am I suppose write all 400+ address on each individual letter or is there an easier way to do this??

[Jeff Stephens]

Michael,

I understand your dillemma and wanted to share with you what we do, with the hopes that it's helpful food for thought.

We take our overall list and segment it into two main categories: 1) The properties we are most excited about (usually defined by neighborhood) and 2) The properties we are excited about, but less so. In other words, if my list were a list of high equity absentees, I would sort that list into categories of awesome neighborhoods, vs. good neighborhoods. Usually category 1 (awesome neighborhoods we are most excited about) is maybe 15% of the total list for us.

We do this so that we can invest more on a per-unit basis on the higher priority targets. For our high priority targets, we actually have a small team of letter writers (hired via "gigs" on craigslist) who hand-write everything: the letter, envelope, manual stamp etc. For category 2 with the lesser but still "good" neighborhoods, we work with a local mail house to do large mail merges and use presorted postage which is much easier and cheaper, but more generic. 

In the end, my premium letters cost around $1.75 per unit (labor and materials), and my standard letters cost around $.60 per unit.

Jeff