How wide an area to canvas with marketing?

Question

Is there a rule of thumb for how narrow or wide an area to send yellow letters out to? Or put another way, how many letters should be sent out per square mile to be most effective? Are there any problems with concentrating on too large or too small an area?

FYI, I'm looking at the DFW area.

Victoria Winters · Answer

Hi John,

Excellent questions about yellow letter.  In response:  "Is there a rule of thumb for how narrow or wide an area to send yellow letters out to?"  The truth is there is no "rule" to follow for your decision to market through direct mail.  You decide on the type of property and location that you want to target.  Within your defined criteria, you can determine the number of properties that are possible candidates for your mail campaign.  Further, within that number, you can make decisions about how many letters to mail based on other determining factors.  Consider whether you are going to write them yourself or hire someone to do that task.  Decide how much you have to budget for this type of marketing, etc.

Yellow letters (direct mail) works wonderfully well in terms of getting responses.  Like any marketing campaign, your ability to stick with a consistent plan and measure the results are key ingredients for success.  Keep in mind, snail mail is one of the slower ways to communicate directly with people, but it is very effective.  It is one of the oldest forms of marketing and can be infinitely more enjoyable to the receiver.  A properly managed campaign will yield prospects and it may surprise you at how quickly you get a response.

Trust the process you choose and work with it long enough to get the results you want.  I use direct mail (yellow letters) and I am always pleasantly surprised by the responses and the response rates.  The very first deal I did came as a result of a mailing I conducted in my surrounding neighborhood.  I started sending 20 handwritten letters a week and I got a deal in the first batch of letters.  Now that may not be typical, but it I mention this to say that the number of letters mailed is incidental to the act of working consistently on whatever campaign plan you put together.  The good new is that it is entirely up to you!

Lastly, I would like to mention that direct marketing via yellow letters definitely gets the phone to ring.  I've had conversations with people that did not want to sell the property I wrote to them about, but had another property they wanted to sell.  I've even had people call me to thank me for writing even though they did not want to sell.  Perhaps because getting a handwritten letter has become such a rare event, it is a breath of fresh air to actually receive a real letter versus another kind of marketing advertisement.

Best of luck, and let me know how your campaign goes.

Sincerely,

Victoria

Victoria Winters · Answer

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your question.  Yes, I really did "hand write" the 20 letters and hand addressed the envelopes.  I used yellow paper and a red gel pen.  Each letter was exactly the same except for the salutations.  The envelopes I use are invitation size and they are addressed with black ink.

I composed a short script, about 8 lines, included my phone number and signed it.  After reading over some examples of yellow letter scripts, I decided to use my own version.  (It just felt odd, to me, to copy a letter written by another person.)

At the time, hand writing 20 letters seemed like a lot of work.  It would have been so much easier to just turn them out on a computer.  With that idea passed over, I set up everything I needed, sat at my desk and began to write.  When my hand tired, I took  a break and returned to finish the task.  Varying from writing a letter to addressing an envelope seemed to help me from getting bored.  Even placing the colorful stamps helped make the process feel less monotonous.

I kept in mind that this was my action step toward my goal of finding a motivated seller. The thought inspired me to continue writing.  I figured I was going to spend my time doing something, so it may as well be a task that could bring me closer to my goal.  My budget at that time did not accommodate the hiring of another person to write the letters for me.

The list I used was created from a combination of driving and walking through my neighborhood.  It seemed like a good idea to look around my own area for houses that looked a little less than perfect.  Distress situations are found in every area.  Illness, financial difficulty, job changes, divorce and other problems are not refined to certain areas.  Know one knows what goes on behind closed doors, but the outside sometimes tells.

Hope this helps.

Victoria

Brian Risi · Answer

Hi @Victoria Winters

Great, thorough post. I have a follow-up question. When you say you hand-wrote 20 letters, do you mean you literally hand-wrote each one, or were they typed using a handwriting-like font? Also, were they each personalized to address the different, unique situations of your neighbors? I'm looking at a similar strategy to get started with a limited budget. Thanks.

Brian

Stephen Chatto · Answer

It depends.  How many leads do you have to mail in your concentrated market?  Are they all "motivated" leads?  Absentee, Probate, Inheritance, Eviction, Vacant, Etc? I have found I can not mail out enough people in my local area with just motivated leads.   I am not going to mail any old house to get my numbers up.   So I have opted to increase my radius of marketing rather than dilute my motivated leads with any old lead.

Hattie Dizmond · Answer

Jerry Puckett is the man you want to talk to.  (And, yes Jerry, I'm going to return your email today.  Sorry...it's been a crazy couple of weeks.)

How wide an area to canvas with marketing?

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