Wholesale Marketing Budget???

[Grant Sherrod]

Hey everyone,

Over, the last month, I have been slowly but regularly building my (probate) list at the courthouse and and sending out my mailers after each trip (Thank you mail-merge!!!). I am beginning to see how this could get expensive after a while, at about $0.50 per stamp. To make this sustainable, I am considering taking the $200/mo cash-flow from my (only) rental property to invest in direct mail marketing to my leads. I would plan on starting out budgeting about $160/mo. for stamps and $40/mo. for paper ink, envelopes, etc. I would not need to buy a list since I have plenty of time every other week to go to the courthouse to continue getting the new leads. I feel that another benefit of building my own list is that my leads are as rock solid  as the administration documents.

Ok, enough of the back story. Are there any experienced (probate) wholesalers out there who could give me an idea of when this kind of small scale, but long term campaign could possibly pay off? Is it worth the effort if my budget can only allow sending out 80 letters per month? With this long-term view in mind, I also know that I have to be patient to get a real deal, so that I can build relationships where investors know that my deals aren't the type of junk that just give wholesalers a bad name. 

Any tips or other insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Steven Leigh]

Here are a few data points. I don't know if they apply quite as accurately to probates, whether they would be higher or lower, etc. but this gives you a ballpark idea.

This is based on typical yellow letters. Postcard response rates are generally lower.

Response rate for yellow letters: 4% (on average)

So if you mail out 1,000 yellow letters, you could expect about 40 calls.

On average, it takes about 40 calls to get 1 or 2 good deals.

So if you are mailing 320 per month, on average you would expect to get a good deal within about 4 months. You could get lucky and get a great lead within the first month, or you could get unlucky and have it take a lot longer.

The main thing is to just keep plugging away at it. Maybe supplement your strategy by trying some other free or cheap marketing ideas, like driving for dollars or bandit signs (check local regulations).

It sounds like you've got a pretty good system down, so just keep repeating it until you get some good results. Once you close a deal, put at least 20% back into your marketing and then keep doing that so that you can continue to grow.

Keep posting as you go, or you can PM me if I can help you at all.