How much does a direct mail marketing campaign cost?

[Troy Michaels]

I know its a broad question, based on the number of cards you wanna send, but can somebody give me a example of the costs associated with mailing and postage, etc.?

[Matt DuSold]

If you are talking about just postcards and mailing, I get 5000 postcards for 200 dollars and then a stamp is 28 cents.

Like you said it really depends on how many you send out. The cost of my cards getting sent out is about 100 dollars a week and I send out 60 cards a night. If you want to get real technical you can add in ink and labels and what not so probably just over 100 dollars. But thats for me... I dont know what everyone else is doing.

If you do want to get postcards let me know its the cheapest I have ever seen them and they are great quality. I also have a card for someone who I refer they and I get 25 dollars off! For anyone who is interested PM me or if you want the company name PM me. I dont want to have a violation... I dont think I made one... sorry if I did.

[Christopher W.]

Originally posted by Troy Michaels:
I know its a broad question, based on the number of cards you wanna send, but can somebody give me a example of the costs associated with mailing and postage, etc.?

That is a broad question with a broad answer: It will cost as much as you want.

I just went to vistaprint.com and priced standard postcards. I know there are many other places, all with varying costs and quality so shop around. For regular postcards as an example, 1000 postcards is $159 and for 5000 it is $404 plus shipping. Add postage of .28 cents each card and it is obviously $280 for 1000 and $1400 for 5000. That is just to get the postcard printed and mailed.

You also have to figure who will design your card or if you will either purchase one done for you or maybe design it yourself? You have to get the lists to mail to. The going rate for lists is around $50-100 a month. Then you just have to print the labels and send the postcards out!

Really you can make this as simple or as complicated as your budget will allow. Maybe you want mail multiple times. And even then with or without different postcards.

Really, do a search of direct mail here on BP and you will get other great marketing ideas.

[James Ward]

And for another type of direct marketing-

We hand write our letters and envelopes. We also obtain our list from the county clerks office and property appraisers.

So, we pay for the note pads (about $3 for 4 or 5 pads), envelopes (about $1 for 80), and stamps. The time is apart of the persons daily job. The info is FREE!

We mail daily. In our area if I get the letters to the Post Office before 2 pm, they get to the persons house the next day.

This works well for our area and type of marketing.

[Troy Michaels]

Originally posted by crosswind_:
And for another type of direct marketing-

We hand write our letters and envelopes. We also obtain our list from the county clerks office and property appraisers.

So, we pay for the note pads (about $3 for 4 or 5 pads), envelopes (about $1 for 80), and stamps. The time is apart of the persons daily job. The info is FREE!

We mail daily. In our area if I get the letters to the Post Office before 2 pm, they get to the persons house the next day.

This works well for our area and type of marketing.

what type of lists do you get from the clerk and appraisers?

[James Ward]

Originally posted by Troy Michaels:


what type of lists do you get from the clerk and appraisers?

We get the Lis Pendens from the Clerk of the Courts. And we get the property address from the Property Appraiser.

We market to property owners that are in pre-foreclosure.

[Keith Ransom]

Troy

What type of hand written do you use? I was thinking of doing the same thing to market to people in pre-forclosure as handwritten envelope and letter are more likely to get read. How many letters do you have to send to receive a response?
Could I have a sample of what has worked for you.

[Troy Michaels]

Originally posted by Keith Ransom:
Troy

What type of hand written do you use? I was thinking of doing the same thing to market to people in pre-forclosure as handwritten envelope and letter are more likely to get read. How many letters do you have to send to receive a response?
Could I have a sample of what has worked for you.

you misread the post, it was crosswind who has hand written his letters. i havent done any yet. get with crosswind.

[Demos Loizides]

I use Click2mail.com, which is partnered with the USPS and the postcards cost 31 cents each (printing and postage combined). I created several postards on their site and I upload my address list. Very simple process!

[Jamie Dzierwa]

This may sound like a dumb question, but where do I find these marketing "lists" in my area?

[Jonathan Rexford]

Originally posted by Jamie Dzierwa:
This may sound like a dumb question, but where do I find these marketing "lists" in my area?

Jamie,

The best way is to see if you can get your list local from like a title company.
Major lists are
Absentee
Preforeclosure (Notice Default) Court house
Probate at court House

The other source that I use frequently is listsource.com it is free to set up an account and you can actually boil down the list from geographic to demographic.

I am a huge fan of click2mail. Been using them for the last 4-5 years. For smaller mailings I use greeting cards. But click to mail you can mail your card for .312 per copy to include postage.

Ad the cost of the name which is usually about .17 its pretty good in my book.

Post Card Mania
Vista Print

Are good sources. But with click2mail is print on demand.

[Demos Loizides]

I got a lot of my names from the local tax assessor's online database.

Here's a link to find yours:
http://www.netronline.com/public_records.htm

You can search streets in your target area and look for landlords. They'll be the ones with a mailing address that's different than the property address. You can also drive around looking for junkers or vacant house and then look up their addresses on the tax assessor's database. This costs you only time, and it's great to do on nice days.

[James Ward]

Keith,

Our letters say-

" Hello __________,
My name is James Ward. I am interested in purchasing your property. If you are interested, please call __________."

That is it. Right now we are sending about 100 a week. We get about 15-20 a week. But not all of the calls qualify in our plan. Not all calls are just from that prior week.

Jaime,

Go to your clerk of the courts. Some areas have website some do not.

[Eddie Price]

You guys get good responses from Free and Clear Lists?

[Kevin Bentley]

What kind of returns are you guys seeing in general from your direct marketing email campaigns?

[Kelvin Deloney]

@James Ward Hi James, I know you posted this a long time ago, but I wanted to know if this still works for you the same, and also, how much does the actual mailing of all of these take you?