Direct Mail VS Cold Calling

[Craig Brandt]

Hey everyone, my main marketing strategy for the past three years has been cold calling, I have a cold caller that is outsourced and I handle all the leads that are produced. I have seen a pretty large decrease in our contact rate and lead flow. I am intrigued by direct mail. I have done some research and it seems as if I want to take the personal letter approach. Looking for input from someone who has done both cold calling and direct mail in this current market. Pros Vs Cons (Boston MA and Jacksonville FL Market)

[Cornelius Garland]

@Craig Brandt I've marketed to Boston before. It is one of the tougher markets. I haven't marketed to Jacksonville, FL, but I have closed up deals in Tampa and Broward County. I do a ton of cold calling, and I have done a lot of direct mail in the past as well. In any market, you're going to encounter issues with sellers hearing from other investors. That's not where your problem is. I think follow-up is a slept-on strategy that not a lot of investors are doing. Sellers do business with people they like. The more we speak with them, the easier it is to befriend them. I am constantly staying on top of my team to get in at least 50 follow-up calls per day. Since you asked about cold calling, I'll touch on some points with cold calling that may help you optimize your campaigns.

Firstly, how long have you been dialing your current list and how many numbers are on it? Typically, a list can last for about 3 months if you have 2 callers per 10,000 records. If you have like 20 callers dialing 10k records, then you'll fatigue your list quickly. I start noticing a decrease in my lead flow around month 2 of dialing my list, based on me dialing a list of 20k records with 5 cold callers dialing it. Once you start seeing your call intervals increase, meaning it's taking your callers longer to connect to another record, then it may be time to rest your list. I'm constantly rotating my lists to keep them fresh. I don't think investors realize the sheer volume of calling you need to do to generate one lead, let alone to generate enough leads to contract a property.

Both direct mail and cold calling are numbers games. I would definitely split test both to see if one beats out the other. For instance, I'd put the same budget to both for a month. Let's say you set a $1k budget for cold calling and direct mail. I'd then track how many leads you received from each marketing channel. Then I would track how many hot leads you received from each marketing channel. If one clearly outperforms the other then you may want to focus on going all-in on that marketing strategy and eliminate the other.

Based on my experience, you can close deals using any marketing channel. The point investors get hung up on is scaling. It's easy to pull a fresh list and market to it for a few months. However, there gets to a point where we reach a diminishing returns effect; the more money we put in yields stagnant or even inverse results. This is where you need to dive into your numbers and determine what you can optimize. Ultimately, I determine the health of a marketing campaign based on how many leads it's generating per day. Once those leads dip down, I know I need to determine the cause and make a swift change.