Building A Marketing Machine – Part 4d, Direct Mail

This is the final post in a 4 part marketing series. If you’re new, you can start from the beginning HERE. If you’re only interested in the Direct Mail portion, start HERE.

Follow up is critically important in this business because you want to make sure you’re the first one people think about when they decide it’s time to sell. There are a lot of investors in the market these days so once you’ve invested your time and money by sending mailers you don’t want to miss a deal because you didn’t follow up. Also, if you tell someone you will call them later and you don’t, it kills any amount of rapport you’ve built. Most people will instill trust in those who do what they say they are going to do, so if you tell someone you will call in a week, be sure to make note of it.

Whether you’re mailing a couple hundred leads a month or thousands, you should have a system in place to track your leads and follow up with potential sellers. You don’t need a fancy system but you should have a plan in place so you’re not backtracking to figure out who called or what property you were researching a week ago.

The system can be comprised of making notations in your Lead Database (Subscribe at the top to get a copy of my Lead Database Template) and making entries in a calendar application. For a more robust system, you can use a CRM (I recommend Zoho, and the basic version is free). Whichever you decide is best for your business, be consistent.

The importance of tracking is based on the notion that you should spend your money on high performing marketing campaigns and cut the ones that aren’t performing. The more specific you get, the more valuable the information, which will increase the accuracy in your decision making. Below are some suggestions for what you can track in each campaign:

• Lead Type (i.e., absentee, tax lien, equity, etc.)
• Type of Mailer Sent
• Number of Mailer they responded to
• Day of the week the mailer was sent
• Cost of the mailer
• Color of the font in the mailer

In addition to tracking marketing information, you should have a way to track notes on the seller and the property they are calling about. This will help when you follow up with them later, or assist you when making an investment decision several months later. Again, you can enter this information in the Lead Database, a CRM like Zoho, or you can use my Seller Telephone Questionnaire.

Are you currently using a tracking system? If so, what do you find works best for you?