Mailers to Get Deals

Mailers can be very expensive and the mailing that goes out may not hit the person’s emotions to get you a call back. I’ll be discussing how you can succeed on the tactic of mailing even in this world of so much technology. There really are a lot of ways to get a deal and mailers are not really the go to process for a lot of people today; however, think about the amount of people that are still opening the mail today that control the amount of money in real estate. The baby boomer generation is the second largest population of a generation besides the millennials. The population of baby boomers are the ones that are the majority that are targeted in mailers due to their habits of using the postal service more than many other generations.

Let’s talk about mailers first; they are still being sent out and they are still working. Many people still open there mail, and we can see that 1-2% is a response rate on the mailers which is low; however, this is something matched with the online conversation rate for PPC (pay per click) with that lead source which is 2.5%-3%. Not much better, and many people take a long time to even convert on buying or selling. How long can this take? It can take up to 6 to 24 months (about 2 years) to close an online lead, which is a long time to get paid back on your money that is invested in that marketing either online or offline. Marketing to certain subsections and the right person works though, and that is where a lot of investors and agents make a lot of money. How do you know it’s the right person? We’ll get into that, before we do I want to emphasize this is not a get rich quick lead source, none of them really are get rich quick. This takes time, data research, and patience to actually get something that comes back to capture revenue after putting in a lot of time and money to get someone to convert. It is very tough to see a return, however, it is something that is important to work on and do it right to add more to your business, not less.

The amount of income that is generated is what you need to get to run a business and doing it on small numbers is tough just starting out and you are a broke real estate professional. Everyone in real estate must start somewhere, and you as the person running your real estate company need to pick. Anyone from an agent to a wholesaler is trying everything they can out there to get someone to buy or sell. This is a direct marketing 101 course for a lot of people and sometimes it really just does not work that great. What is so hard about it? You send 500 mailers out and you get a response. There is a difference between a response and a response that converts to an actual lead. Let’s talking about just getting a response since that is one part of the lead generation game, the next part is actually converting that lead to a dollar. For example, leads verse conversion. 5 leads in and 1 converted, that calculation would be 1/5= 20% of your leads are getting converted into clients. So, 500 mailers, 5 calls and one converted. That is 20% of the leads are getting converted, and as we can see above, we should be getting 25 leads off 500 mailers. I wish that it was that easy, and it’s not due to so many people out there mailing, and so much noise. There was another realtor just the other day that mentioned that he sent out 300 mailers and he was waiting for a response. This small batch of mailers will not get a response. On average a real estate professional marketing will send out 2,000-5,000 mailers a month, and sometimes more, and this is a consistent mailing each and every month. There must be consistently within your marketing or if not, there will be no calls back or closed sales on the marketing piece going out. Many people hear it is a numbers game, but that is as true as making sure you have the right strategy with the marking mailer.

Not only is it consistency that will get you to where you will be successful, but it’s also the strategy that gets you there. A strategy that is calculated for instance looking for someone that has owned the home for 20 years and has over $200,000 of equity is a great strategy, and to layer that more you can put in that search, absentee owners which will get you even more pointed to a specific market that will respond more frequently than targeting just absentee owners which may not have enough money in their home to sell to you with a cash offer. As the layers get layered on to the marketing more people will be open to calling someone back with the right marketing message. The deeper you go as a marketer, the better chances you get a response on conversion. This is true for any industry, if you are selling chainsaws, you would not want your mailer about your chainsaw to go to a 75-year-old woman that was a homemaker her whole working life. You want to direct your efforts to a small group to get the people to call back.

We mail to canceled and expired properties in our market because most agents are calling these people which their phone gets multiple calls an hour, and their voicemails get full while the noise of all the realtors calling and texting them turns the seller off from contacting these agents back. The ability to fly under the radar then get to their mailbox has a lot higher odds that there will be someone that converts to a sale. You need to go undetected then pop up when the people do not expect the actual marketing piece, or they are tired of getting hit with the same phone call or strategy. This breaks through the noise as a marketer that can get a response. This helps with tactics and sales copy. You need the right sales copy to win over the people that actually need it. So, tactic, who to send to and what to send, then comes the sales copy to win over the people on what you are saying and why you are saying it.

The strategy we talked about already, mailing to people that have equity in their home, are absentee owners, and owned their place for 20 years. Now, let’s talk about sales copy. You want to get that phone call back; you narrowed down the subset of people that you are looking for and can have that conversation when they call you about selling their home. You need to now craft the sales copy to pull the reader in to actually get them to pick up the phone and respond. You want to talk about buying their home quickly, and for cash. There should be some urgency in the language and talk about how this would benefit them as the seller. You can give confidence in your ability by telling them you buy hundreds of homes a month, or add a small tidbit about your track record, but do not get lost in “who I am,” as the whole focus. You want to reinforce confidence not tell them all about how great you are the whole time. People reading the card, mailer, or postcard want to know that they will win in this transaction. Talk about the benefits to them and emphasize how they’ll feel once this stressful situation is completely done for them. For instance, owning a place that a person does not live in and does not want to deal with anymore as an absentee owner is a very attractive offer if it is cash and they have a lot of equity.

As I mentioned we mail to canceled and expired listings and we show them a small track record, how we sold a house that was expired recently in 4 days, and then go into sales copy of how their home can sell quickly and painless verse letting it sit on the market for months with other agents. Letting the seller know that they can get money in their pocket quickly with no hassle is the best way to go for them since they already had it listed with many showings and no luck. It is three key pieces in the mailer, sense of urgency, strategically directed to the right people (canceled/expired), and the right sales copy to get them to call. The two things missing in this are consistency and numbers.

These five things that are above will give you the ability to dominate; however, this will take some time to get to dominate. Just like I said, numbers and consistency, there needs to be repetition that is multiple times a week and month. If neither of these are coupled together then there will be no success on the end of getting a call. Of course, a person needs to feel an emotion to pick up the phone to call back, and that is in the sales copy and the two other crucial pieces in that mailing a lot and on a set day and time each week. This consistency is just like practicing for a big game in sports, the more times you shoot the ball for basketball the better your odds of getting it in the basket. You want more at bats, and this is a way to do that by mailing a lot over a long period.