Direct Mail Is a Great Way to Reach Self Storage Owners

You need to build a relationship with the current owners of self – storage. While they may have no intention of selling their property today, time and circumstances change. They may decide to retire or find themselves in a situation where they are forced to sell. You want to be at the top of their list of potential buyers when they are ready to sell.

One way to consistently reach out to current self-storage owners is direct mail. This is a way to get in front of owners on a regular basis with as little time investment as possible. You have built a database of properties and their owners. Now it is time to engage with the owners.

When you send out your direct mail make sure that you use handwritten, hand stamped, number 10 envelopes. If you look like spam, you will be treated like spam. If your letter looks like something that is special just for them, they are going to open it. The next important step in having a successful direct mail campaign is to answer every single phone call that you get. You cannot build a relationship if you do not answer the phone.

Finally, you need to follow up with the owners that you sent letters to. By calling on a letter that you sent them, you are following up rather than just calling. Your only job is to verify that they got your letter. Hopefully you can strike up a conversation and work on building a relationship with them. By making sure that you hand address your letters, answer your calls, and follow up with your sellers, you should get great results from your direct mail campaign.

You can purchase a pre-scrubbed list of self-storage property owners. This may be faster than trying to build a list in every market that you are interested in investing in. You can also narrow the list by the types of properties that fit your business model. Your list is never going to be perfect. As you send out letters, you will get returned mail and sellers that ask you to take them off of your list. However, this gives you the opportunity to fine tune your list until it is perfect.

Each time that you have an interaction with a seller, keep a record. There are a lot of customer management software programs available to help you track what you have said so that you can build these relationships. You should also include pictures of the self-storage facilities to help you remember what they look like.

The most important thing about direct mail is consistency. You never send one letter. If you are only going to send one letter, you may as well not even start. Your job is to set up a calendar and stick to it. You want to touch base with the sellers at least once every 6 months. If you don’t feel like you can follow up with all of the self-storage owners at one time, then send out 25 mailers a week. That is 5 phone calls a day. As long as you keep sending them out so that you have a consistent rotation going so that everyone gets multiple mailers and multiple phone calls, you can build that relationship.

You need to make sure that your mailer is something that reminds them that you want to build a relationship and that if they are ever in the market to sell, you are in the market to buy. We have several example mailers that we share.

Take the time to build a great mailing list and a great mailer so that you can build a strong database of self-storage owners. As always, happy investing.