All Forum Posts by: Brandon Foken

Thought I would give everyone an update on our marketing efforts thus far. After taking the advice given here, we decided to go big on our marketing efforts. Instead of mailing 395 people like we were, we went out and bought an absentee owner Listsource list of just over 5,000 people.

So far we have sent out 8,395 pieces of mail (one more round of 1,679 to go on our second mailing) and our response rate is at .24% (OUCH!). That works out to 20 phone calls from those 8k+ pieces of mail or $263 a phone call.

For those who want to know, we are using the Zip Letters from Yellowletters.com as our mailer. We've also purchased postcards for our 3rd round of mailer based upon Michael Quarles' advice.

My question is, why are our response rates so awful? They've actually increased from .18% to .36% from round 1 to round 2 (apparently all that advice about repeat mailings is true, although those numbers should be higher). Is it the area we invest in (East Bay, California). Does our messaging suck? Is the market completely over-saturated with RE investors? If you were in my shoes, what would you do differently? We are committed to sending out a postcard towards the end of next month, but we don't know how much longer we can sustain this with such pitiful results - the time to pull the cord on this experiment is getting close.

Any advice, counseling, strategies, words of wisdom or ideas would be a great help to us.

Thanks for those videos, @Dev Horn - very informative stuff, especially the Rule of 7 one.

@Kevin Oldham can you go into more detail as to what you mean about inbound marketing tactics in relation to REI? I understand what pull marketing is from my college days, but what specific tactics are you referring to? We have a company blog, landing page and are targeting folks through organic and paid searches. Any others that have worked well for you?

Hope things are well in Lee's Summit, I spent my high school years there and graduated from Blue Springs South. Thanks for the reply.

Oh, and to update everyone on our progress, we've received 12 calls from our latest marketing campaign. We are got a few calls yesterday from folks who had received our mail in between Thanksgiving and Christmas and are now wanting to do something about their properties. We had another 1,700 letters go out on Monday so I'm hoping our responses will double here shortly. Thanks again everyone for the help, feedback and advice!

@Jon Klaus that's a great idea about a condo regime. I assume you mean something along the lines of a TIC? The total rent for all 8 houses is $11,150/mo. That could probably be increased a bit, but not by much. She does not know what she wants for it...she has contacted a broker friend of her to try and get a valuation.

@John Rooster I'm interested why you don't think a beginner should spend time on this? I'm certainly not going to spend thousands on marketing and throw away leads that seem out of my comfort level. I'm going to hustle as much as I can to try and find a workable angle. Again, confused why you would recommend just walking away.

@Stephen S. it was willed to her.

I got a phone call today from a lady in Hayward, CA that has 8 houses on a single parcel. She wants to sell but is in over her head and does not know what to do. She has gone to the city and to lawyers to try and subdivide the houses into 8 different parcels but hasn't had much luck (not entirely sure the reasons). As someone who doesn't have the funds to purchase 8 houses with 17 total beds and 9 baths, I would be looking to get a wholesale fee from this. A few questions come up:

1. Do you package this for an investor and basically think of it as a large, multi-dwelling apartment building?
2. Is there money to be made by subdividing the land and making 8 separate parcels?
3. As a long-term investor, would this be attractive to you (assuming the numbers made sense)?
4. Would any discount be given due to the fact you would have to manage eight separate dwellings?

Sorry for the question dump, but this is the first time I've encountered a scenario like. Appreciate the BP help!

I'm working with a nice lady in my area on a wholesale deal. While talking with her she mentioned she had a house in the Richmond, VA that she wants to sell as well. I'm hoping to find a rehabber in the area that would take a look at the property and make an offer.

Here are some relevant notes from our conversation:

• Her mom built the house in the 1960s.
• No one has lived in the house for a few years and recently the city boarded up the place.
• No family is in the area so no one will be around to "let" you in. I asked her how to view the property and she said that there are some loose boards that you can get in through. (Her words, not mine).

Like I said above, I'm working on a local deal with her and have built up a good rapport with her. I'd like to wholesale this to a Richmond-area rehabber. If you have any questions, let me know. Please message me or respond to this post if you are interested in getting more details and making an offer.

-Brandon

@Erik Hitzelberger either luckily or unlucky depending on your view, but I got laid off from my job a little over a month ago. I think between myself and my business partner we will be able to handle the amount of inbound phone calls. I could definitely see that being a problem as I got 14 phone calls one week when I had a job and that started to feel pretty overwhelming. It's great advice to those who are doing this on-the-side while still working a full-time job. Finally, thanks for the kind words!

@Sam Craven we chose to hire an AdWords expert for a few months to help us get on the right track as both myself and my business partner had no clue where to start. We're budgeting $1,000 a month for the time being and trying to fine-tune our ads, keywords, etc. So far we are at three total leads (2 calls, 1 form) so we are on our way there.

@Jerred Morris thanks for your detailed reply. We have set up 5 ad groups with (I think) 3 different ads per group. Our AdWords expert is reviewing the keywords every few days so he can add in those negative keywords. Interesting that you don't want mobile ads, but I think your reasoning is sound. I got a few phone calls from wholesalers over the weekend so those might have been exactly what you were talking about. I think initially we were too restrictive in our GEO targeting so we've actually expanded that a bit to include a lot of the surrounding areas. I live in the Bay Area so there is a wider geography we have to cover to get leads that we can work with. I'm talking to our consultant later on today and will bring up your points. Thanks again!

Hey BPers,

I just started an adWords campaign late last week and was curious what other's conversion rates looked like. What is the average number of clicks you pay for to get a lead conversion or a filled out form? I know I'm too early on in the process to start determining if this is a success or failure, but I'm curious what others are getting.

A related questions would be, how many converted leads does it take for you to find that one good lead that results in a deal? Again, trying to determine some averages for the REI community.

Thanks!

-Brandon

@Account Closed I've heard about calling a title company up for lead lists (from BP no less), but I didn't go that route because I haven't done a deal yet. I figured that would work better once a relationship was established instead of just asking without giving anything of value in return. Thanks for the well wishes!!

I just wanted to jump in quickly and re-thank everyone for their help and answers and to also provide a quick update. I went ahead and purchased a lead list of absentee owners that totaled just over 4,400 leads. Combined with my 500ish leads I gathered from driving for dollars, I have just shy of 5,000 total leads.

I just submitted an order to yellowletters.com yesterday for zip letters and will be mailing to those leads over the next month. Roughly 1,250 per week for the next 4 weeks. I'll be taking a break over Christmas time and then re-hitting those same leads on a regular interval come 2014.