All Forum Posts by: Ehsan Rishat

@DeShaun Sellers that's a huge success. Congratulations!

@Axel Ragnarsson, thanks for the post and congratulations on your success!

@Phil, thanks for the awesome post!

@Isiah Loya, if you're limited with budget, then it would be waste of money to just mailers just once. You are better off trying a different strategy like cold calling, SMS blast, RVM blast, etc. Direct Mail definitely gets you deals but only makes sense when have enough budget to do 5-6 mailers.

The most important part of being successful with DM or any marketing strategy is persistence. Try to include your website, emails if you haven't because cause there are people who are more comfortable with the emails and filling contact us form instead of calling and adding the additional info makes you look more professional.

If you didn't get any response sending 700 mailers, then there might be something wrong either with the list or with the message.

With a limited budget, I would start out with the following more targeted lists: Tax Delinquent, Probate, Divorce, Code Violations, etc before you go into High Equity.

@Connor Stark, you can expect 1-5% response rate on your first mailer but you can definitely increase the Cumulative Response Rate to 20% or even more.

Cumulative Response Rate is the ratio of the total owners contacted to the total response received. Suppose you sent 200 mailers to 100 home owners. First time you sent the mailers to 100 owners, you got only 10 response. So the response rate is 100 home owners /10 response =10%. On your second mailer to the same 100 home owners, you received another 10 response from 10 different house owner. So, in your first mailing you got 10 response and in your second mailing you got another 10 response which sums up to 20 responses. Now let’s calculate the response rate. (100 home owners / 10 response from 1st mailer + 10 response from 2nd mailer) = 20%.

I would advice you to keep on mailing the same list until the house gets sold or the owner asks you to remove them from the list. You want to be the last one standing when every other investors gave up on them. Always keep in mind that the more you send mails to the same person, the more trust you build in them which also increases your brand value. We send 6-8 mailers to the same list and thus can attain a CRR in between 10-20%.

Best wishes for your mailing!

You should think about what's scalable in your business. As your business grows, you will not be able to do the things you are doing. If you have time available then to save cost, it makes sense to do your own letters but I wouldn't get too attached to that method as you will not be able to scale. I personally would recommend using a direct mail company for your mailings and your time will be better spent focusing on developing systems.

Same for door knocking, you can do that while you have more time available now but as your business grows, you will not be able to continue doing that. As for door knocking, another thing I recommend it having a door tag in case no one is home so they at least have your information.

Chris, we do about 50k+ mailers/month and you can always expect 1-2% call with postcards and 2-5% with letters. 1-3% conversion depending on your experience and negotiation skill. If you send 1000 mailers you can expect 10-50 calls depending on postcard vs letter but if you're new in the market you got to work hard for it. In order to get your first deal, you must be consistent with your mailings. It's better to send 5 mailings to a list of 200 people than sending once to a list of 1000 people. When a homeowner receives your direct mail for the first time, chances are they will ignore it but when you keep on sending direct mails to the same list of people then you're creating brand awareness and building trusts which are the key factors of any business.

Good luck with your mailings!

Ross, we personally find door knocking a bit time consuming but it can be a really good way to find deals. I would advice you to run a direct mail campaign with a small list. You can always get your own list from listsource.

Handwritten letters are good but not a great option if you are looking to scale your business. You have to balance your return on time vs return on money. Expert says that there's not much of difference when it comes to response rate if you use handwritten font instead. You can utilize that time by driving for dollars and building a list for yourself.