All Forum Posts by: Lucas Machado

@Braden Smith I used BeenVerified's "KnowThyCustomer." It worked and had a good match rate best on my data.

The problem was it pulled TOO MANY phone numbers and e-mails - and many were dead lines or e-mails not longer actives.

Hello,

I am looking for a recommendation for a service to append e-mail and telephone addresses to a list where I provide first name, last name, adress, city, state, zip.

Here's the thing: I've used other services in the past that just have too many mis-hits, dead phone numbers - or that simply charge way too much.

I'm looking for a service that has quality control on the telephones and e-mails, and either charges .10 per check or .15-.20 per successful match.

@Christian Sifuentes Postcards are less expensive with lower response rates. You can reach greater quantities of prospects for perhaps 40-60% of the costs. Letters have higher response rates, limit the amount of people you can reach, and are more expensive.

I send letters to my "hot" lists, postcards to my "more general" lists. Quantities usually end up around 1,000 letters and 4,500 postcards.

@Account Closed Well - you don't necessarily need a call center. I keep very tight control on my cold callers. In fact, I have daily contact with them - and I still only pay a few bucks per hour. They are integrated into my CRM so it's pretty seamless. I also don't cold call on a mass scale . . . I usually have a select 200 to 800 leads that I have various reasons to prefer cold call verses DMM.

I also don't use my cold caller as a traditional call center in the sense that I spent a long time training him, developing his script, and having him call me with any questions. Since I've trained him up pretty well, I can also use him for other things. I like my staff to pretty much have an open line with me at anytime. Of course, there are limits and I let everyone know when I don't need to be involved. That said, I lean towards providing more guidance and care as I think I get more out of my employees that way.

@Account Closed I've done this before. In my experience, it didn't work very well. Problem is - it seemed that the data just isn't tight enough. I was getting a lot of "miss traffic". I had FN, LN, Address and some additional data. Didn't work great and I actually pulled the plug.

Now that all being said - I think there are some improvements I could have made in hindsight. I think mainly just narrowing more target (for example, just going with 1,000 hot leads verses massive 10,000 addresses).

Perhaps one of the problems with 10,000 is it's just not targeted enough. I've actually been cutting down my direct-mail more and more. I like that approach - not just cause saves thousands every month - but saves time wasted with tire-kickers - and - when you remove the "random" element and focus on generating a hotter list - you are ensuring to get the hotter leads (as opposed to subset of 10,000 - that is ends up missing 1,000 or 2,000 of real motivation - because of an arbitrary date or equity cut-off).

In any case, if DMM isn't working out, definitely consider branching out to cold calls and a website.

@Matthew Rembish

Concerning your ListSource list, the first question regarding any DMM campaign is your budget. DMM is volume - particularly on some general list. You need to mail so many prospect you "hit on" the ones that are really going through some distress, estate/probate scenarios, taxes, violations, big time repairs, vacancy, foreclosurers, etc. If you can't really good big budget, worth it to take the time to research more cost effective targeted mailing lists or some direct contact strategies.

Also - for what it's worth - you can probably more cost effectively generate leads with a good solid online marketing campaign (or do both - that's what I do, as well as MLS).

Honestly - if you're markets competitive - you should consider dispensing the agent altogether. Not going to dive into whether or not to use an agent on a particular deal - but 3% commission is ALOT. That can be a deal killer. Business is business. That being said, most agents are more than willing to help out in pulling comps. That gives them referrals, and hey if you do need a listing agent (perhaps a deal is far away, or it's a niche property with a high HOA you don't want to risk hanging on to for an extra month).

You DEFINITELY don't need an agent to buy (with the exception being local New Jersey rules . . .). Down in South Florida, I actually wouldn't even consider it. You can print out standard bar approved forms, you can act faster than an agent, you don't pay any commission. Not sure what other paperwork there is? For like closing docs/etc., title company could handle. I do deals all the time and never use agents - so I really don't think there is any need (with the exception again being local NJ rules).

@Andrew Balogh

Andrew - I highly recommend you don't build the site on your own. I have a tech background, with web programming, computer engineering, before full time investment.

First - the assumption that your even saving money might end up not being the case. Websites are always evolving with best practices, and fact is sometimes things break. You are either going to be spending a bunch of time - or paying someone else. You might very well end-up net negative. With InvestorCarrot at least, there is daily support. I can hope on pretty much at a moments notice, and get someone to help me. For example, I've tested our services like WVO, LiveChat, some CRM integration scripts. Guys at InvestorCarrot helped set it up. They can also provide guidance on things like setting up conversion tracking. I don't think InvestorCarrot is a replacement for understanding on your own how things work - but does it help with getting quick free tech solutions? Hell yes.

Second - you shouldn't really delay. I would say that - everyone I have recommended for InvestorCarrot never looked back. I'm a neutral party - there are some advantages to not doing InvestorCarrot. I think that sounds good in people's heads, but the amount of work to do it right, I would say 75% of the people I've chatted with that decided to go that route either for cost savings or customization - didn't follow through. Too much work and stress. 

Third - I can't speak for your design skills - but I could imagine it not coming out as clean as more cookie-cutter site unless you hire someone or spend quite a bit of time/energy on it.

Fourth - I've tested my Page Speed against my competitors (big SEO thing). My Carrot site out-performed competitors.

I'd spend a bit more attention focusing on ranking or driving traffic verses (that's really the hard part). Doing good/successful SEO/online ads. I wouldn't get too caught up in this other stuff.

@Matt Kiser Not info info here to help out. Post your site and we could possibly offer some tips. It could be a great set up and your targeting wrong, or it could be great targeting and your set up is wrong. Or you could have bad targeting and a bad set up.

@Michael Davis

I'm going to take a completely opposite stand-point from everyone else.

You absolutely need a website for lead generation to start.

First, it costs $50/mo. That is NOTHING. If you can't chalk up $50/mo, don't even bother stepping up to the place of wholesaling or marketing. If you're thought process is ("Let me save $50/mo so I can build a custom site!") then you immediately need to change that mind set and figure out where to get $50.

Second, SEO takes time. You can' just TURN IT ON and think leads will roll in. Depending on your market, it can take, 3, 6, 9, 12-months for a page SEO heat. Then, there's all the little things you need to do to grow your traffic. Backlinks, social media, social shares, regular and fresh posts.

Third, even if you'r tech savy - do you really want to be running a website on your own? That's a giant pain in the butt. And if something bugs out, breaks, has to change - you're going to have to be paying someone or doing it on your own.

Fourth, as to the benefits of Wordpress, InvestorCarrot is a word press based site? Not sure if there's a big difference.

The one thing I do agree about - is you will need to take time to customize your website. Remove the text everyone uses and re-build it.

However, that is absolutely not because I care that my site looks the same.

People go into the site, enter info, click get offer. Sure, they might surf some more. I highly doubt sellers are looking at a site and thinking (let me think about clicking the form and go to other sites, see if they are similar, and comp back!).

I use IC, my conversion rates are always super high. Bigger challenges are generating cost effective traffic.

I definitely definitely not spend much energy on NOD. First, it's way too early in the process. The cold calls I've made at the NOD stage - they really aren't motivated at all by that factor. There could be other reasons they happen to be motivated - but that alone - not enough to justify a call. And I say that particularly with NOD - because 95% of the leads have no equity. The odds of getting to one that have sufficient equity to wish to deal and be motivated is miniscule.