Hey @Kyle Marek
I can help touch on a couple of your points. One way to stay competitive in a busy market is to send mail pieces that are different or unique from others. Bright envelopes and a personalized message are a great start. As you mentioned above consistency is key so if you start out with anywhere between 275-500 leads and continue mailing to them on a regular basis that will be a good starting point.
That being said, with such a niche group of people I would send them letters and nix the postcards. Letters tend to get a better response rate than postcards so I would focus on really trying to give them a solid sturdy mail piece. People who have thousands of leads tend to use postcards because the numbers are on their side and they are a less expensive mailer, so that is why you will see a lot of big fish doing postcard campaigns.
With first class mail you get returned mail so you can update your list and remove/skip trace the undeliverable mailers once you get them back.
If you want to keep your mailers personalized and automated at the same time shoot me a message and we can go over that in more detail.
Hope this information is useful!
Cheers,
