All Forum Posts by: Blair Halver

I went to a wholesaling weekend seminar one time and they mentioned, tongue-in-cheek, doing a "wholesale b&e". If it's a vacant house, look in the windows, if there's a door open, go in at your own risk. It's just life.

Looking through the windows is usually enough. Or get the owner to give you pics of the inside. Or hire some dude on craigslist to go to the house, meet the owner, and take pics of the inside that he can email to you, then you email to buyers, etc.

The buyers I've worked with all wanted to see the house themselves, and they're not going to take your ARV or Estimate of Repairs. They're gonna want to do their own figurin'.

So all I would usually send them is "address and asking price". That's all they want. They'll do a drive by, and then if they want to get inside, then they'll call you and you just make arrangements to do so.

If you have a bunch of buyers interested, and the seller lives in the house, schedule a one-time visit with all of them together, so you're not having to do a whole ton of separate visits.

@Patrick Reagan - it's a funny thing sometimes, we'll send the same number of mailers out each week for a client. One week we get a dismal response, the next week we get 30% response.

It sometimes makes me think that maybe the mail from the first week didn't really hit till the second week. Who knows.

I think if you really want it to be consistent, then you'll have to make your numbers bigger. There's variance in anything. So if you expect 5 leads per week, and you get 6, that's a 20% increase. But if you expect 100 leads per week, and you get 101, that's only a 1% increase. Or if you expect 1 lead per week and get 2, then you just doubled the expected!

So if consistency is a priority, then from a statistical standpoint you'll need bigger numbers on everything: more lead sources, more leads per source, etc.

Listsource is just about all we use. It gets the job done well. Make sure you call in to talk to a sales rep - they'll try to talk you into committing to monthly payments, just decline, but see if they can convert your account from a "web customer" account to a regular client account. This waives your $50 minimum order fee, and gets you better pricing on names. It also allows you to purchase lists with your CC right on the site instead of having to use Paypal.

Hi @Anna Warren - to answer your question, each subsequent message you send to them, no matter the medium chosen (postcard or letter), should build on the previous message.

There's a great course by Dan Kennedy called "Magnetic Marketing". I believe at one point I had found a video on google for free, a presentation Dan did at one of his conferences about the power of the Dunning mailer process as illustrated by a local plumber he had hired.

Here's a quick wikipedia article about Dunning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_(process)

You can see it was originally used, and probably still is, with collections companies. Dan figures if collections agencies can get money from broke people using this method, any half-way proficient marketer can sell his products/services this way.

The quick answer here is that each message should build on the previous messages. For example, something like -

Hi {seller},

I noticed you still haven't called me. I'm wondering why. Please let me know.

###

Or...

Hi {seller},

I'm still waiting for your call. I'm looking to buy a house in your neighborhood, but I only have enough cash on hand for one. I have several other houses I'm looking at, so please call me at your earliest convenience.

###

Then maybe a final message might be a postcard that looks like:

FINAL NOTICE - I've tried reaching you several times but have not been successful. I am still interested in buying your house, but time is running out and I must close on a property by the end of the week. Please call.

###

I think you get the point. Hope this helps!

By the way - none of the above messages have been tested. They may work, they may not. It is up to you, the marketer, to test and find out.

@Dev Horn - thanks for your comments. I especially appreciate the last part of your last comment about the message. I believe the message is probably the most important part of the mailing. Sure the medium dictates whether they read it or not, but if it's not a compelling message, they're not going to call.

I also totally agree with what you said about response rates varying by market. L.A. has had the worst response rate for us in terms of qualified leads generated per mailing. While Memphis probably had the best, or one of the best.

Is this due to the varying climate of each market, hot or cold (in terms of home pricing), or could it be due to cultural mismatches with the message?

@Ceasar Blackman , to your original post - I know @Sharon Vornholt is a big fan of Postcardmania. She always spoke highly of them to me in terms of quality and service. I have not used them myself, yet, though, so I cannot say.

Hey Brandon,

Handwriting the letter and the envelope will DEFINITELY increase your response rate. No question. At the very least, handwrite the addressee on the envelope.

Think about it - what do you do when you see a letter to you where someone used a handwritten font on the outside of the envelope? Personally, I toss it - it's junk mail. If you can tell it's fake, so can the recipient.

Handwriting the outside of the envelope gets your letter opened. Handwriting the inside as well, gets more calls. No question.

There's always the tried and true, traditional yellow letter message:

That's 4.47% of people I mail leave a message. Keep in mind this is an overall average from several markets around the country. It will vary wildly from 4.47% at times. From as low as 0.25% to 6% for the voicemail rate. Voicemail rate = voicemails divided by number of mailers sent.

So on the high side, say 30 qualified leads (voicemails) to get a deal. To generate that number of leads, you'd divide 30 by .0447 = 671 postcards.

I know a lot of you reading this will now think, "ok, all I gotta do is mail 671 postcards and I'm gonna get a deal and be rich." Well, I'll just warn you, it doesn't really work out like that.

You might have already seen the chart below, but it basically sums it all up:

@Tiffany H. - thanks for the word! Glad to know it's not just me.