All Forum Posts by: Blair Halver

An easy way around that regulation is by charging your "marketing services fee" at the time you send the lead to the realtor. That way it's not a referral fee.

With all the companies I've built, I've always retained 100% of the ownership. I just knew I wouldn't want to share control of the company with anyone else. Then I read a fascinating book, How To Get Right, by Felix Dennis, and he supported this idea - always retain 100% control.

Now, in your situation, you've already given up 50%, so there's not much to do there unless you wanted to buy him out, but in the interest of retaining as much control as possible, I'd say not to have anymore equity partners. In the end, debt is usually cheaper than equity investment.

Unless, that is, if the new equity partners actually bring something to the table other than money.

I use RingCentral, and I use a different local phone number on each different mailing I send out. I can route each unique phone number to whatever extension I want in RingCentral, without the person having to dial an extension. I can then have the call automatically forwarded to any of my office lines or mobile phones, or I can have it go straight to voicemail. Once you have a RingCentral account, I think it's only $4.95/mo more to add another phone number.

Hey Dev and Sharon, thanks for your insight. I think you make a good point. Which is unfortunate because, wouldn't it be nice to be able to predict the response rate in a given market before you invest in mailing to that market? In other words, wouldn't it be nice to predict the future? :-)

With enough data from enough markets, though, perhaps minimal conclusions can be drawn by looking at trends found in the data. But I think this would require MUCH more data than I've provided here of course.

Other factors that are immeasurable that I was thinking about - local cultural differences (e.g. Los Angeles vs. rural North Carolina), wording, etc. But I agree, there are probably too many variables to really prove anything.

But it's like the guy on Mythbusters said once - it's called "science" if you write stuff down (i.e. measure data), and if you don't it's just called "screwing around". :-)

These are the cities where the owner has a property that he does not reside in. The owner could have lived anywhere in the U.S.

Hi all,
I wanted to provide some valuable intel from the front lines of the world of direct mail marketing for real estate investors.

The last time I mentioned response rates on here, it was an average response rate throughout the nation, since I market in various parts of the country. Now I'm noticing some significant differences in response rates depending on the market.

These are all postcard mailing campaigns mailed to Absentee owners who have owned the property at least 10 years. The response rates listed here are RAW CALLS (i.e. all calls except duplicates) divided by number of postcards sent. Each market listed below represents a number of contiguous zip codes. The postcards all contained relatively similar copy and other variables.

Here are the stats from some of the areas we mail for our clients:

Washington D.C. - 3.77%
Boston Area - 10.69%
Northern Mass. - 10.68%
Southern Los Angeles - 2.16%
Allen, TX - 4.64%
Memphis, TN - 9.02%
Burlington, NC - 9.15%

What can we learn from this? Well, I'll throw that question out to the BP community here - can we draw conclusions regarding direct mail response rates based on other factors such as median home price, average home price, sales volume, etc?

Anybody out there good at researching some stats and doing some simple math? I'm sure all of us here would appreciate seeing what this data can lead to!

Thanks!
Blair

When were you running that ad? And where? What kind of results did you see with it?

Hi Al Bunch - I had to jump in here when I read your last post. Are you thinking of printing 20k pieces right off the bat? If so, I would strongly advise against that. Ask any direct response marketer - marketing is synonymous with testing. Test test test before you invest.

I once printed several thousand full-color mailers, only to find out that they bombed in terms of response rate. I was out all that money because I wanted to be cheap and get a better price per postcard by printing larger quantity. Never again.

I too am a fan of Dan Kennedy. I believe it was one of his audio programs, can't remember which, where he was interviewing a direct response marketer who was doing half and full page newspaper ads with great success. However, this DR marketer said they started with a tiny little classified ad and grew slowly from there as they tested and tweaked their message. He said that if anyone thought to jump straight to the full page ads, he'd call them crazy and reckless with their money. It's just not smart.

So, pay a little more per piece in the beginning, it will be worth it in the long run.

By the way, don't forget about click2mail.com - no minimum quantity order and does what you need it to.

Hey Nicasio,
Glad you posted. I'll agree with Seth Williams above - direct mail has always been the best way I've generated leads. I would start there if you have the money to invest.

If you find the right mix of Market, Message, and Medium (the 3 M's, from Dan Kennedy), you can get a near-immediate response and have seller leads coming in to your business within a few days.

Check out listsource dot com for a good mailing list. I've had success with them.

Blair

Is anyone still using Sales Team Live? Seems like they do good business, but I have not tried them.