All Forum Posts by: Blair Halver

I haven't experienced too much of that with Listsource, however, I do believe it is different for different areas. For example, I purchased a list of Absentee Owners with Last Market Sale Date within the last 6 months in Atlanta, and I think something like 26% of the names were in fact NOT absentee owners.

The problem was that on the property record, whoever entered the data originally, put the mailing address as, for example, "123 Main St.", and then for the property address they put "123 Main Street". Just a different way to write it, or maybe they misspelled the street name. To a human, it reads as the same address, but to a database system computer it is technically a "different" address. So when the computer sees that the mailing address and the property address are different, it marks that entry as "absentee owned". Which of course is not the case.

So I sorted out all those erroneously marked Absentee Owners, there were maybe 216 of them. At $.185 per name, I essentially "wasted" about $40 on those bad names. Fortunately I noticed this before mailing to all of them, or I would have had some very bad response rates.

I considered calling Listsource for a refund, but in the end decided it wasn't really worth my time to go after them for $40. Too many other productive things to do. And in the big picture, it's not that big of a deal and I'd rather focus on the things that matter.

To that end, if/when I get a high undeliverable rate like you've mentioned, I just keep it moving and get to work on improving other more important factors like response rate, and revenue/profit.

Yes - that's a good idea to try to find owners who have room to negotiate, what I was saying, though, is that list providers couldn't possibly be very accurate in determining equity (unless you simply specify free & clear) because they can't accurately determine home value. But this is just my opinion, I have no data to back this up.

Hey Kelly,
If you're doing repeat mailings, try to wait at least 6 weeks between mailings. Also, regarding your list, of course I don't know your specific investing goals and reasons for your property criteria, but you might do well to drop the equity and value criteria.

Listsource is good, but I do not believe their system truly knows the value of a home very accurately. And if they do not really know the value, they can't really sort the leads by home value and equity very accurately.

Point being, you might try loosening your criteria by dropping the 51%> equity, and the value range. It will probably give you more houses to mail to, which is a good thing.

Hi Kelly,
I know how you feel - I used to send the slick looking cards and got the dismal response rates like you're experiencing now. I read up on it more and more, and some people will tell you to just keep mailing those slick cards over a long period of time and eventually you will get people to start calling you.

BUT, if you read from the highly successful direct-response marketers out there (e.g. Dan Kennedy), you'll learn that just because you send the same card over and over doesn't mean the response rate to THAT card is going to increase. In other words, if a card doesn't generate a good response the first time, it's not necessarily going to improve just because you mail it again.

This does not take into account the timing factor, though - where you want to stay in front of the prospect repeatedly in order to be there when he's ready to sell. But, this timing factor, in my opinion, in the grand scheme of things is small compared to the factors of having a really strong offer, call to action, a good story, etc.

I send little yellow postcards. They are full of small-font text. They are personalized with the recipient's name and the address of their absentee-owned property.

The problem with slick cards is that they look like all the other commercial junk mail they get. But, you send a crappy, low-tech yellow postcard, and it stands out. It's not pretty, but they do not necessarily care about it being pretty. If they want to sell, they want to sell.

If I were you, I would not waste anymore of your marketing dollars on the slick cards.

To your first question, I just posted a minute ago, we shoot for about 1 deal out of 30 voicemails, but it fluctuates a lot.

To your 2nd point, I agree with you there. I don't mail to trusts, though, simply because it usually complicates the deal. As a wholesaler, I want the simplest/fastest deal possible to pass off to my investors.

And as long as people like me believe what I believe about it, it puts people like you in a better position with the trustee-owned because there are fewer people mailing. :-)

Seth, I couldn't have said it better myself! I usually tell people: Our marketing is “interruptive” and “proactive” instead of passive and reactive. This means we’re contacting this motivated seller before he has time to go online and search “sell my house fast”. You get the deal before his wife even knows he’s selling.

I once found a deal that I wholesaled to an investor in NC, the house was owned by a family that attended the same church as this investor, and the homeowners called ME from my postcard before they called him, even though they knew he was a full-time homebuyer. It was wild.

I firmly believe that the higher the number of people who know about a deal, the worse a deal it will usually end up being. So if you're the only buyer in sight, that gives you a very strong negotiating position. That's why I don't put much stock in internet leads that get sold and resold and resold. I think the direct mail leads are best. But I'm biased I suppose.

Forgot to answer your 2nd question...

Postcards printers are usually pretty easy to find. I know Michael Quarles on here looks like he has a good product, even if you have to buy in bulk. I have not used his service, though.

I used to use an online printing company, kind of like vistaprint but a step up in print quality, to print the full color with UV coating, etc etc. I did not get a good response rate from the "nice" professional looking cards. Low tech is best I've found.

I'll tell you, I've found this to be much harder to track than one would think - primarily because some deals come from past mailings (ones I didn't track), and some come from other sources.

To give a rough estimate though, we typically shoot for about 30 voicemails to 1 deal. It varies a bit from there, though, because, for instance, sometimes we'll get someone to call in and they have multiple houses they want to get rid of. So we'll get more than one deal out of that one prospect, which makes this deal-to-response ratio go way up of course.