You have to send out hundreds of letters/postcards on a consistent basis to get your phones ringing.

It's really there for the peace of mind, I can always get in regardless of what car I am driving (rental key ring is in my car) or if police or fire or medical personnel needed to gain access, they can always get in--without bulldozing the door.     

@Taylor Comer I second the advice about Google voice - free and super useful - you can forward it to your cell, have it be just on answering machine, customize greetings, etc. when the number gets called both my phone and my wife's phone ring and when a message is left I get a text and an email transcript.

One my goals in the next 6 months is to expand my knowledge past the midtown/1st ring suburbs area, and see if there are better numbers elsewhere. 

I’ve never looked at marketing as trying to make the phone ring/ inbox explode.

When it rings, it shows the Google Voice number as the incoming call, so you'll know it is someone calling your Google Voice number. 

But, my phone sometimes rings off the hook from wholesalers trying to buy my SF rentals and every week I get postcards and yellow letters.

I did get the cashier's check for rent check on the 1st of Aug, but both of their phones ring to system messages as "this number is unreachable" and no response to any emails. 

The phone never rings, no texts, no nothing, just steady rental checks being automatically collected through Cozy and being deposited into your bank account month after month.And nobody is stuck with a bad tenant,  there is no such thing as a bad tenant that a landlord has no contact with, bad tenants create incidents that create contact, so each contact with a bad tenant is an opportunity for you to move them toward eviction if you want to.

knowing what to say when the phone rings is extremely important.