The best precautions I think are to watch housing statistics in your local market (your agent can provide you that stuff from previous years) and pay attention to days on market and prices listed vs prices sold for houses in your target areas.

There is only so much to be gained from checking out the crime statistics to determine a general neighborhood "vibe", so I find I am super reliant on my RE professionals to give me the qualitative rundown. 

Secondly, should I start off with a yellow letter campaign or be bold enough (*gulp*) to actually call?

@Lisa Thoele When I listened to the podcast I thought the same thing - I'm not sure if you were talking about KW Bold, but it just struck me how similar what he was saying was to what KW taught me.  

Cold calling or what I called Bold calling because I about had a nervous break down when I was supposed to use the phone to call someone I didn't know.

That's a bold statement but its a fact, I wholesaled a deal I got right off this forum from a motivated seller.

I’m wanting to buy soon, please call.Change the font to blzee, change the size to 14, and bold it.Next we will deal with spacing.

We’re looking for people who are statistically more likely to sell their property.ORTry to:Place a newspaper ad (major daily)Bandit signsDrive neighborhoods looking for vacant houses and FSBOsCall FSBO adsSearch MLS for junker propertiesSearch MLS for expired listingsContact landlords who are evicting a tenantContact landlords with properties for rentPre-foreclosuresForeclosure auctionsREO'sHUD & VA housesTax salesEstate salesProperties with outstanding building code violationsProperties with outstanding health code violationsCondemned propertiesFire damaged propertiesOut-of-town ownersNetwork with professionals, i.e. attorney, CPA, REALTOR?.

Jasmine -Do two different tests, one with MD signed, and the other without.Look at the reply rates, and if there are statistically significant differences (that means one clearly shows higher response rate than the other) use that stationary.The reality is that we won't know for sure until you try it. 

Digital allows for multi-varient testing and constant learning, every variable can be tested against a control and statistical conclusions made.