BiggerPockets

I sent out my first set of postcards this month. I sent around 1300 cards to absentee owners who acquired property via $0 transfers, to people who purchased property significantly under the tax value, and to people who have financing that is maturing in the next few years.

Unfortunately, due to timing my postcards were all delivered on the 4th of July weekend. I only received about 2 responses from that mailing. I understand that being delivered on a holiday is possibly one reason, and I do understand that I need to do 6, 7, or 8 mailings to the same people, but is this typical for the 1st mailing?

I am concerned that my postcards appear too professional (simple, but colorful graphics). I am also concerned that my mailings to the tax value and maturing financing lists may be unwise as they aren't necessarily motivated sellers.

What are your thoughts?

theLemur,

In my opinion, the key to marketing is not in design or presentation, it is in testing. So far, you know that 1300 post cards elicited two responses. Disregard the holiday thing for now. For your next mailing, I would suggest changing one thing, and one thing only.

Let's say that you change the color of the card from white to yellow. Let's pretend that out of 1300 mailings, you got 9 responses for the yellow mailer. For the next mailing, you could try a different color, or a different headline, or a different offer, or whatever. This is called split-testing. It is key to all marketing.

Items that could be split tested are:

1. Post Card Vs. Envelope
2. Color of mailing
3. Headline of Mailing
4. Postage (first class vs. metered)
5. Adcopy
6. etc...
7. Oh yeah, be sure to split test the destination (absentee, fsbo, etc..)

I am sure some people would say, " Don't over-think it, just mail it" . I think that if you aren't measuring, you are wasting. I wasted for years. Now, I measure every mailing, every time.

Good Luck.

It's hard to know what would work for you without knowing what market you're aiming for. Your response rate does sound low, but that could be the timing, as you said, or it could be that you need to send out more than one mailing - with something as big a decision as real estate I think people need to have some brand recognition before they move.

I'd send out more mailings, and monitor the results each time with small changes, as others have said.

Personally, I'm turned off by the 'legal looking' mailers, but I may not be your target audience :) Have you tried surveying people in the area to see what they think?

My reading about direct mail says you don't get much response the first time. You have to keep mailing over and over to the same people, with a slightly different messages each time. Four to six mailings to the same person will generate a higher success rate.

If you want to do some testing, apply the randomized trail approach. Come up with two, three, or more designs. Divide up your names randomly. That is, don't send design one to one neighborhood, design two to a different one, etc. Or any other sort of grouping. Include an offer code, or some sort of id, or just keep track of who gets which one. Now when you get a response, you'll know which design generated it.

Response rates are low on this sort of thing. I've read at best its going to be 2-3%, and many times lower. So, your response is on the low end, but not completely unreasonable. Keep mailing to those folks.

May I ask where you obtained your specialized mailing list?

you might want to mail those 1300 prospects a few times. also what was your message? 0 response sucks especially sending out that many pcs. your mail piece might need a lot of work.