BiggerPockets

I understand your problem, but am afraid I can't really help. I've been doing smaller scale mailings (~500) myself, but I believe my value lies in things other than stuffing and licking envelopes. It takes quite a bit of time to even do <500 houses, and I look forward to the answer to your question.

The only thing I could possibly recommend is to pick a neighborhood in the price range you'd be interested in which is located near you, and mail to them. That way you've narrowed your focus (and focus is everything) to a certain price range you're most interested in, and you could do follow-ups. Do a search on the web for reverse address searching, and see if you can find phone numbers for the houses you've mailed. Call them and "make sure they received your flyer," and open a dialogue with them about you, your company, and what you're looking to do.

I understand mailings become much more effective when you follow-up.

You don't have to pay for a list. Find a good local title insurance company (if they have them in your state), some of them give you access to lists for free if you're a customer. In my case I went to the title company and said "I want to be a customer, can you give me access to your comp service and lists?" They said yes.

Consider sending postcards instead of envelopes. Heck of a lot easier and cheaper. I get mine for $0.37 each including printing, postage, and mailing service.

3200 NAMES? Sounds like you better spend the extra $ and buy the envelopes you don't have to lick.

No but seriously, that is a lot of money to spend for a list of names. I would try to fine tune that list down to a more select group. Just getting absentee owners is not very valuable to me. In my area there are several absentee owners that bought at the TOP of the boom market and therefore have 0 equity. Those guys maybe candidates for a short sale but certainly not your traditional wholesale deal.

Figure out exactly what your looking for so you can fine tune your message to better fit their needs.

Also, there are a lot of places to buy lists, shop around a little. Andy gave you great advice about the post cards, especially for high volume mailings.

Jeff

Kessler Creative, the website is that plus a dot com.

I got that price with a contract for 10,000 ea. 4x6 full color both sides, so if you're doing less it may be slightly more expensive. I am doing variable print postcards so each card is personalized for the recipient.

You can also check out click2mail, they have about the same price, and can do variable printing as well, however their product line is more limited but they price the same whether it's 100 or 10,000. If you're working with a smaller list they may be a better option.