Direct mailers

[Mike Flora]

I'm a wholesaler in inland empire area in California and over the last few weeks I have sent out 3250 direct mailer post cards to absentee owners with equity and all LLC were removed from my list. I have only received 5 calls, which is a horrible response rate, but did get one deal out of it. It's a good card as well, so I know that is not an issue. Since I'm pretty new I'm not sure if anyone else has experienced horrible response rates like this with absentee owner lists? I'm going to start adding probate, divorce, pre foreclosure to my lists as well but from my mailers before my last 2 I had a much better response. THOUGHTS??? Just trying to see what I might be missing here.

[Robert Laird]

Mike,

I have found that some of my absentee owner mailers to California are very hit and miss. I once sent 6,000 postcards to absentee owners of properties in Sacramento and only got one call back that was to get their name taken off the list. 6,000 post cards and not a single motivated seller call is unheard of. On the other hand, I sent 400 post cards to home owners in Shasta county and I got 43 call backs. That is also unheard of. This makes me think that the geographic areas have a very large part to play in call backs.

Another thing I might add. A lot of mom and pop investors will put their 3 rental properties into an LLC. Although some of the LLCs on your list will be a waste, I would not eliminate all of them from your list. I have gotten deals from mailing LLCs.

If you start mailing those more specific targeted lists, you will definitely get more calls. Good luck and let us know how the next one works out!

Rob

[Mike Flora]

Thanks Rob, yeah I will keep at it and I figured the same with geography and just the fact of bad luck lists at times. 6K and one call had to be frustrating!! I will keep up on my KPI's and see where my stronger areas are around me. Thanks again

[Ron Goff]

I know it's not exactly what you are looking for but we were having a hard time getting responses from our title leads and lists. We went back to MLS searching and made this tool to show us the low hanging undervalued fruit on the MLS. You may want to check it out since it may be helpful in those down times when you get no response.

http://smartsell.house/info/

[Mike Flora]

Thanks Ron, I will check it out.

[Sean McNamara]

Mike,

I sent a batch of about 2,000 postcards to Absentee Owners in select Denver zip codes w/ over 50% equity, whose homes had not traded for at least three years. As you may have heard the Denver market is extremely hot right now, absolutely a seller's market and it is becoming harder and harder to find deals on MLS. We received a similarly dismal response rate from those postcards which were well thought out and clearly came from a RE pro. We were able to close one deal from that first batch but the response rate was about 1%.

About 2-3 weeks later we mailed Yellow Letters to that same group of owners and our response rate essentially quadrupled. Still not the huge response rate many people claim when using these types of "handwritten" letters, but I attribute that to the market conditions here. Just about every owner I spoke to had been inundated with mailers from guys like myself. We found that because we were targeting such highly sought after neighborhoods, we were far from alone in trying to make on offer on their home. 

However, I am still receiving calls from those letters months after sending them while the postcard calls stopped coming a long time ago. Postcards, especially when yours isn't the only one in their mailbox that day, are easily thrown out. Our letters on the other hand were able to stand out from the rest. I've had numerous people tell me they kept my letter on their desk/fridge/etc for weeks before deciding to call me.

Hope this helps your mailing efforts! We are going to start pushing out to the neighborhoods that likely receive less interest from investors like myself and see if we can drum up more deals there. 

Good Luck!