Hi all,

I was trying to find some yellow letters examples and the one I found says: "My name is XX, me and my husband XX, are interested to buy your house, please contact us at ...."

I didn't like this one much. I am thinking from the seller's point of view, that a couple is interested in buying the house and he calls, he finds an investor and/or realtor. Am i making sense here?

Anyone is using the above example? any success with it? Thoughts? Other examples?

Thank y'all

The letter is alright, but I think it could be improved on. Unfortunately, there is no "magic bullet" for the perfect yellow letter; you need to test and track different letters for their success rates.

If you want some more examples, you may find a few here:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=yellow+letter&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

Gotta love Google Images :). Good luck.

Jimmy

We use that very same format that you mentioned. We get about a 21% response rate...

There is a difference between a seller who wants to sell and a seller who needs to sell.

Most of the callers will be a waste of time, however you will hit a home run every now and then.

We do a lot of marketing to expired listings, and on average we have to send 248 yellow letters to get 1 contract. It costs about 60 cents for a yellow letter,,, so I am spending about 150 bucks to get a house.. I can take that return on the 150 bucks...

Hope that helps.

Tony Severino

Tony,

Thank you for sharing hard numbers with the forum. That really helps us newbies put things into perspective. I have two questions:

1) How many times are you mailing the same owner on the same property?

2) How are you producing the letters? Handwritten? Laser printer with colored toner? Outsourcing?

Thanks again for sharing!

-Matthew

I wanted to give a quick reply in response to the question about the message on the yellow letter. It has been tested, tracked, and PROVEN that the "Hi, My name is Tracy. My husband Dan and I would like to $BUY$ your house at 123 Main St" is the best message for getting a high response rate.

Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Just go with it!! :-)

Interesting. I wonder if the sellers can go after the buyers for deceptive sales tactics.
Anyone have any insight into the matter?

I don't see this letter/practice affecting buy and hold or rehab investors, but do see a problem with this technique as a wholesaler.
Please advise

Originally posted by Tony Severino:
Jimmy

We use that very same format that you mentioned. We get about a 21% response rate...

There is a difference between a seller who wants to sell and a seller who needs to sell.

Most of the callers will be a waste of time, however you will hit a home run every now and then.

We do a lot of marketing to expired listings, and on average we have to send 248 yellow letters to get 1 contract. It costs about 60 cents for a yellow letter,,, so I am spending about 150 bucks to get a house.. I can take that return on the 150 bucks...

Hope that helps.

Tony Severino

A 21% response rate is terrific! We average around 14%.

We are interested in creating our letter that's general so that we can send it to people in foreclosure, probate people, absentee owners etc.

My thought is that if I just say that ''Hello, We buy houses and that we're investors" that these people can connect the dots if they have a house for sale and they will call.

Do you know if call rates are better if the letter is specific in nature? i.e. "Hi John, I want to buy your house at 123 Main St."

I'm thinking that if we use the former that this will yield more motivated sellers rather than just curious callers.

Any feedback on this guys?

Hi I've been using a letter that is just written by one person, but do you guys seem to get a better response by including your spouse's name?

Jesse (or anyone), what is deceptive about yellow letters?

Also, do people include their squeeze page URL on their yellow letters?

thanks

We've found a few things in our letter campaigns that seem to increase the response rate:

1. Keep the message short and sweet. Don't lie about your situation, but don't give all the details either. A simple message stating your name and that you are interested in purchasing their property will suffice (similar to what is above). This will leave them intrigued and may get them to call where you can explain the situation that you are an investor.

2. We have tested several different ways of sending...from me, from my wife, and from both of us. By a good margin the best response we get is when the letters come from my wife. I think it's probably just less intimidating for a homeowner to call a woman back than a man.

3. Hand write the letters or pay to have them hand written.

4. Hand write the envelopes or pay to have them hand written.

5. Include a return address.

6. Use decorative stamps rather than just a standard stamp.

Essentially, you are trying to build intrigue with the homeowner to get them to open the piece of mail rather than throwing it in the circular file...this is the reason for the decorative stamp, handwritten address and return address. Then you want to keep them intrigued with your vague message. All of this adds up to a better response rate and more calls.

Now, like Tony said above, most of the calls you receive will be a waste of time, but it's a numbers game, and if done consistently you will get deals.

I liked information given in this post although I don't understand the tracking method. Are you just giving a certain time frame for the letters that you are sending (3 - 6 month).

What is the tracking method used?

This is way old, I know, but I was hoping to find a resolution as to the potential ethics (?) issue with the "My wife and I" template, as well as the debate using fake names, while we're at it. I noticed Jesse NA asked whether sellers could go after you of misleading advertisement or whatever, but no one ever addressed it. Anyone willing to revive a thread, I'd love ya forever.

I would love some insight as well to your question @Devin Beverage . Hopefully we can drive some traffic this way momentarily! 

Well, I'm gonna jump in here to add my two cents on yellow letters.  Full disclosure, I am planning to send my first round of mailers out, for the first time.  I don't think I'll add "$" around the "BUY" section of my letters.  Mine might look a little bit more like:

Hi,

My name is Nick.  I'm looking to purchase a home in your neighborhood & in particular, interested in buying your house.

Would you be interested in selling for a cash offer?  

If so, please give me a call at 123-XXX-XXXX.

Thanks!

Nick

I'm going to jump into this old thread too. I am also curious about the ethics of an investor and especially a wholesaler giving the impression that they are just a couple or family looking for a home

I am getting ready to mail out my first round of yellow letters. My format is:

Dear [owner name],

My name is Adrienne. If you are interested in selling your house at [address], I would like to buy it.

I can pay CASH and close fast! Call me at [my number]

Thanks!

Adrienne

Adrienne just curious about your results.  I am a new investor getting ready to Do my first yellow letter campaign.  what was your response rate and have you got any deals done? Any insight would be gratefully.

There are tons of options on the various mailer sites.  I've just finished sending out my first 2000 yellow letters (500 per week for 4 weeks).  I've gotten 5 responses (UGH!).

BUT.... I think one of the major issues is that I made it too hard to get in touch with us.  My phone system has extensions for each person.  My letters said "Call me at 303.747.XXX" BUT no extension.  SO I realized that people were calling that number but then my system would say "Press 1 to talk to someone about selling your house.  Press 2 to hear an inventory of properties.  Press 3 for a company directory".
IF someone pressed 3, then they would hear the extension number and have to dial it.

WAAAAYYYYY too complicated! 

I now have a new number that goes directly to my staff to answer these seller calls with no muss, no fuss.

I can't wait to see if I get better results.

Any good suggestions for good websites that have yellow letter mailing services or postcard mailings? I've been looking at a yellowletters.com but just wanted to see if anyone was using any other services.

Thanks!

Make sure that if you use yellowletters.com that you spend the $195 to get the platinum membership.  It saves you 15% of each order for 6 months.  It saved me over $800!

@Roy Leach how was is response rate now since you switched answering techniques ?

Which format, letters or post cads, has the best overall ROI? I think I have read its cheaper and get more response to yellow cards but the yellow letters seem to produce more solid leads and buys.

@Jimmy Farag , our colleague's are right there is no one way or magic letter that works better than the other or at least they vary per your market that you are marketing to. Your message will depend a lot on who your target market is. By that I mean, Who are you marketing to: absentee, tax liens, probate, compliance issues, etc. Your message should reflect to the motivation or the pain point of the reader. When I did my DMM campaign, I did what you are doing researching but I typed in to Google yellow letter examples and picked the one that corresponded to my message and my potential seller. I certainly hope this helps. Here is to wishing you a successful 2017 in your REI ventures!

Agree with @Tony Wooldridge

Couple of important things to think about with your direct mail campaign

1) Is it scalable (manual letters aren't)
2) Are you using your time in the most efficient manner (handwriting is ok for starting, but you need to hit 1000s of targets to get the responses to grow your business)
3) Is your message correct for that market? e.g. absentee, tax liens, probate, compliance issues, or simply overgrown / abandoned. Your message should maximize your probability of a response
4) Are you hitting enough people? With an average response rate of 0.5%-1% for most campaigns, are you hitting enough houses to expect a reasonable amount of calls to your number?
5) What type of problems are you having? Are you having growth problems in that you can't get enough responses, are hopefully you are having too many responses! Totally different problem. If you're not getting enough responses is your message on point? If you're getting too many responses, is your system efficient and scalable? Can you outsource part of it and remove that bottleneck to grow your business more efficiently?

Just some important things to think about. If you're interested in excellent direct mail fulfillment system, I'm here to help and can get ya great pricing and service.

Could anyone chime in one who they are sending these to? I guess your trying to get people who are absentees or have tax liens, but how do you go about getting this list?

Also, what do you say when the person calls? I'd assume they would ask for a price? I guess you can tell them you want to a bit more research on the property and you just liked it, ask them if they have a price in mind and then conduct your analysis?