Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
I am starting my first direct mail campaign and figured I would post my plans and how things are going as time passes to help keep me accountable. Give me your thoughts, questions, and suggestions!
The Plan:
- Mail 1000 pieces per month (250 per week)
- Mail each contact once per month for at least 6 months
- Switch up between letters and postcards, do some split testing (no specifics here yet)
The List:
- 500 absentee owners
- 250 "poor condition" properties (properties listed as "poor" or "very poor" condition on tax appraisal records, built after 1950, deed transfer before 2010, few other filters I can't remember)
- 250 TBD (trying to get list of properties with code violations from the city, open to other suggestions)
What do you think? I will post progress soon. I'm sure I will have plenty of questions as I go along.
Involved In Real Estate · Lynchburg, VA · Member since 2013 · 246 posts · 75 votes
12y
Just do 1,000 absentee owners. Why try multiple things at once? You're "spreading" the risk but at the same time making each list super small. 250 is such a small number you might as well go hang door hangers.
Who's your target audience? What's your call to action? Why should they respond to your offer compared to the other ones they're receiving (USP)?
I'm not trying to give you a hard time. You did ask for help keeping you accountable. Direct mail is awesome but can be an epic waste of money if not focused properly.
While you're working in your direct mail campaign, if you've done several deals of more by now, why don't you begin developing several referral-based marketing campaigns.
When you buy a property from most owners (who own a single property) is a one and done deal. When you develop referral who can fill a pipeline, the lifetime value of a good referral source might be dozens of deals.
Rick - I am curious as to how to build a referral-based marketing campaign as well. Looking forward to your thoughts.
Realtor & Investor · Houston, TX · Member since 2013 · 48 posts · 19 votes
12y
Wow thanks for this thread. I'm about to start my own direct mail marketing campaign in the Houston area while working a full time job and reading this definitely made me more motivated to get going.
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
Just posted to my blog the latest deal we closed! This was our 3rd wholesale deal, and the first to come from a website lead. The deal ended up taking 7 months from start to finish, but with a $15k profit for next to no work it was well worth it!
In other news, we are working on putting a probate list together. After some research, we figured out how to search probate court records on the county website. It is a pretty tedious process to filter through all the documents, determine if they have real estate, try to find said real estate on the appraiser's site, and make sure it hasn't been sold already. I want to go through the process for awhile just so I know how it works, but the probate lead lists you can purchase are already looking very tempting!
We are also sending out mailing #3 to our second list of absentee owners shortly, so expect to have more calls coming in soon.
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
We are working on gearing up for a few new mailing campaigns. Our first absentee campaign was a success (3 deals), but the second one has not yielded anything yet (after 3 mailings). We have at least 3 more rounds of mailing to go before declaring success or failure, but I would like to move away from an exclusively absentee-focused list.
We are working to develop three new lists - probates, evictions, and code violations. I will post in more detail about our probate process once we get the first mailing out. We have sent written requests to the city (code violations) and county (evictions) to try to get our hands on that data. Eviction records have proven extremely difficult to obtain. Once we finally figure out how to get it, I'm sure it will be a good list as it has probably discouraged a lot of other investors. I am optimistic we will get a list of code violations this week.
We have another deal under contract that we intend to wholesale. It was from a website lead. Maybe I should have renamed the thread - our website deals are catching up to direct mail! Will post more details once it closes in a few weeks.
Hopefully these updates are encouraging to you all to keep up the hard work. It's not easy to take call after call from tire kickers, or submit offers and lose out to other investors, but each new deal we get makes the prior weeks (or months) of drought worth it!
Rental Property Investor · Kansas City, KS · Member since 2014 · 604 posts · 222 votes
11y
Appreciate the updates @Andrew Herrig ! I'm working the direct-mail here in KC, too...just not quite as aggressively (have a few other things going on). My 2nd round in KCMO (postcards) is dropping next Monday and I'm still chugging away sending hand-written yellow letters to my self-assembled list here on the KS side. So far I've had several calls, looked at about a dozen houses, made half a dozen offers and have one that'll close as soon as it comes out of probate (4-6 weeks...dang it). Overall I'm satisfied with my results so far and am pleasantly surprised by the numbers coming out of my hand-written campaign (about 80 letters so far with 12 calls, 3 offers and one pending close). Keep up the good work!
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
@Jim Viens That's an impressive response rate on the yellow letter campaign! If I may ask, what was your criteria for assembling that list? Congrats on the pending deal!
Rental Property Investor · Kansas City, KS · Member since 2014 · 604 posts · 222 votes
11y
@Andrew Herrig - Kansas is a bit different to deal with as state law prohibits the use of public records to use public records to pull names for sales lists (so companies like ListSource won't touch the state). Thing is I'm not using the names to sell anything. :) That being the case I'm pretty limited at to the criteria I can use, so I've been pulling property owners (both owner-occupied and absentee) with at least 5 years of equity (as best I can tell...records are spotty). I'm able to pull up entire subdivisions and get several hundred names at once. Then I hit the ones that match my criteria.
The evictions are listed under "ALL JP Courts" and the Probates are listed under "All Probate Courts"
Instead of searching by case number (as you will not have this), click the drop-down menu and select "Date Filed". Play around on the site a little, you may be able to find code violations as well.
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
@David Ward Thanks for the links. I am actually targeting Dallas County rather than Tarrant. There is a similar system for probated in Dallas, but not evictions.
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
We are still plugging away at our direct mail. Sent out our first probate list (~30 names from one month of probate records) and are working right now on sending out our first mailing to a code violation list.
I wrote a new blog post about our latest wholesale deal that netted us almost $30k - by far our best yet! Check it out below.
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
I know it's a little late for a 2014 year-in-review, but I wanted to post a few stats from last year as motivation to myself to make 2015 even better!
- Sent out over 8000 pieces of mail to 2000 different people - 6 deals (1 rental, 1 flip, 4 wholesales) - 3 deals from direct mail, 2 deals from website, 1 deal from MLS - $80k net profit on flips and wholesales
It seems like things really slowed down over the holidays and we haven't closed a deal since early November, but I think we are on the upswing again. We are closing next week on a new rental property, and have 2 houses under contract we intend to wholesale.
Just as advice to the newbies out there (and me, I'm still a newbie) - this business can be an emotional roller coaster. A few weeks ago I was very discouraged after a string of near-misses and no deals for a few months in a row. Now that we've got a few under contract, I feel like everything is back on track. I'm sure it'll swing wildly back and forth in the coming months, but I'm trying to stay confident and positive and not be constantly swayed by the ups and downs. Easier said than done.
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
One more thing I forgot to mention that I am excited about...
We are starting a new postcard marketing campaign that I believe is different than anything else out there (at least I haven't seen anyone do it). DFW in general, and especially Dallas, are way over-saturated with investors, and many people get multiple mailings per week from investors wanting to buy their house. We are trying to craft a message specifically targeted to the most heavily marketed areas that stands out from the rest.
Time will tell whether I am a genius or I wasted a bunch of my marketing budget. I just sent out the first postcard (there will be a series of 6 unique postcards) to a test list of ~550 people. I don't want to give away the exact message just yet, but I am looking forward to posting preliminary results (whether good or bad) soon.
Residential Real Estate Agent · Argyle, TX · Member since 2015 · 21 posts · 2 votes
11y
Hi Andrew Herrig,
I am new to BP but what a great thing you have done here by posting your plan in action, asking to be held accountable, posting your progress & results, and getting some great feedback. Keep it up...go, go, go!
@Tyler Thrush Last year we got 3 deals from direct mail and spent ~$5000 on marketing, so it cost me a little over $1500 per deal. That is probably a little low as a long term average. I would plan to spend at least $2-3000 per deal in a market like Dallas. As a reference point, I have spent $3000 this year and gotten no deals from direct mail. On the flip side, I have gotten 3 deals from my website in the last year, and it costs me about $10 per month. Of course if I valued the amount of time I put into the website, it would be closer to the direct mail cost per deal.
Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2012 · 502 posts · 263 votes
11y
One other quick update:
I have worked it out with my boss to transition to part time starting sometime this summer. My wife has been mostly running the investing business, but we are having a baby soon and she won't be able to do as much. So I'm taking a tentative first step toward eventually making this business a full time gig!
We've done one wholesale deal so far this year that brought in $18k (website lead), and we have another one that's been pending for awhile that should close in May. We also picked up another rental house (bought for cash, fixed up and currently working on financing it).
Things seem to be going slowly this year, even though I've sent out a lot more mailings than last year. The market is super competitive and even now there are days where I wonder if direct mail works. But I will keep it up and continue to update this thread with my progress. Looking back on this thread helps me remember that if I keep consistently marketing, deals WILL come along eventually.
Residential Real Estate Broker · Dana Point, CA · Member since 2008 · 147 posts · 7 votes
11y
thanks for the update and answer. We have sent out 4 mailings so far this year and no deals. Our next one should hit next week so well see what happens! Look forward to seeing how your efforts pay off!
I've sent out close to 2500 mailers so far this year and still haven't closed on a deal so far this year. I've submitted many offers but no dice just yet. Don't give up buddy, because I'm not giving up! Keep updating this thread you motivate so many of us.
Property Manager · Griffith, IN · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 913 votes
11y
Fun read - thanks for posting. Anything new?
I know this thread is old but I'm sure it'll pop up in searches. For folks with the phone dilemma of getting calls while at work or numbers you don't recognize but expect to be house related, get a dedicated number for RE. Either add a second line to your cell plan or use a second number like a Google number. With the google voice app, it rings directly to my phone. I can have a dedicated message for these callers. If they don't leave a message, I know exactly why they are calling because this number is only used on mailers or yard signs or whatever.