Investor · Miami, FL · Member since 2017 · 229 posts · 271 votes
Hi Guys,
I have taken the plunge and started my direct mail campaign here in Miami. I was wanting some advice from those experienced in this as to when exactly is the best time of the month to send out your letters. To give you more information I am mailing out the standard yellow letters to absentee owners with high equity.
I do t think time of month matters. Time of year may matter. Things slow down around the holidays and summer as people are traveling but as most people say it takes 4 to 7 touches to usually get a deal so stay consistent in your mailings even over those periods.
If you are doing 1st class stamps try and avoid it arriving on a Thursday as it can get lost in the grocery store adds. If you are doing standard stamps that is a lot harder to predict when they will arrive but you can send more mail for the same cost.
I send at all times of month and notice no difference. It really just depends on that persons situation. If the tenant trashed the house, their motivation on the 5th versus the 22nd will be the same. There's not a magical date to hit them. I drop mail on Thursday and fridays so they can read it over the weekend.
@Jason Brown, I stagger my mailings throughout the month. I send out mailers every week, and haven't noticed any particular set of mailers getting more responses then other times of the month.
My mailers are different from your though...
I send out typed letters with hand written envelopes (thinking of moving to printed envelopes with a handwritten font).
I only mail to houses I find while driving for dollars. I add new houses every week, and am mailing over 1200 monthly now.
@Jason Brown, My initial mailing (first piece) gets about a 3% response rate, but I have yet to make a deal on a first response. Every subsequent mailing after the first gets 1-2% response. Most are people who want too much, or aren't really motivated. All of my deals (only landed 5 so far, after a year of mailing) have come after mailing to a prospect 4-6 times.
@Jason Brown to be honest there is no wrong time to send out direct mail. What's important is the message in the piece of mail. The goal is to educate and get people to respond and take action. Focus on the message and watch how the response rate rise. I talk more about this in the guide I wrote called "Real Estate Postcards? Complete Guide to Increase Your Response Rate by 50%" Just google it
I do t think time of month matters. Time of year may matter. Things slow down around the holidays and summer as people are traveling but as most people say it takes 4 to 7 touches to usually get a deal so stay consistent in your mailings even over those periods.
If you are doing 1st class stamps try and avoid it arriving on a Thursday as it can get lost in the grocery store adds. If you are doing standard stamps that is a lot harder to predict when they will arrive but you can send more mail for the same cost.
You know you brought up an interesting point about grocery ads being delivered on Thursday. I tried to google whether grocery ads landed on different days for different markets and didn't have any results because it'd make sense to avoid grocery ad days in addition to heavy mail days because it's easy for it to get lost in the pile. Mine seems to arrive on Mondays here in SD, but I need to double-check since I'm not the only one that gets the mail in my household.