Originally posted by @Brett Peters:

@Ellis San Jose, I have used Info USA in the past. It's pretty flexible and affordable. They also have great customer service. It's really all a numbers game though.

 That's what I used to do until I found out I did better with very small niche lists. I even wrote a blog about it in BP https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/1110/89356-6-figure-profits-by-shredding-your-direct-mail-list

Originally posted by @Kim Tucker:

So, I am only talking the average numbers.  We did one deal.  We owned it for 10 days, we made $125k - direct mail deal that we would never have done with PPC.  And the seller called us up 2 years later and sold us another house.

And the majority of our deals we buy from OLD people, who don't know what email is, let alone google or facebook, so how do I find those folks using PPC and Facebook.

And with PPC, they call ALL the ads and I have to compete.  With DMM, I am often the only person they call and they, gasp, take my offer - I have no one else to beat out.

And if it's a holiday weekend and we don't call back in 5 minutes if they leave a message, they are ok, they don't have 10 other people to call who will jump all over it before I even see that they are interested.

I need a good mix of both in my book.

But DMM sellers are a lot easier to work with, a lot less competition and I don't have to work through a ton of leads that don't fit my criteria.

No be very careful here.

You are wrong. Consider this.

Read your statement again. "DMM Sellers are easier to work with". 

EVERY seller that is motivated is "easy" to work with. Your "easy to work with seller" has NOTHING to do with your DMM campaign. It is just the fact (the luck) that your DMM mailer (finally) reached a motivated seller. And that is ALL it is. To make that conclusion that DMM sellers are easier to work with is just wrong. They are not easy to work with because you reach them through a mailer. They are easy to work with because you luckily reached a motivated seller. 

And DMM is simply the action of sending a mailer. DMM has ZERO strategies incorporated to target motivated sellers. Filtering a list is not targeting motivated sellers. Filtering list is an illusion of lowering the probability of reaching someone that doesn't want to sell. Again an illusion!

What you are experiencing of "easy to work with sellers", is what I get 90% of the time anyone reaches out to me. I don't think you have an idea how green the grass is on my side. And when you get a mere glimpse of finding a motivated seller and how much easier they are to work with buy luck trough a mailer, you attribute this to DMM, which is obviously nonsense. 

99.99999% of bigger pockets does what you just did!

Look,

if you have a 3% open rate, and out of that 3% open rate, 90% of the people yell at you, do you have any idea how small that number of motivated sellers is left? Let's find out:

If you have a 3% open rate (usually DMM has a 0.1% to 0.5% open rate) and you send 5000 mailers, you will get 150 calls.

Out of these 150 calls, about 90% are people that are not motivated. They will be angry, demand you to take them off their list, they are just curious who you are, curious how you found them, curious why and how you picked them, or want to see how much you'd offer without any intention of selling, or want market value. 

With a bit of simple math, 90% of 150 = 135.

So out of your 150 callers, 135 will be not motivated.

So now you have 15 interested potentials. For DMM every 10 - 15 potentials you strike one deal, (with some luck). So you would barely get 1 deal with these numbers. So you spend like $4K-$6K and you make $10K- $20K on a wholesale fee (on average).

Well I get 30 motivated sellers a WEEK. All free all organic and thus "all" motivated. That is about 3 to 5 deals a week, no effort, no followup. no back and forth...

(notice I provide proof, evidence?) 

(Fineprint.. these are numbers pre COVID times)

(seriously...what possible grounds do you or anyone have to argue against these facts?! How are any of you STILL defending DMM?! and without any proof or data. It's so weird to me!) I would love to see how much money you all spend a month for a period of like 6 months and how many deals you make and what all your expenses are, and not just from the people that are successful... but from 100 random people doing DMM.

I PROMISE you, these numbers would scare anyone away. But it is always the DMM companies with the biggest mouths concerning DMM and the few people that are successful at it.

Anyways

So when you say "DMM sellers are easier to work with" makes no sense right? You just filtered your horrible % into a group of potential motivated sellers and those are easy to work with , BECAUSE THEY ARE MOTIVATED, NOT because you found them trough DMM.

Sorry I don't know how else I can explain this obvious concept. It is not that DMM sellers are easier, it is the fact that they are motivated makes it easier. The sellers are not going to tell you, I am selling to you because you send me a mailer, and if I had found you via Google, I wouldn't have sold it to you. Right?

It is important you draw correct conclusions. So now you THINK DMM sellers are easier and now you are wasting more money on DMM while you could have made a LOT more money for your dollar without having to deal with people yelling at you, and without having to lift a finger getting these leads.

See stop thinking that I am telling you that with DMM won't make you money. What I am saying it is not reliable, and you are wasting a lot of money.

Let me make sure you and everyone else FINALLY get my point across...

Imagine you have a 300 squarefoot shower and the ceiling is covered with rain showerheads. And you take a shower (just you, one single person) in this 300sqft shower. You turn on the water and the 300 square foot ceiling all rain heads turn on. Do you see how much water you are wasting? Will you be clean afterwards? Sure, (just like you can get a deal using DMM) the water reached you, but you have wasted so much water doing so. If you just installed one showerhead you would have gotten way better results without all the water waste.

THAT is what DMM is.

So that statement and your conclusion that you shared with all on biggerpockets to see is completely erroneous. NO, DMM sellers are absolutely not easier to work with. That makes no sense at all.

Now people will read your comment, and they now think, "see I knew it, DMM DOES work".

As for your other claims, and results with DMM, I refuse to go into details without any proof. Everyone always talks an amazing talk, but no one dares to show numbers, screenshots or any evidence on this. Again it is irrelevant if you really made that deal and get these numbers... as I mentioned before, I am really good at data collection and drawing conclusions, (I am a NASA scientist for crying out loud), and I have years and years of data collected on DMM to be very confident that DMM is not a sustainable way or predictable way of getting leads. 

And I invite all and anyone that doesn't believe me to keep doing it. Your money, and I get a bunch of leads because of your mailers.

To those that manage to see truth in my rants, you have a great opportunity to crush anyone too stubborn to let DMM go. You can overtake them easily and crush their business like I have done in my market!

If anyone is experiencing a decline in DMM results over the last few years.... and you are still stubborn, sorry but you deserve to be crushed by those that will adapt!

And for the 15th time. I NEVER said you should only do 1 lead generation method.

I am saying, friggin DROP DMM. Do facebook ads, PPC, while doing SEO.

I don't know, I only send DMM to people who actually have a house i want to buy - located in areas I like, price range, size etc.  So when I say easier to work with, I mean they actually have something I want as opposed to 20 calls from my PPC campaign that may or may not be something I would want.  Sure they are usually motivated about 90% of the time on PPC because they hunted for me.  

But on my DMM when they do call me back, they are also motivated, but a much more target.  And I only send DMM to a highly targeted list who would have high motivation.  

I'm not throwing out mailers to every person who owns a house.

Or even to only absentee owners who own a house.

Or even to only absentee owners who live out of state.

I primarily send mailers to Dead People, Trustees, Attorneys, and homes that are for sure known as vacant.  And only to owners of houses that I would want to buy.

Sure I do PPC too - and combine that with my DMM and that makes my SEO go through the roof, for about half my key words I rank 1, 2, and 3 on Google this week and most weeks.  And I sure love SEO, its super easy and super cheap an I can take a month off and it still brings in leads - one year it generated all my leads and other than writing a blog post now and then I didn't do much, but it's not quite that easy any more.

I'll stick to being wrong - it works well for me.

Originally posted by @Kim Tucker:

I don't know, I only send DMM to people who actually have a house i want to buy - located in areas I like, price range, size etc.  So when I say easier to work with, I mean they actually have something I want as opposed to 20 calls from my PPC campaign that may or may not be something I would want.  Sure they are usually motivated about 90% of the time on PPC because they hunted for me.  

But on my DMM when they do call me back, they are also motivated, but a much more target.  And I only send DMM to a highly targeted list who would have high motivation.  

I'm not throwing out mailers to every person who owns a house.

Or even to only absentee owners who own a house.

Or even to only absentee owners who live out of state.

I primarily send mailers to Dead People, Trustees, Attorneys, and homes that are for sure known as vacant.  And only to owners of houses that I would want to buy.

Sure I do PPC too - and combine that with my DMM and that makes my SEO go through the roof, for about half my key words I rank 1, 2, and 3 on Google this week and most weeks.  And I sure love SEO, its super easy and super cheap an I can take a month off and it still brings in leads - one year it generated all my leads and other than writing a blog post now and then I didn't do much, but it's not quite that easy any more.

I'll stick to being wrong - it works well for me.

Sigh...

Your response "I stick to being wrong" has no merit here.

See it this way. If someone tells you, that eating apples are healthy because they are red, they are wrong. Yet eating apples is healthy so the fact that you are eating them regardless of doing it for the wrong reasons, it still is good for you.

This is what you are doing. You need to learn how to think and understand your process and systems.

Again, you are making money because somehow you are targeting motivated sellers. NOT because you are doing DMM. Get it?

Honestly, it gets a bit frustrating trying to explain the obvious to people and they simply can't wrap their heads around it...

Either way, glad it is working for you. Good luck!