So I want to take on doing yellow letters because I really believe I could get good response. So I am looking for some info. Should I start there or should I do postcards to start? How much does it normally cost per month because I want to be sending at least 100 a week? As far a a phone goes I want a seperate business phone, not my cell. How do you get a 1800 number?...any advice will be amazing and well apperciated.
Windie
Who cares about response rate. I would rather get 8 calls a month, 4 of which turn out to be deals, I have enough going on the last thing I want is sorting through tons of unqualified leads. I dislike Yellow Letters personally because they typically incentive people to call for the wrong reason. The potential client is curious because they have what appears to be a genuinely authentic hand written letter. Furthermore, many yellow letters use a template such that you appear to be a person searching to buy a home as a personal residence and implies you physically drove or walked past their property. Again, this will produce many leads, but for the wrong reason, often unqualified.
People need to be more willing to put their message out there and be accepting of it, don't try to hide it! You buy houses at a DISCOUNT for CASH and can offer a QUICK CLOSING in most cases (unless a title issue springs up or the seller requests a closing farther out). There are NO Realtor commissions appraisals or any of that mess. Get that message to the right people and it has appeal I promise you.
Your marketing piece should do some upfront filtering for you. Some people on here talk about how you need to field 30-50 calls to get one deal. Thats ridiculous and its likely because they are using yellow letters. 1/3 of my calls turn out to be deals and I use post cards. I truly feel sorry for anyone that has to field that many calls to get a deal.
With that rant out of the way, real estate is local, and YL may very well be worth using in your market. Perform a split test, see what produces for you. Some zip codes may be more sensitive post card vs yellow letter even. The leads you are trying to generate will also hinge on which marketing piece you should use. If you are trying to do sub2 or lease option, YL may very well be the letter of choice. However, for high equity motivated sellers I always use post cards. YOU CANT CREATE MOTIVATION so quit trying to manipulate it, you are working on the sellers time frame not yours. Thats why you continue to mail them through the year as you will read more about below.
In addition, post cards allow you to cast a wider net because they are much less expensive and easy to produce and outsource.
Also you don't need to do X amount per week, your making it too complicated. The amount you send out is completely dependent on your marketing budget and how much YOU are willing to spend for at least 6 months without getting a deal.
Here is how I would do it. Figure out how much you can COMFORTABLY spend every month. Lets say that is $1,000. Next choose your marketing piece. We will use post cards in this example. For printing and postage fulfillment its .30 per post card.
Your monthly budget / cost per marketing piece
$1,000 / .30 = roughly 3,300 post cards you can send each month as per your BUDGET. If your budget is $200, who cares, spend that consistently and persistently and you will find deals. And guess what, when you do you can put that money directly into your marketing budget and scale your business accordingly.
Form 3 groups for mailing: Group A, B and C. Use list source or whatever you want to generate this. I query the information from my appraisal district myself.
Group A = 3,300 unique leads
Group B = 3,300 unique leads
Group C = 3,300 unique leads
So that means you will need about 9,900 unique leads (Group A + B + C) from your list generation service total. The 9,900 total leads gets divided into 3, however you want to cut it, for our 3 groups.
Now mail each group on rotation at the beginning of the month, for example
January - Group A
February - Group B
March - Group C
April - Group A
May - Group B
Etc.
If you follow the above plan each group will be "touched" by your marketing peice 4 times through the year. This is critical. You are building a brand rapport and estbalishing an identiy and the seller may not be ready to sell the 1st, 2nd or even 3rd time you contact them. However, as you "touch" them more often you will begin to see a higher yield in the deals produced. Remember circumstances change through time thats why your mailing them multiple times.
Hope that helps.
Windie,
You can get a magic jack plus.
Joe Gore
If you think you are going to do well with yellow letters why would you want to do something different?
How good of a response do you expect? If you are doing 100/week that isn't all that many letters so even at a very good response rate you are probably only looking at 5-10 calls each batch, and really 2-3 is more likely unless you have targeted very well.
MagicJack is an option for a new number. I don't know for sure if you can get an 800 number. Lots of services out there for that and none are that expensive. Not sure why you would need an 800# though. I'd just get a free local number from Google Voice.
Who cares about response rate. I would rather get 8 calls a month, 4 of which turn out to be deals, I have enough going on the last thing I want is sorting through tons of unqualified leads. I dislike Yellow Letters personally because they typically incentive people to call for the wrong reason. The potential client is curious because they have what appears to be a genuinely authentic hand written letter. Furthermore, many yellow letters use a template such that you appear to be a person searching to buy a home as a personal residence and implies you physically drove or walked past their property. Again, this will produce many leads, but for the wrong reason, often unqualified.
People need to be more willing to put their message out there and be accepting of it, don't try to hide it! You buy houses at a DISCOUNT for CASH and can offer a QUICK CLOSING in most cases (unless a title issue springs up or the seller requests a closing farther out). There are NO Realtor commissions appraisals or any of that mess. Get that message to the right people and it has appeal I promise you.
Your marketing piece should do some upfront filtering for you. Some people on here talk about how you need to field 30-50 calls to get one deal. Thats ridiculous and its likely because they are using yellow letters. 1/3 of my calls turn out to be deals and I use post cards. I truly feel sorry for anyone that has to field that many calls to get a deal.
With that rant out of the way, real estate is local, and YL may very well be worth using in your market. Perform a split test, see what produces for you. Some zip codes may be more sensitive post card vs yellow letter even. The leads you are trying to generate will also hinge on which marketing piece you should use. If you are trying to do sub2 or lease option, YL may very well be the letter of choice. However, for high equity motivated sellers I always use post cards. YOU CANT CREATE MOTIVATION so quit trying to manipulate it, you are working on the sellers time frame not yours. Thats why you continue to mail them through the year as you will read more about below.
In addition, post cards allow you to cast a wider net because they are much less expensive and easy to produce and outsource.
Also you don't need to do X amount per week, your making it too complicated. The amount you send out is completely dependent on your marketing budget and how much YOU are willing to spend for at least 6 months without getting a deal.
Here is how I would do it. Figure out how much you can COMFORTABLY spend every month. Lets say that is $1,000. Next choose your marketing piece. We will use post cards in this example. For printing and postage fulfillment its .30 per post card.
Your monthly budget / cost per marketing piece
$1,000 / .30 = roughly 3,300 post cards you can send each month as per your BUDGET. If your budget is $200, who cares, spend that consistently and persistently and you will find deals. And guess what, when you do you can put that money directly into your marketing budget and scale your business accordingly.
Form 3 groups for mailing: Group A, B and C. Use list source or whatever you want to generate this. I query the information from my appraisal district myself.
Group A = 3,300 unique leads
Group B = 3,300 unique leads
Group C = 3,300 unique leads
So that means you will need about 9,900 unique leads (Group A + B + C) from your list generation service total. The 9,900 total leads gets divided into 3, however you want to cut it, for our 3 groups.
Now mail each group on rotation at the beginning of the month, for example
January - Group A
February - Group B
March - Group C
April - Group A
May - Group B
Etc.
If you follow the above plan each group will be "touched" by your marketing peice 4 times through the year. This is critical. You are building a brand rapport and estbalishing an identiy and the seller may not be ready to sell the 1st, 2nd or even 3rd time you contact them. However, as you "touch" them more often you will begin to see a higher yield in the deals produced. Remember circumstances change through time thats why your mailing them multiple times.
Hope that helps.
LOVED that post by @Chris Feltus above. This sounds like MY kind of preaching! Amen, brother!
I haven't yet used them, but I've looked into CallFire and it appears to be a good choice. $1/local number and $2/toll-free number plus $0.05 per minute used. I have a free Google Voice local number for now. You can have it forward to your cell or get text notification of new voicemails. It's a pretty robust solution considering it costs nothing. As I am just starting out, so free fits perfectly into my budget :)
Originally posted by Windie Gaytan:
So I want to take on doing yellow letters because I really believe I could get good response. So I am looking for some info. Should I start there or should I do postcards to start? How much does it normally cost per month because I want to be sending at least 100 a week? As far a a phone goes I want a seperate business phone, not my cell. How do you get a 1800 number?...any advice will be amazing and well apperciated.
Windie
If you're going to use yellow letters, please don't write the letters yourself. It's going to better for you to pay someone to write the letters, photocopy a form letter in your handwriting or to have your handwriting converted into the font. The last option is what I use. I ordered yellow, lined essay paper and printed my "handwriting" directly onto the page. You will need to adjust your margins and font to print directly onto the lines. Once you've done that you can easily print 100's of letters with the prospect's name and address in the letter. You can also print directly onto the envelopes as well. Be sure you're comfortable with using Mail Merge before you do this.
The site I use for creating the handwritten font is www.yourfonts.com and then I just order the essay paper from Amazon.
Hope this helps you!
I use Google Voice for my postcard number. It's free, you can get a local number, and you can set it up to ring your personal phone or just take messages. Really hard to beat that.
I have had 800 numbers in the past and much prefer having a local number.
I have had 800 numbers in the past and much prefer having a local number.
110% Agreed.
great response
@Chris Feltus
Wow what an awesome response. You covered everything. Thanks so much for taking the time to write that and shareing it with me. But your right . Being consistent and quality rather then quantity. Thanks again Chris
@Jared DeValk
Thanks for your comment. Thanks for trying to save me time.
@Jim Deason
Much thanks for the comment. So your journey is at its beginning as well. How is it going? How have you had your business grow?
@Dev Horn
Right that was an amazing post. I am going to keep reading it over and over again.
Thanks again everyone. Awesome!
Count me as another user of the free Google Voice local number!
Who cares about response rate. I would rather get 8 calls a month, 4 of which turn out to be deals, I have enough going on the last thing I want is sorting through tons of unqualified leads. I dislike Yellow Letters personally because they typically incentive people to call for the wrong reason. The potential client is curious because they have what appears to be a genuinely authentic hand written letter. Furthermore, many yellow letters use a template such that you appear to be a person searching to buy a home as a personal residence and implies you physically drove or walked past their property. Again, this will produce many leads, but for the wrong reason, often unqualified.
People need to be more willing to put their message out there and be accepting of it, don't try to hide it! You buy houses at a DISCOUNT for CASH and can offer a QUICK CLOSING in most cases (unless a title issue springs up or the seller requests a closing farther out). There are NO Realtor commissions appraisals or any of that mess. Get that message to the right people and it has appeal I promise you.
Your marketing piece should do some upfront filtering for you. Some people on here talk about how you need to field 30-50 calls to get one deal. Thats ridiculous and its likely because they are using yellow letters. 1/3 of my calls turn out to be deals and I use post cards. I truly feel sorry for anyone that has to field that many calls to get a deal.
With that rant out of the way, real estate is local, and YL may very well be worth using in your market. Perform a split test, see what produces for you. Some zip codes may be more sensitive post card vs yellow letter even. The leads you are trying to generate will also hinge on which marketing piece you should use. If you are trying to do sub2 or lease option, YL may very well be the letter of choice. However, for high equity motivated sellers I always use post cards. YOU CANT CREATE MOTIVATION so quit trying to manipulate it, you are working on the sellers time frame not yours. Thats why you continue to mail them through the year as you will read more about below.
In addition, post cards allow you to cast a wider net because they are much less expensive and easy to produce and outsource.
Also you don't need to do X amount per week, your making it too complicated. The amount you send out is completely dependent on your marketing budget and how much YOU are willing to spend for at least 6 months without getting a deal.
Here is how I would do it. Figure out how much you can COMFORTABLY spend every month. Lets say that is $1,000. Next choose your marketing piece. We will use post cards in this example. For printing and postage fulfillment its .30 per post card.
Your monthly budget / cost per marketing piece
$1,000 / .30 = roughly 3,300 post cards you can send each month as per your BUDGET. If your budget is $200, who cares, spend that consistently and persistently and you will find deals. And guess what, when you do you can put that money directly into your marketing budget and scale your business accordingly.
Form 3 groups for mailing: Group A, B and C. Use list source or whatever you want to generate this. I query the information from my appraisal district myself.
Group A = 3,300 unique leads
Group B = 3,300 unique leads
Group C = 3,300 unique leads
So that means you will need about 9,900 unique leads (Group A + B + C) from your list generation service total. The 9,900 total leads gets divided into 3, however you want to cut it, for our 3 groups.
Now mail each group on rotation at the beginning of the month, for example
January - Group A
February - Group B
March - Group C
April - Group A
May - Group B
Etc.
If you follow the above plan each group will be "touched" by your marketing peice 4 times through the year. This is critical. You are building a brand rapport and estbalishing an identiy and the seller may not be ready to sell the 1st, 2nd or even 3rd time you contact them. However, as you "touch" them more often you will begin to see a higher yield in the deals produced. Remember circumstances change through time thats why your mailing them multiple times.
Hope that helps.
Absolutely finding this to be true. Down here in Florida I just sent out 129 YL to absentees with 50-100% equity and received a nice 19% response rate....from "Snowbirds" who live out of state but come down here for the winter, all of which were definitely unmotivated to discount their house and was curious as to how I got their info. Atleast I had some pleasant conversation and more importantly, learned yet another lesson which I am happy about. The above is a great idea.
I'v found this post very useful as I do mostly online marketing and have been wondering where the best place to start is for direct mailers. Thanks @Chris_Feltus
@Windie Gayton, I could'nt agree with Chris more. Response rates dont do you any good if you dont close deals. I have used Yellow Letters for the last year and we have talked to over 200 sellers, probably alot more but embarrased to admit. Anyway, my point is, just because the phone is ringing that doesnt get you deals in itself. You have to have a targeted market and be specific in how you can help. My new marketing is a postcard that is very DIRECT and no fluff, I tell the seller just what I can offer and no more. I dont pretend, I make no bones that I am an investor and I buy at discount. My point is, do your research and get the proper list to market to.
@Scotty Hamill
Thank you so much for the advice. I understand a lot more with just this forum. Is there a certain company that would be better or are all of this pretty similar? Im so excited about moving forward!!!!
@Windie Gaytan
I use Listsource to get my list. There are others like Melissadata but I have only used one. Another reason I have been marketing for about a year without a deal is because I have been very inconsistent in sending my letters or cards out. We just had a baby and funds have been tight. You have to be consistent. I thought you could just mail like 500-1000 letters and bam you get a deal. Now some people have got a deal like that but I'm not lucky,lol. So, get your criteria right and go get a list you can afford and just continue to market to that list every single month. Check out @Sharon Vornholt and her post and website, she has a wealth of information. Also @Chris Feltus has a great method of being consistent.
You are always better off mailing to fewer people but mailing to them consistently. Different mail pieces work better in different areas so you just have to test your market. I am one of those folks that doesn't want to waste time talking to a whole bunch of unmotivated sellers, so I want my mail piece to be clear on my intentions. You have to get comfortable with making low offers in order to be successful in this business. Practice will take care of this in time.
Like a lot of the others, I think you are far better off using a local number. It just doesn't get any better than free so Google Voice is a great choice. It used to be that calling long distance was a problem because of the cost. Now that is almost never the case because everyone has a cell phone, so I think there is really no reason to invest in an 800 number.
Sharon
Thank you so much for your post. I am really starting to understand the importance of the consistence for your target market. Things are about to get interesting! :)
Just keep reading and learning. One day it will all start to come together; that "big old light bulb" in our brain comes on and we suddenly get it. It happens to all of us. LOL
Sharon
You are always better off mailing to fewer people but mailing to them consistently. Different mail pieces work better in different areas so you just have to test your market. I
Sharron,
When you mail to the same people multiple times do you send the same message and type of mailing or do you mix it up?
@Chris Feltus Thanks for your input in this thread. You pretty much nailed my frustration with yellow letters. I've stumbled into some pretty nice deals with them but I'm feeling like that was mostly dumb luck. The vast majority of leads are unmotivated and call because of curiosity.
You mentioned that you pull your lists from local appraisal district - could you share some of the criteria that are working for you?
I have a sequence of letters for probates. I am currently using postcards for absentee owners. I have tried using a different version of the text and just re-sending the same type of yellow PC. It doesn't seem to matter in my market if you change the postcard or not. I think all they see is a yellow postcard.
I do think that delivering a different mail piece ( having a few to choose from) might get a better response. I am going to test this out for myself over the next few months. In my area I have found over time that December is a low response month for direct mail. What have you found? I am thinking of sending a different mail piece in December and possibly January.
Sharon