Funds to Jumpstart a whole sale by direct mail business?

Question

what would be a good amount of money to jumpstart a whole sale business by direct mail. This would include getting lists of names from the city, yellow paper, envelopes, ect. how many people should you start mailing to for your first batch. how often should you spend more money. any thoughts, notes on this will help greatly.

thank you,

Rich

thank you,

Rich

Richard Holzhauer · Answer

hey claire,

Thanks for your input! i guess i will have to learn by experience and finding out the right amount of direct mail for staten island

Claire Trammell · Answer

Hello @Richard Holzhauer!

Just to add my 2 cents in here, I would say that you can do direct mail with really any budget. The key is consistency. That being said, I would recommend determining what you can do budget wise monthly and plan to be consistent with that budget for 5-7 months.

Direct mail tends to work best when you send a campaign of 5-7 different pieces, 3-5 weeks apart from each other. Follow ups are key as the average person takes 3-5 touches before picking up the phone to respond.

I wish you luck!

Nick Boullion · Answer

@Richard Holzhauer I order my mailings from a direct mail company. I personally use go big printing. They print and mail certain pieces and send certain pieces to you to mail out depending on preferences. Your personal budget determines the rest. If you can afford a bigger mailing go for it if you think you can handle it, if not start small and when you make money put it towards more mailing and grow yourself by doing business.

Richard Holzhauer · Answer

Yess thankyou, as i told @nick Boullion, i will be mailing to staten island, new york, which i think would be a small but competitive market. Once you buy names you have them forever. Do you suggest, starting out small but keep adding names each month, as you continue to mail to the original names?

Thanks,

Rich

Richard Holzhauer · Answer

Thankyou nick, this was a good way to look at it. I will be mailing to staten island, where i live. I think my next step would be to go to the city and see the price of the lists of names, tjen i can begin to plan it out. Do you do anytbing special like buying yellow letters, envelopes im bulk ect.

Thanks again,

Rich

Braden C. · Answer

@Richard Holzhauer like @Nick Boullion said, it's a pretty loaded question. Each market is going to be different with several different factors. In my market, we need to send approximately 1,000 letters in order to get one deal, on average. You might be in a very competitive market where it's necessary to send 2,000 letters or your number could be less. Your budget will depend on how many letters you need to send in order to start creating revenue for yourself.

As with anything in life, you probably won't start out as a great wholesaler. So it's going to take time and persistence with your mailings in order to get your acquisition costs down.

We work with a lot of very successful investors and one thing that sets them apart from others is being consistent with mailings. I constantly see people buy a list with 500 names, send out one letter and then give up when they don't get a deal.

Good luck!

Nick Boullion · Answer

This is a very BIG question. How many names and letters depend on where your mailing to some cities are big some are small. If it is big how many calls can you handle? spending $10k on mailing may get the phone ringing but your probably going to miss a few. I personally am trying to get to 3000 mailers per month because i think that is a fair amount to cover my areas I'm currently in. The frequency could be any where from weekly, bi weekly, monthly or any other way you can think that coincides with your mailing campaign. My first batch was 300 mailings and my first round of budget money was 1k thats about all i remember from the first mailing though. I know this isn't  a direct answer but it will be hard to get one because every single member here is in a different situation.