Direct Mail Market Campaigns by city, zip-code, or sub-division?

Question

Hi Everyone!

I'm new to using direct mail marketing when trying to acquire off market houses.  What is the best way to do this?  Should I be searching and mailing letters by city, zip code, sub-division or something else all together?  Any help is greatly appreciated!

Justin W

May Emery · Answer

@Justin Westgate I also agree with @Aaron K. and @Jake Soper. You definitely want to narrow down your criteria rather than mail to everyone in a zip. You might consider working with a list broker who can suggest some filters.

Be aware that a lot of investors are mailing to the Absentee Owners, so you will be competing with other offers in their mailbox. Some other lists might include Owners with Low Financial Stability Scores (FSS) or Seniors with Long-Time Ownership. These can be combined with home value, property type, owner age, length of ownership and have both absentee and owner occupied.

Good luck

Justin Westgate · Answer

Wow, thank you to everyone who responded.  This is hugely helpful.  I've been using direct mail market campaigns for land, but it makes sense that houses requires a lot more detail when looking where to send mail.

Reading through the above comments, I think I'm going to start applying some of the filters you guys talked to include absentee owners, owned house for x amount of years, and also have over x amount of equity in the house itself and then search at the zip code level first and see if I need to narrow or widen my search from there.

What do you guys recommend widening or narrowing first? location or criteria?  For example should I go to zip-code to city or like years owning a house from 20 years to 10 years.  I'll also probably start with just single family houses and then probably experiment with other types later.

I've never tried listsource, but I can definitely give them a look.  I'm currently getting my lists through prycd.com, which uses DataTree as their source for real cheap, but they currently only specialize in land, so I'll be in need of a list source for houses in the meantime until they have that implemented.

I appreciate all of the responses again!

Justin W

Aaron K. · Answer

None of those, you probably want to focus on people who've owned their house for a long time 20+ years, or absentee owners, or the preforeclosure list etc.  blindly sending mailers to a whole zipcode is going to produce sub-optimal results and cost a lot.  Also tailor it to only what you're willing to buy, if you don't want to buy condos, then don't mail to condo owners.

Michael A DeAngelo · Answer

@Justin Westgate depends on market if the city gives you 1000s of properties in your criteria maybe take it down to zip if that’s still to high then narrow it down more. As long as you know who you want to mail to make it as specific as you can with still sending enough mail to get some calls. Good luck to ya!

Jake Soper · Answer

hey @Justin Westgate  good question, like @Aaron K. said, you cant target by just geography. That would be like buying a lottery ticket.

First identify the types of properties you'd like to buy. This will help you narrow the list down greatly. Then you can start pulling a list based on your criteria. I'd recommend Listsource for the data.

For example you can search for 1-4 unit props in a zip/area/county/whatever, that also have been owned 20+ years and has over 50% equity. That will give you a much more targeted subset than just by zip. To take it a step further, you'll also want to find some higher quality leads from distress type lists like probate, tax lien, etc. Thats where a lot of the hidden leads are that cant be pulled from databases.. you typically need to look for these on a more local level.

any other questions feel free to DM me

Jake Soper · Answer

Great point about the absentees May. They are the easiest to find, so make sure to really personalize your approach for these leads! You arent the first, but you could be the last with the right messaging and tone.

Direct Mail Market Campaigns by city, zip-code, or sub-division?

Most Popular Reply