All Forum Posts by: Alison M.

I discuss what the *market in the neighborhood supports*, and not the seller's house specifically. I find putting it in the context of something bigger than my opinion of your house vs. your opinion of your house makes it much more comfortable for the seller.

I just had this conversation an hour ago: "Mr. Seller, I know your parents want $100k for their house. (pause.) What I'm seeing in the market is $100k for houses that have already been fully renovated and are in top condition, and . . . " then you can finish it in any way you want.

That said, I agree with Kyle about how to close out the conversation with an unmotivated seller. Give them your realtor's name or else follow up in a couple of weeks to see if anything has changed.

Mike Hurney, you can check out yellowletters.com or click2mail.com. Both have calculators for your piece and quantity. YL offers lots of personal help as well, whereas click2mail is definitely a do-it-yourself operation.

I second the comments from Jerry and Michael about out-of-the-gate success stories. I got my first deal on my first mailing and one of my first calls ever. Nobody told me at the time how unusual that was, or gave me Jerry's advice of "it won't always be that easy." I sure wish someone had! The experience definitely set me up with some unrealistic expectations.

What happened instead was that I thought I was doing something wrong for the next couple of years because I couldn't replicate that first deal with every hundred postcards I sent out. The lightbulb finally went off however and things improved after that. :-).

Variable data is when you can insert specific text into certain fields on your mailer, such as seller's name and property address. It personalizes the piece.

As to the 4/4 color cards, I have been sending them WITH variable data recently and gotten a resoundingly silent response. Much lower than what I get from my non-glossy yellow postcards to the same addresses.

I believe Sharon Vornholt commented recently that she has had to discontinue using them too because they didn't work in her market (correct me if I'm wrong Sharon).

Once again highlighting that it's important to know your market and understand that what works in CA or OK might not work in KY or DC, big city vs small town, etc.

Hi Paul,

It would be a whole lot easier, if you can get access to your local Multiple Listing Service, to query on who the cash buyers are. I believe most MLS sites have a field that specifies what type of financing was used for a settled transaction.

If you don't have access then take a realtor to lunch in exchange for running it for you! ;-).

Michael Quarles, I know Infusionsoft handles e-marketing. Does it help with direct mail campaigns too?

I've had very good experiences with Postlets for both real estate and non-real estate transactions. When the deal is done you can delete the ad and it goes away. They look good, too.

Sounds like you're saying the right things. It gets easier with time. If you have at least 2 ways to contact the caller again and you forget something, then you can call them back ;-).

For what it's worth, I have been a phone-phobe my whole life but after doing this for 5 years I actually enjoy talking to callers to get their stories and see how I can help. Hope it works that way for you too!

.5% to 1% is the norm, from what I understand, for direct marketing campaigns. So from 2500 letters a month that equals 12.5-25 calls, does that sound about right? If you want more calls then perhaps you need to expand your marketing areas and send more mail. It depends on what your conversion rate is - I'm sure there are folks on this board who could get a deal a month out of 25 calls, while others may need 100 calls to get a deal.

I have found it very helpful to keep a spreadsheet tracking my marketing campaigns to see where, in the process from mailer to closing, deals get stuck. This has been very helpful to me. You may also want to consider finding some local colleagues who want the deals you pass up, and pay you a referral fee for them if they close. Good luck!

Hi Yu. What is the response rate to the marketing you are sending out? If you're getting calls but not getting deals then the issue may be with another area of your pipeline, and not your marketing.

If you're not getting any or very few calls then it may be helpful to post your pieces and list criteria to the board.