All Forum Posts by: Justin Silverio

Thanks so much for the kind words @Josh Parra.  We'll miss you in Boston but I know you're going to great in PA.  Keep in touch!

Welcome to BP @Tim Esteban.  I'm not a big fan of postcards due to their low response rates (<0.5%) and have only been using letters to send to my prospects.  If you're in a highly competitive area, look for mailers that stand out from the competition.

Yes, use your name and try to use a physical address.  If you get a box at the UPS Store, you will have a physical address (i.e., 123 Main Street #133).

@Kim Stofan cash is a very loose term when it comes to contracts.  At the very basic level, cash just means that you don't have a financing contingency.  I say that my offers are cash deals even though I may use bank financing.  

You would use public records to search for the owner and their mailing address and then decide how to market to them, whether its direct mail, cold calling, etc.

Listsource, MLS, Public Records, Treasurer's Department, Probate Court, etc.

You're talking apples and oranges.  Direct Mail is a form of marketing and skip trace software is a means to gather information on a prospect.  Usually you send out direct mail and skip trace the mail that comes back return to sender.  Skip tracing is not expensive ($1/search).

Great advice @Jerry Puckett.  Focus on your list first.  Most investors will throw a list together just to get mail out the door.  Very few actually take the time to find unique niches and scrub their list down even further. 

@Robert Youngquist Wow, that is a huge list.  Have you niched that list down so you are mailing to the neighborhoods that you want and also removing homes on busy roads, near train tracks, etc?  I generally scrub all of my lists so I know each house is exactly what I want to buy.  This way, I'm not wasting money on marketing.

With regards to mail pieces, I've found that creative mailers yield the best results.  They get you to stand out from your competition and they get your prospect to remember you (<--this is huge).  As for a mailing campaign.  You should account for about 6 months worth of mailers in your budget.  Direct mail takes time to build momentum so you want to make sure you have allocated the appropriate funds to do so.  

Good Luck!

Sorry, looks likes like my original comment didn't make too much sense.  What I meant is don't think you have to use yellow letters because that's what you've heard from others.  Most investors are sending the exact same mail pieces which means they are not standing out from their competition.  I've noticed a huge increase in my response rates once I broke out from using the typical mailer and started to use creative mailers (26.7% increase).

Investors need to understand that marketing in general is not something that should be thrown together becuase they've heard of other people doing the same thing.  That is the quickest way to throw money down the drain.  A good marketing approach takes planning, tracking and refining.  My general approach is if my competitors are all doing the same thing, I want to do something different to gain a competitive advantage.