@Craig Kleffman
I'll be happy to share a few of my responses so far as well, you're not alone here! I sent a little over 2,500 mailers to absentee owners who had at least 50% equity in their properties. This was my first mailing ever and had received 9 leads from it so far (about a month in) which is a 0.31% response rate.
Two of the responses were "Take me off your list", one of which was a fellow wholesaler (great opportunity to network, can co-wholesale between both parties) and the other a retired real estate veteran with 18 properties and no plans to sell any. I am currently in the works to setting up a lunch meeting with this person to pick their brain and get good advice (you can't buy 18 rentals and be incompetent... unless you inherited them). My point here is that even when there isn't a deal, you can still get something of substance from these kinds of leads. Think outside the box.
One was a land deal and the guy wants waaaay too much money for it, but I'll keep him back-of-mind if I come across a developer who needs land in that area.
Three calls were currently listed with an agent. I currently am licensed in California to sell real estate so I don't even come close to these deals and I explain to them why I can't. It builds a level of honesty and trust with them so that if their house doesn't sell within the listing time period, they may be open at the end to selling to me directly. I look up their listing contract and set a follow-up call for just before the listing will expire to remind them that I am interested once the contract expires. I also ask them if they own any other properties anywhere else that I can possibly buy. Out of state wholesale wouldn't be that hard to do with a network like BP, so you never know!
The rest of the calls were legit and offers were made. I had one guy who inherited the property after parents passed, he was going to fix the property up himself and sell it himself, but his wife nagging him to just dump it convinced him to call. Still working the negotiations on this. Another property was a rental, tenants recently moved out and she wants to retire soon and not deal with tenants. We offered a fair price, but ultimately we were off by about $100k so I asked if she would let me assume her loan and lend me seller carry-back for the difference. I am currently in talks with her now on closing this deal. She also owns the property next door free and clear. The tenant in that house is expected to move out in December, so hopefully I can work something out for both properties with seller financing (allowing her to maintain an income without any hassle of managing a rental).
The final deal I have come across deals with a mixed use lot (mixed use is an understatement for this case LOL). It's about 0.75 acres in a dense suburb where the average lot size is 6,000 sqft, currently zoned residential and light industrial. He has a duplex on the lot, 3br/2ba each 1,200 sqft roughly. He rents most of the land out to a local pallet business who uses the lot for extra pallet storage. The west side of the lot has been land-leased out to a cell phone company to put a cell tower and equipment. He also has a few trailers on site that he wants to sell with the land. The cell tower contract is ~$2,500 per month with 3% escalator clause per year on the contract, which renews every 5 years. The pallet business pays him $1,800 per month to use the land. The duplex rents for about $2,600 total. His net on the whole lot is $5,500 per month. So... I got in touch with some BP people and local people that know how to negotiate the cell tower lease and either sell it to a company that holds these contracts (often they will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for them) OR someone who will be willing to raise the cash to pay this guy off completely. It's a very messy deal, but sounds like it will be the most fun to explore : ) Currently I am trying to gather all of his legal documents (cell tower lease, rental agreements, etc.) so that I can meet with investors to come up with an offer price.
While I can't say I am happy with the results thus far, I am waiting until the full 6-month campaign finishes up before I make any firm judgements as to the success or failure of the mailings. I think it's very short sighted to base it off of a single mailing, or even a couple. It's very easy to be results oriented (especially if your finances are tight) but my goal when I started this out was to focus on the EFFORT and not the RESULTS. If I send the mailers consistently, handle the inbound calls effectively, then deals will happen. If they don't, then I will look back at my data and find out where I need to improve. It may cost me tens of thousands of dollars to figure out the right formula, but I am willing to lose that kind of money to get this operation going. When you can easily make $30k+ on a single flip, it only takes 1 deal to pay for years of marketing.
Best of luck to you, it sounds like you are on the right track!