I need some help! I’ve been stuck for a while now (3 monthsish) on setting up a direct mailing system! I don’t know exactly how I am going to do this and I am completely open to suggestions and how you personally have your system functioning, but here’s how I picture it all in my head:
- The Lists:
I’ll have Excel files for each category that I’ll be mailing to: absentee owners, probates, Vacants, etc. And then each category has subcategories that are different only by the mailing dates. An example of this might be that I go Driving for Dollars and get 100 houses and mail them, then go again that same week and get another 50 and mail them, so I would have to subcategorize those into separate lists to keep track of their different mailing dates so I know when to mail each again.
- The Letters/Postcards:
I’ll have all my various types of Letters/Postcards pre-written. Many of them will have the Name and Property Address of the Seller in main content of the letter, and so I would need to have blanks where these go, example:
Hey __________, I am writing to you about your house at _________________.
And within those blanks I would then somehow need to create an extract system, that automatically pulls the name and address and puts them in the appropriate spot! So that all I have to do is print it out.
From this point, I want to be able to with postcards, flip the postcard sheets over in the printer and then print my address on the back, along with the prospects name + mailing address in the center as well, by somehow creating another extract system that does that. Is this possible?
Okay, so my concerns with this are:
-
Is this the general idea on how to setup a Direct Mail System. If so, what type of programs should I use, MS Mail Merge and Excel? And are there any tutorials out there for me to learn how to do this? I have no idea how to set this all up!
-
I know you can get a stick on address label for your own address duplicated unlimited times for all your mail pieces, but is there some type of program out there that will create a stick on address label for each of the mailing addresses so that you can just print them out and stick them on?
-
Is there any example letters already premade (for probates, absentee owners etc) or complete ones that I can buy or get for free, so that I can use those as a starter point?
-
If I do end up using excel for my lists, how do I go about checking for duplicate addresses that might be on different lists. Example: How could I check my “probate lists” addresses against my “Absentee owner” Addresses to insure that I don’t have duplicates?
-
What is “Click2mail” (Only heard of it), and can it help me with any of this?
Thanks in advance!!!