So I took Rando’s advice and got some cardstock from Amazon then went to office max and had them cut. After all said and done the price came to be. 01 a card :shocked. Now with a little help with my office guru wife I created a postcard that rivals the yellow letter guys. I can change the font and do almost anything I like now for the same price as I pay for a gallon of public water lol. In total I now have . 36 cent in a mailer. Not bad at all.
I want to look over and copy your post card design. It’s time to make some changes and kick this direct mail in the ass.
Instant message me and share ur design broham.
Rando
I will send you a email with the template if you want.i have one blank and one set to mail merge. I based it off of your Amazon and office max cardstock so it should fit the size and shape you use.
I finally got my sister in gear and she printed out 300 post cards and just dropped them off. I ordered these stick on plastic jewels, they look like rubies or precious stones, I got like 2,000 of them on Amazon for 7 buks, many sizes and dif colors, really spice up the look, I dont think they will come off easily, they have som good strong sticky adhesive on them.
I believe they are used for crafts and such. I originally wanted some tiny stick on decals of nature or flags or something, still looking, but these things are cheap. I press the little gemstone right next to their names, they gonna feel so special.
Awesome bro! I just printed off 300 myself and are about to mail. I got a callrail account to keep track of this mailing so we will see if I need to tweek it or not.
My worry is if these little plastic gemstones I put on the post cards will screw up the mailing machines, will it kick these out, tear them up, get them all wrinkled to hell or worse?
These post cards are a thick white card stock, with bold black print, Uses the ink and I buy it by the quart, on the front it says PROPERTY NOTIFICATION Urgent
If that don’t piss of some homeowners, the other side, NOTICE Sell your house today get cash this week, my sister says “that’s not ethical, you cant get them money in a week”. That was a txt and I never replied to it.
These guru’s tell how u better use an answering service, cuz of angry callers, But I want to get in the thick of it, answer these calls personally, when the money call comes in, oh, its the, can’t think what its like, most times you don’t know till you check it out closer and do the numbers .
My philosophy is ‘do NOT do what everyone else is doing.’
Well, I am laughing so hard at you petting this cat backward!!! You have to make money, because it’s so wrong to send threatening mail …and then make it ‘bumpy’ …and then promise cash in a week~~~~!!! LOL
Okay, now I so want to hear what happens next… :shocked
Definitely will be fun to watch.
How are you putting addresses on the postcards? Writing those manually, or do you have a process for it?
I don’t know how Randoskie does it, but I’ve discovered that hand addressing postcards is OK if you’re not sending a lot of cards. Otherwise, it makes more sense to either do a mail merge into Word and print labels, or just upload your artwork and mailing list to click2mail.com and let them do everything automatically. They’re reliable and efficient and will save you a LOT of time.
***You want your mail pieces to be read. You’ll probably read about all sorts of gimmicks used to get ‘opens,’ but the best way I know is to sift your mailing list down to the most-likely suspects. After that, postcards are a great option, since they don’t need to be opened to be read. However, the copy on the postcard must resonate with the recipient. So, whatever you have to write in order to capture the reader’s interest and attention is the next ‘key’ to getting read.
Apart from mailing novelty items like Randoskie described above, my advice would be to first sift a mailing list for the most-likely prospects that will want what you’re offering. Then tailor the ad copy/message that will most-likely resonate with those prospects. This would be called "message to market’ advertising.
All the rest just supports the first two things, and may or may not affect response rates enough to spend a lot of time fussing over. My 2-cents.
Thanks for all of the tips, that all makes sense!!
Are people slowing down at all with direct mail over the past few months, or are the results and call back rates still relatively unaffected with everything going on in the world?
All things being equal …and the mailing list is well-sifted and the ad copy resonates with the target, than you just have to go with the market sentiment that exists, and accept the response and conversion rates you experience at the moment.
These will fluctuate in real time. Otherwise, market sentiments change. And so does the response rates/conversion rates.
For example, Coke sales go up and down. However, their ads don’t come and go. The most important thing Coke does to capture whatever market there is for their diabetes inflaming beverages is day in and day out exposure.
This way, they embed their brand name in your sub-consciousness, so that when you go to the grocery store, and see Cokes, you just want to grab a case, because it’s familiar to you, and it promises to give you a refreshing feeling, just before the doctors cut off your diabetes-infected left toe.
The challenge is, knowing whether, or not, it’s a bad timing for what you’re offering, or just bad marketing, or lack of consistent exposures that negatively affect your response and conversion rates (Never mind exposing your message to the wrong target).
I mean, if you’re marketing consistently for wholesale deals in a brand new, no-equity, sub-division, you’re gonna be waiting years for any motivated, qualified suspects to become interested in (much less capable of) accepting your low-ball offers. This is probably a case where you need to change farms, not the marketing approach.
Now, if you’re marketing for wholesale deals in a dead, tired, flat, old neighborhood with lots of equity situations, then you’re gonna experience more responses and create more conversions than you would in the new neighborhood. Of course, duh, but… this also happens simply because you’re offering a solution to a larger number of people with problem properties …at the moment.
If the market changes, and say, sellers get greedy, the responses might go down as suspects wait for the market to top out. This is probably the biggest reason that most investors love market crashes. That’s when the most sellers want out and bargains are easier to negotiate.
That’s not to say that bargains can’t be found and negotiated in any market, but we have to understand our market regardless.
Since market conditions change, the axiom holds true that says, “Buy when everyone is selling, and sell when everyone is buying.” The challenge comes when you have nothing to sell, when everyone is buying.
*** Which brings me to mention that in 20 years, it won’t have made much difference what you paid for a property. It will still be worth more, and you’ll have made an equity profit, even if it was simply a result of paying down the mortgage. FWIW
*** The key to real estate investing is to control as much as you can, for as long as you need to, in order to realize a profit.
Great response, lots of wisdom there! Consistency is the key.