I have a question on Yellow Letters. Should they handwritten or can they be printed with a handwritten font?
There seems to be different schools of thought concerning this.
Good to meet you…
There all kinds of ways to do a Mary Letter. With that said it comes down to price and value.
If you do your own letters and use a bulk mail wet pre canceled stamp you can get these in the mail for around 34 cents each…
As for if they should be computer or handwritten…
I use to have them handwritten then copied and then the envelope would be hand addressed… However now since its about getting the mail in the mail I am going to a font on both… The letter is Yellow pad or made to appear as if it were, the ink is red on the letter and is mail merged to the seller and the envelope is ivory invitation (Although it scanned white)and printed by a computer. with a label on the back with art.
Here is the look of all of it…
Front
http://www.michaelquarles.com/Envelope_Front.jpg
Back
http://www.michaelquarles.com/Envelope_Back.jpg
Letter
http://www.michaelquarles.com/Yellow_Letter_.jpg
Cost should be;
Ivory Envelope: .05 cents 12.99 box of 250 or 10.79 if buying 4 boxes. Order through http://www.paperplus.com
Yellow Pad: 6.99 for bundles of 12 pads 50 sheets per pad. http://www.Officedepot.com
Ink: .04 cents I use a HP2025 four color two sided machine.,. Cost is 399.00 uses 4 ink cartridges. buy them from http://www.4inkjet.com half price.
Labels: less then .01 cent
Stamp: 21.3 cents in in your area and 27.3 if outside your area. Averages 22.8 cents for me.
Here is a link to the font I use. http://www.michaelquarles.com/Jennifers_Hand_Writing.ttf although you can download hundreds from http://www.dafont.com for free.
Hope this helped.
Great information Michael. Thank you! :beer
Thanks for the advice. I am using my own handwritten font for printed letters. But my issue is I can’t line up everything correctly. I’ve gone over and over trying to tweak it and it just REFUSES to print on each line.
Some lines are close while others are not. My husband thinks I should send them out. Maybe I’m a perfectionist, but it looks kind of sloppy. On the other hand, I want them in the mail because I don’t want to wait anymore.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
sloppy is ok…
Hello,
I grew tired of having to hand write all of my mary letters, so I migrated towards creating a custom font. I had my wife hand write all of the characters required on a template, so that it was legible but looks like real handwriting. Uploaded the font onto my PC and walla! I print all of my mary letters and envelopes in the custom font - it looks very close to actual hand writing. If you tweak the font color configuration a little bit you can make it seem even more realistic.
This is where I got it and it only takes a few minutes and only costs $10. http://www.yourfonts.com/
Good luck!
Great advise…
If you tweak the font color configuration a little bit you can make it seem even more realistic.
Thanks again! I’m using www.yourfonts.com for my letters, but how can I tweak the color configuration? I scanned in my letter, copied and pasted it, but the pasted letter part looks lighter than the mail merge part. If I could fix that I’m all set and they can be mailed asap.
Thanks.
Hello,
I scanned a piece of ruled paper similar to the standard yellow paper pad you find at your local officemax. Scanned the lines only (keep the image size small) and used it as a background, then printed on canary yellow 20lb. paper. So the custom font and the yellow ruled paper completes the look I was going for. It looks pretty close to an actual hand written letter once printed. As for the font color. If using MS word. Select the text and click font color icon. Select more colors and custom. From there you’ll have to experiment a bit. The point here is that a red pen doesn’t put perfectly red ink on the paper. In my experience, it puts a darker shade of a standard red. Note: depending on you monitor and printer. What you see on the screen is not likely calibrated to what is actually printed (i.e. they will look different). Experiment to get this right.
Good luck. Hope this helps.
Chris
Ok, so I re-worked my letters because nothing was matching up and when I tried to do mail merge it got even worse. So with the www.yourfont.com fonts I was able to play with all the spacing and printed up all my letters. I’m finishing up my envelopes tonight and we’re sending out the first batch of direct mail by Friday. Scared, but I need to start somewhere!
Mail merge isn’t working so what other programs work like a mail merge?
I only use MS word and Mail Merge - it works great for me each and every time.
Not sure what else you could use.
Best Regards,
Chris
if you want to do a webex with me I will show you how to do this… It will take 15 minutes
I’ve gone back and forth on this topic as well… It’s a tough one… it boils down to a numbers game… No matter what you send out… (hand written or not) you’re going to get calls… The more you do, the more you get…
I’ve actually done the mail merge through word and downloaded a handwritten font… THEN, every other word, I would change the font size so it’s not so uniformed…
After that, I would hand sign the letter and hand address the letters…
Calls are flooding in!
awesome tips - this is a great forum - who are you all typically mailing yellow letters? vacants, ugly occupied, pre-foreclosures…? thanks.
I use a handwriting font from my computer that looks exactly like real handwriting. I haven’t had anyone say anything about them, so I guess it’s working… Calls are coming in, so I would say it doesn’t matter.
You mail Mary Letters to anyone who has a home which fits your business model.
There are methods for determining an owners equity base and then whether its absentee, in state or out of state or if owner occupied.
I would filter down to the area you’re comfortable buying in… Then do as much research as possible on that area to determine the value and buyer requirements. As well as the active seller concessions…
heck you can take a list of people with 40% equity and cross check that list to people in foreclosure and narrow even further…
Good luck
Michael
hi michael what is wet pre canceled stamp exactly and how do you get them for 21cents?
http://www.usps.com/send/postagepermitimprintsandmeters/precancelledstamps.htm
There are some rules that apply. You have to be sending out at least 500 pieces, and you will have to pay an annual mailing fee of $185. So basically you’re not saving money until you’ve mailed out 805 pieces. If you plan on mailing less than that (in a year), then just get regular stamps, or send postcards.
Its actually 200 pieces… of like type mail.