M o t i v a t e d S e l l e r s P a r t 1 - D i r e c t M a i l

M o t i v a t e d S e l l e r s P a r t 1 - D i r e c t M a i l

P R O V I D E D B Y K I M T U C K E R

Contrary to what you might believe, Direct Mail remains one of the most effective methods for generating seller leads for real estate investors.

But why is it effective? Most of it gets tossed in the trash right? But consider all the work we did on finding and developing our targeted list? We can now create a marketing message designed specifically for the motivation of the person receiving the mail.

The list you will gather will depend on what you want to target. The higher the pain point of the target, the more motivation. And now with some of the great technology out there you can stack lists.

An Absentee owner may or may not have a lot of motivation depending on how far out of the Kansas City Metro they might live. But if that same owner is an heir to a deceased owner and the property has back taxes and is receiving code violations, that owner is going to be be a lot more motivated.

So now you have your list, your not quite ready to start mailing letters and postcards. I remember my first direct mail piece. I had a list of 1000 names, I had a post card to send. I mailed it and guess what. NOT A SINGLE PERSON CALLED. I was so let down that I didn't send it again for 6 months.

In direct mail, it's a numbers game. You might get lucky on that first mailing and then again you might get diddly like I did.

But guess what. I got over my lack of response and mailed the same exact postcard to the same exact list. This time I got 3 calls and one of them turned into a house we bought to rehab. And after it was trashed out we sold it to the neighbor with no work at all and made a cool $12,000 profit.

You need to have a decent budget and a plan. You don't need to mail 1000 at once like I did, you could take that 1000 and send 250 a week. But if you just send 250, you might not get anywhere. And be prepared to mail to the same list 4 to 5 times.

DIRECT MAIL PROCESS

Step 1: Get the list

We talked about this in last month in Part 1. Just remember the harder the list is to get, the fewer people will be marketing to the same people. And the more motivations they might have, the better your response.

Step 2: Create Your Mailing Piece.

You can spend some time on Googling for images of "I Buy Houses Letters" and "I Buy Houses Postcards" and find a ton of examples.

Letter or Postcard: In most cases I would say a mix of the two. You might start with a letter, then send a postcard, and then send another postcard. Now if you are targeting a probate list or a foreclosure list you may want to stick to a letter in my opinion because there are just some things you don't want to share with the mail carrier.

Typed or Handwritten: There are many services to get letters and postcards printed that look like they were hand written. But do keep get a few hard copy samples and check them out. If they are hard for you to read then they are no good. And maybe have a friend who needs a pair or readers take a look too. I get many of these mailing pieces and some are so hard to read that I can't see them being effective.

The Envelope: There are many options here. Hand Addressed is better than a Printed Font that looks like Hand Writing and that Hand Writing Font is Better than Times New Roman. Those little return address labels on an envelope that have no company name are good too. And using an invitation or greeting card envelope that might be some fancy paper is ideal. With a pointy flap that you can seal just at the tip or with a sticker so its really easy to open. Last make sure you use a cutsie stamp: I like a holiday themed, puppies, flowers, just about anything except the old standard flag.

Pretty Postcards Vs Ugly Ones. I have not done a lot of studies but I have studied under many of the masters who have conducted tests and they have found that the pretty ones are less effective. The more simple , yellow postcards worked much better.

There are also several apps out there that you can subscribe to that lets you drive by the house, take a photo of the house and send a postcard with the picture of the house. These have proven to be fairly effective when you are out driving for dollars. Or driving your list on Google Maps and using the street view as the photo.

What Should It Say?

Your message should speak to the motivation of your list. Target their pain. And then solve their problem. It's not about you, its about them.

If your house is in HORRIBLE condition, stinky and full of stuff that no one wants, I can look past that and make you a fair offer anyway.

If you have inherited a property and are tried of it dragging out forever and all your time spent managing the property, I can be ready with cash to close when the court is done with the process.

Tired of all the code violation letters piling up on top of all the repairs you know your property needs? Don't waste a dime of your hard earned money on repairs, sell it to me, I love a good project.

Note its not just about their problem, but the way that problem makes them feel. Dig into that pain point and then solve it with your offer.

Disclosures. If you are a licensed Realtor, consult with your broker as to what you need to disclose. For me, I put in the bottom fine print, but still readable, that While I am a licensed agent, I am writing to buy their house, not list it. And if their property is listed, to please disregard this letter.

Step 3: Print and Send

I have done this a lot of different ways. I have worked with a mail house where I use their mail pieces and give them the list and they send it on a set schedule of every so many weeks. You pay for it up front and they take care of it from there.

The major flaw with this one is that if you have a bad address, or someone who wants removed from the list, you can't.

There are a few mail services that maintain your list in an online database, so if you want to remove an address, you can with in a certain time frame.

I have also worked with a service that would pretty much do what you want. Each week I would take a look at my returned mail, try to find better addresses and update my list and remove the ones who wanted removed. I would then send my mail piece template and my list, they would merge it, they would print it and they would hand address and live stamp my envelopes.

And for postcards, if you want to design your own, which I like to do, I can create my postcard on click2mail and use it over and over again and send for less than 50 cents a postcard. My ladies who did the printing and hand addressing were getting close to about $1.30 per letter last time I used them. The more manual the process the more it costs, but the better the results.

How Often to Mail: The sooner the seller's deadline for motivation would call for sending each piece closer together. For example if you are targeting sellers being foreclosed, you might mail every 7 days. While if you are targeting just an absentee list, you might send once a quarter.

Step 4: Clean Up and Resend or Contact Another Way

You will get mail back. This is huge opportunity. Sometimes it a simple typo that you need to fix. But other times its going to take some work to locate the right address, phone, Facebook profile, LinkedIn or Other Social Media Profile. I generally buy 1 houses a year from doing my extra homework and finding the right mailing address, but more often finding the seller and contacting them on Social Media.

So how can you track down that elusive seller when the tax records do not have a correct mailing address? Google baby.

I start out and search their name and address in Google, something like Bob Smith 123 Main Street, Overland Park, KS. See what you find.

Next I might try that same search with just Overland Park. If they are a husband and wife I will try several combinations. One with Bob and Sue Smith as well as Bob Smith and Sue Smith. And if it really is a smith, search for both together and add in middle initials if you know them.

What I usually find is either Bobs or Sues obituary. I read it and find a wealth of information there. Sometimes you will find heirs and sometimes you can go to the county court and search the probate records and find their executor and the attorney handling the case.

I also like the free phone book searches. I use Zaba Search but any will do. My goal is to find my name that is associated with my address and maybe get a phone. I also subscribe to Intellius.com so I can do a deeper dive and sometimes find phone numbers, emails, social media profiles, and other addresses.

And then armed with some basic knowledge of names of relatives and where they might work, I can go to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to either find my owners or their heirs and send them a message - something like "Hi, my family and I buy houses in the KC Metro and I came across this house at 123 Main Street. I am trying to track down the owner, would you know anything about it?"

For every person that has responded, some say "Yes, that's my house" or "was my mothers house and it's not for sale" I have also had several say, "Yes, that was my mothers (brothers, uncles, ect) house, and we will be selling it soon. Give me a call let's talk." I even had one lady say it had been her fathers house, but the bank had foreclosed. I did a bunch of research and could not find any record of a foreclosure ever taking place. I reached back out and she said she would be happy to sell it to me, except as the bank had said they had foreclosed and instead they had sold the loan, she didn't know how to clear the mortgage that was for way more than what I could pay. It too me and some help from the team at Accurate Title (our local title company) about 6 months of work to track down a lender who was more than willing to do a short sale and sell us the house. I found her on LinkedIn. (she has a great review for me on my LinkedIn Profile. Last year I found a lady on Facebook who had 3 family members die in a row. We were able to buy one of the houses from Crystal and she left us several glowing reviews.

There is gold in those returned letters, so don't toss them. You could even go knock on the door and probably get no one, but leave a note on the door and while you are there, TALK TO THE NEIGBHORS you just might get to the owner.

Step 5: Seller Contacts You

Now if you are just starting out, you might want to go simple with just a phone number and an email address. For years we used a free google voice number and a free gmail address for them to contact you.

I really think you should have some sort of website where they could also find out about you. The theory is that you don't put your website on your mail piece but that they will do their home work to learn more about you finding your website and hopefully a few other things. For me I have an Investor Carrot Website that does it's job, I have used a lot of their training to make my website better and to make sure sellers can find us listed on other sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Local and The Better Business Bureau. If you want to learn more about a carrot website follow my affiliate link to get there at www.MAREI.org/InvestorCarrot. If you buy a site, MAREI makes a few dollars in referral.

But back to the Seller Contacting you. If at all possible answer the phone live, if you can't consistently, during business hours answer the phone live, then pay someone to do so. There are a lot of call answering services that will do this for you, take some basic info and email it to you. But you still need to call them back within the hour.

If you don't answer the phone, the other person who sent a card or the other website they found when researching you online will. So be prompt.

What you say and do while talking with the seller is actually an article for another day. However, your goal is to get their story, their reason for selling, to find out their motivation behind selling, all while being conversational and making them like you. I have also found that being honest and up front with them works. There are so many investors out there, all using the same letters, the same canned scripts the same read it out of a book everything, so when they talk to a real person, who is honest and real, you get more deals. But maybe that's just me

Step 6: Evaluate and Follow Up

Now out of all the sellers that contact you, many will not be a deal. Some will never be a deal as they call not about the house in your letter but another one they have that is out of your area. But for those that could be a property we would want, if you are new, go look at it, evaluate it and talk to the seller. After some practice will figure out what is a deal and what is not .

Make an offer that makes sense for you. If they don't take it, or you don't even get to the go look at the house stage, remember to follow up.