“56 yr Old Direct Mail Rookie: WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T TEACH AN OLD DOG?”

Ok let me rephrase the above heading. I am a rookie to effective direct mail. First a little about myself.

I am Joe Davalos I have been in real estate since 1981. Investing off and on since 1987 I’ve been a broker owner since 1996

Seen some success as a REO Agent since 1999. Even ranking number one in the world in sales for a large franchise during the foreclosure meltdown. This has helped me tremendously in evaluating properties and locations.

I have purchased real estate since 1987. I’ve done direct marketing on a small scale continuously since 2013 buying 8 to 10 houses a year

About the middle of 2017 I found my direct mail marketing was no longer working It simply died. I used to pick an area and just mail to every absentee landlord. No checking for equity or distress and for a time it worked. No longer

I was at a standstill and needed to learn a new way of marketing quickly. I looked into online and pay per click. I didn’t have the funds to invest the 5000 or more a month to get in that game

So here I was a rookie when it came to REI as far as marketing was concerned.

I did a couple of things that were beneficial to me.

I listened to countless podcasts on real estate marketing. I educated myself on what others were doing to be successful in this business. Still do actually

I set up keywords on Bigger Pockets for Direct mail, skip tracing, marketing and my home town.

Started a distress Property list based on what I learned from those posts and podcasts.

Started mailing out postcards like never before.

Purchased a list source list. (Not as effective as distress list)

Eventually hired a direct mail company

Sent my first mailing late June. The response was abysmal. These were mostly purchased from list source. Panic mode kicked in

By early July I started adding distress property owners to my list. This eventually produced good results.

Kept growing this list and working it still. Bought our first 2017 direct mail Property in September. So far we have a total of 6 purchases from September to November selling 4 of these all for a profit.

From mid October to end of December I didn’t mail out. This was a mistake as my momentum just stopped.

My 2018 direct mail ambitions

Started mailing again and plan to send each month without fail. My distress list is up to 4,000 leads. Hope to see much success in this New Year. My plan is to send out at least 1,000 mailings per week 4 times monthly and repeat.