Solving the direct mailing puzzle by Joe Davalos

Solving the direct mailing puzzle by Joe Davalos

2017 was up and down. When I started realizing my direct mail campaign was not working I changed courses and eventually I saw success. I created a distressed seller list and was at the point of buying 2 properties a month. Got busy and stopped mailing and the momentum quickly died.

Well back on track. I have someone working about 30 hours a week on my list updating records adding new properties and such. Just sent out 4,000 plus cards. Hoping for success as I saw last year. I know it may take a mailing or 3 before that happens but with consistency it will happen.

On a side note a respected Investor and podcast host had a session recently on how direct mail was dead. Well this particular host always gives insight into the how and why and that’s the reason I listen to his show. I thought I have had pretty good success lately was I just lucky. I quickly realized he had targeted one market with the possibility of distress was not likely. All his mailings were going to this market and to the tune of about 30,000 pieces a month. Even with that his cost per deal was about 5,000. Well I know based on past shows that he makes well over 15k and many times much more so they were profitable. Its funny but I as well just targeted 900 sellers in the same market segment. This was the high equity empty nester type sellers. For me that is only about 25 percent of my mailings. I picked a good area where I have seen a lot of flips and many properties sold AS IS as well. I wouldn’t discount this type of market since many vacant homes have the owners mailing address as the subject property. Many of these homes in this area have homes that need repairs as well. So even though I respect this investor and he has had far more success than me I will discount his opinion of direct mail as an issue more so with his target market than the marketing medium.