You may think I’m exaggerating when I say this. But I assure you that I’m not. When you decide to mail your next postcard campaign for your real estate investing firm, consider this suggestion: give twice the effort to the mailing list as you do to your copy.
What? Have I just committed direct-mail heresy?
A basic direct marketing tenet every real estate investor should know is the 40/20/40 rule.
In this principle, the investor must allocate 40 percent of his time and effort in selecting a good mailing list. He’ll use another 20 percent of his time focusing on the content and design. Lastly, the remaining 40 percent should be used for designing his offer.
This is a vital direct marketing tenet that some real estate investors learn too late.
How do you go about selecting the right mailing list? Experts advise that you hire a mailing list provider. But in working with a broker, you also need to know what questions to ask, to help him process the list further.
Be a smart mailing list shopper and ask productive questions. How fresh is the data on the list? Where did the list originate? Or from which companies did the data broker acquire the list? Can duplicates be taken out from the list? In what form will the data be given to you?
Keep learning about your customer. Your success in picking a high quality mailing list is only limited by your knowledge about your customer. No matter how experienced your data broker is, additional information from you about your customer is crucial to helping them build a better list.
Identify your real purpose. Make sure that you are aware of what you want to accomplish whether to gather leads for future follow-ups or to increase your sales. When you let your list provider know your objectives, the job would be a lot easier on his part.
Now you at least have a slight idea about how much work you’ll need to put into the selection of your next selection of names. And for you to experience success, it may be more time and effort than you originally thought.