Open Letter Marketing

Postcards, handwritten letters, tri-fold flyers. So many options to choose from. How do you know which mailer is the best type for your real estate investment business? The answer isn’t as clear as you might like, but here are some guidelines to help you think through your choices.

Letters

Consider handwritten or professional letters from Open Letter Marketing to stand out from the crowd if you market to a special niche of sellers. For example, your target audience may be probate sellers or sellers whose homes are in foreclosure. You can create appealing direct mail letters that focus on the pain points of these prospects in letters that provide a solution to their problems. Letters tend to have the best response rate for this type of situation.

Postcards

If you have large lead lists with hundreds or thousands of prospects, postcards are the way to go. Our postcards get the prospects’ attention in a succinct way. They are also a cost-effective option with a solid response rate.

Tri-fold Flyers

This is the perfect mix of letter and postcard while right in the middle of price. These flyers have a response rate comparable to the letter while providing quick access more like the postcard. You can customize them to fit with your marketing campaign.

Autopen Letters and Postcards

If your real estate direct mail marketing strategy is more personalized, autopen letters and postcards are the perfect option. They use handwriting that is strikingly similar to an actual handwritten message. By using a robotic arm to write the message, these products enhance authenticity, which can improve response rate for your audience.

If you like the sound of all these products and aren’t sure which one is best suited to your audience, you can send out a test run. Track the results to see which is most effective. You also have the option to mix things up if you’re creating a multi-touch campaign.

Give us a call at 978-269-0245 and we can help you determine the best direct mail product for your business. 

If you’ve appreciated the OLM Autopen letters, you’re sure to be impressed with the Autopen postcards. These postcards are simple to use and are presorted and mailed through USPS directly, so you don’t have the extra step. Since they don’t have a barcode, they will look authentic, just like our other products.

Personalize Your Postcards

With these Autopen Postcards, you get to choose the background image and even select the handwritten font to make it more personalized for your business and prospects. You can edit the message to have it appeal to your potential leads. Choose print or cursive for the handwriting and add your logo to make it cohesive with the rest of your marketing methods.

Our goal is to make it easy to create these postcards, which is why we have a Realtor Template. All you need to do is upload your list as a .CSV file and add it to your order.

Why Use Autopen Postcards?

These postcards are personal and eye-catching. They are also inexpensive, which is important if you have a tight marketing budget. Use them as part of your multiple mailers as a first, second, or even third contact to your prospects.

Right now, you can save even more money when you use the coupon code Auto 10 during checkout to save 10 percent off your order.

If you have questions or want to know more about these Autopen Postcards or how OLM can help your investment business, give us a call at 978-269-0245.

When was the last time you checked your lists to make sure they are accurate? Perhaps you’ve gotten some returned mail or maybe your response rate is down. If you’re not getting the follow-up you had hoped for, it might be time for a mid-year cleanup.

List scrubbing can help you save money because you aren’t sending out mailers to bad addresses. When you run your list through OLM’s scrubbing service, you get updated information to fix any out of date information. You’ll also find out if any of your leads are deceased, which means you can either drop them off the list or find out who the heir is and change the mailing name and address.

Our list scrubbing services include identifying vacancies, apartment appends, and lite skip tracing. Once you have the new information, you can update your lists for future mailings.

Why Schedule a Mid-Year List Cleanup?

It’s easy to forget the last time you cleaned up your list if you don’t have a set schedule. You may notice your response rate is going down but not take the time to figure out why. If you put a cleanup on your calendar and follow through, you can prevent those decreased response rates.

You can set the cleanup any time you want, but you should make it an ongoing task to ensure you’re not missing out on valuable leads.

To find out how OLM can help you keep your list up to date, give us a call at 978-269-0245.

No one likes to get an angry response to mailings they send out. Many would look at this as a failure, but it’s actually better than no response at all. Even a response showing you have inaccurate data is a good response. Maybe it’s time to look at those situations in a new way.

As long as you’re talking to someone, you’re ahead of the competition. For example, maybe you had the wrong address for someone. All you need to do is apologize and continue talking to them about their interest in selling their property.

One of the most important aspects of marketing is engaging your audience. As long as you have them on the phone, you’re making contact. And you never know where that contact might lead, even if it started out negative.

Outshine Your Competition

Many marketers won’t waste their time with a bad response, writing them off as a loss. If you view it as an opportunity, you gain an edge over your competitors. You can often quickly read the situation and know how to respond.

You may be able to laugh it off with the other person or a sincere apology may be all it takes to get them talking. Don’t give up as soon as you hear that someone is angry with you for a mistake you made. Persistence can pay off – just take note of the mistake, so it doesn’t happen again.

Perhaps you call at a bad time. Once again, apologize and find out when is a better time to contact them. As long as you stay calm, you can diffuse the situation and potentially gain a valuable lead.

You can avoid many situations where you have a wrong address or wrong name by scrubbing your lists. Let OLM help you with this challenge. Our mailers can easily integrate your lists, so there is less room for error. If you want to learn more about our services, contact us at 978-269-0245.

As a real estate investor, you don’t want to overlook houses in probate. They have great potential because many heirs don’t want to be stuck with a home or property they don’t need. However, many real estate investors shy away from probate properties because they are a challenging target. The potential sellers are grieving a great loss and may feel sensitive to strangers showing an interest in their family property.

If you’re interested in probate properties but not sure how to reach out, consider how direct mail marketing just might be the perfect answer.

A Non-Intrusive Interaction

Your prospects are feeling overwhelmed with all that needs to be done with the loss of a family member. They’re probably stressed out at the responsibilities of settling an estate. A phone call is cold and impersonal and a bother at this sensitive time. Direct mail is less intrusive because they can look at it when they’re ready. A professional or handwritten letter is a respectful way to show your interest without pressing them too much.

Create the Perfect Message

When you craft your real estate direct mail marketing materials, you can choose how to say what you want to say. Be subtle about your message as you start off with a version of “I’m sorry for your loss.” Consider how you can help make their life easier and explain it to them in terms they understand.

You can craft a message that shows how they benefit from selling their home or property to you. The heirs won’t have the responsibility of cleaning up the house or updating it before putting it on the market. Since you pay cash, they will have money in their hands right away.

A Faster Turnaround

When houses are in probate, it can be difficult to sell them. Many lenders won’t finance a buyer until probate is closed. The sellers may be looking to sell quickly to pay off debts from the deceased. As a cash house buyer, you can be the answer to their problem.

While it can be difficult to market to sellers with homes in probate, this is a profitable niche that you want to take advantage of. Let us help you create the perfect mailer to reach this unique audience and help you close the deal. Contact us at 978-269-0245 to learn more about how we can help. 

If you have an affiliate program but it isn’t living up to its full potential, you might want to consider becoming a coach or mentor. In this role, you can teach and encourage others to maximize their results and earnings to benefit both of you.

What Does a Mentor Do?

An affiliate coach or mentor provides an affiliate program for people to join, but they don’t stop there. Along with the program’s manual, they offer 1-on-1 coaching to teach someone how to build their internet business from nothing.

Some of the things an affiliate coach does:

·         Offers ideas and teaches you how to come up with your own to increase income.

·         Motivates you to keep working.

·         Provides feedback on performance.

·         Helps you correct mistakes.

·         Encourages you to keep going.

·         Keeps you on track.

Anyone interested in becoming a successful affiliate can benefit from having a coach on their team. As you promote the advantages, you will gain interest.

How Being an Affiliate Coach or Mentor Benefits You

So, it’s easy to see the advantages for the new affiliate to having their own coach. The question you may have is how it will benefit you. Since it sounds like more work, you want to know that the payoff is worth it.

·         You get more participants in your affiliate program. If potential affiliates compare your program with coaching to someone else who just offers a plain program, they are more likely to choose you because they see the potential for success.

·         Your participants are more successful. The majority of affiliates earn very little money and fade away in time. With coaching, their chances of success go up and the amount earned increases.

·         Your earnings also increase. Most coaches take a percentage of the profits in return for their assistance. As your affiliates earn more, so do you.

You can take your affiliate program to the next level if you have the time and willingness to invest in the affiliates as a coach or mentor. 

William Wrigley Jr. is credited to the invention of direct marketing with his first mass mailing of Wrigley’s chewing gum. The story is intriguing in its own right, and it can provide valuable information that is still relevant today.

Seizing an Idea

Wrigley didn’t start out thinking about gum, as his first idea was soap. William Wrigley Jr.’s father had a company that made scouring soaps where he worked. He started off as a production worker later moving on to a salesman. The profit margins were low and Wrigley included free items to entice merchants to buy, such as baking powder. His sales went well, but he moved on from soap to baking powder.

Now that Wrigley was selling baking powder, he decided to add a freebie to it as well. This time it was two packs of chewing gum for every purchase of baking powder. Soon he completely moved away from baking powder and focused entirely on chewing gum. He developed his own brand and developed the idea of selling the gum beside the checkout counter as he recognized it was an impulse buy.

Change in Strategy

With an economical crisis at the turn of the century. Chewing gum was viewed as a non-necessity, luxury item. Wrigley didn’t give up though. Instead, he bought more advertising and touted his gum as an after-dinner product to help clean teeth and soothe the throat. He also used the strategy that if someone could afford to have a telephone, they could buy a pack of gum.

Once Wrigley hit upon this idea, he mailed a pack of his gum to every home listed in the phone directory at that time – the first direct mailing campaign. He continued to follow this plan and ended up mailing the gum to around seven million homes.

His motto was simple: Keep looking for ideas and “tell ‘em quick and tell ‘em often.” His answer to a magazine who asked about his secret is still as relevant today for marketers. 

Have you ever gotten one of those texts telling you about some product or service? Maybe you signed up for a rewards program and now you get texts about special offers and deals. As an investor, you may have thought, “Hey, why don’t I try marketing with text messages?” This is a great option, but you should always make sure the laws and regulations in your market allow it.

Limits Imposed on Text Messages

Text messaging is going to be a regulated industry for businesses and other organizations. With new stipulations in place, companies won’t be able to send text messages without registering their phone numbers. They must be approved before they can use this option for marketing. Even if you’re approved, you must stay up to date on any changes to the rules of text messaging for marketing. If you fail to maintain compliance, the cost of fines will also go up. Remember this is not a cost per message but per recipient. So, if you send out a text message that isn’t compliant to 100 people, you pay the fine times 100. That can add up to a lot of money.

Not as Powerful as You Think

Text messaging has held some appeal as marketers look at it as the “next new thing.” However, it’s more powerful when used in conjunction with other marketing methods. You’re limited on your message and even the look of the message. Compare a plain text message to a direct mailing campaign and you’ll quickly see how much more you can do with direct mail. However, it can be a partner with direct mailings to add that extra touch.

Direct mail may seem old-school, but it’s stuck around for this long for one simple reason – It works! With the modern tools available, you have more options to customize it for your needs and audience.

If your direct mail campaign is looking a little tired, instead of looking for other options, let Open Letter Marketing help you revitalize your campaign with new ideas. Contact us today at 978-269-0245.