Direct Mail Lead Sources

In my last video we discussed the importance of online leads. The second lead source that I would recommend to Realtors right after online leads would be direct mail. It’s near and dear to my heart, I have done it for 20 plus years in the business and have found an enormous amount of success with it by becoming an expert in an area and continually farming that area.

What I look for when determining the best area or community to mail is, first, a community that I enjoy. I look for a place that I can see myself, an area that I know and that I that I love. You know you have an opportunity here because this is a very targeted and direct campaign, so with direct mail if I’m going to go to a specific community by all means I want to make sure it’s it’s an area that I enjoy working in. That’s going to be the first thing that I’m going to look for.

Now that I’ve started with loving the community in an area that I know and I want to work in, the next thing that I have to figure out is whether there will be a return on investment. That comes from the fact that I’m looking at this community as a listing opportunity. If people love this community so much that they never move and there are no transactions occurring in the community, unfortunately it might not be the right community to mail even though I love it. So I’m looking for a number of transactions that occur in the community to determine whether or not it will provide an ROI.

When it comes to what message are you sending in your direct mail marketing pieces, this is where you really want to be talking about about the community and not so much about yourself. It should be apparent in your mailer that you love the community and that you are a realtor expert in that community.

I always encourage realtors to give something of value in their mail. It could be as simple as a comparative market analysis on what’s traded over the last 6, 9, or 12 months within the community. It could be information on what’s going on around the community. Are there restaurants opening? Are there bars opening? Is there a new event area that it’s opening? Something that shows that you are really laser focused on that community, that you care about it, and you are in the know of what’s going on.

What you’re trying to do, again, is show yourself as the area expert long enough so that they will read below the fold and get to your information, keep your information, and be able to call on you when it’s time for them to sell their home.

My final recommendation is that you want to make sure you are ready for the phone to ring when you send this direct mail piece out. Remember you’ve gone to the expense of identifying the community, you’ve gone to the expense to print up the cards, to send those out by mail and to reach out to these owners. You’ve taken all the time to make sure that your message is such that the phone is going to ring. So be ready for that phone call, remember on the other end of that line is a person that is also an expert in the community – they’re a homeowner there. So you need to find some information that will be valuable to them and be ready for that call loaded with information about that that community so that you can make the most of that effort.

As a recap, we went through online leads and now we went into direct mail. My third lead source on the list I want to discuss is open houses. In the next video we’re going to talk about open houses and how to leverage them, how to promote the best open house, and how to really boost your business by using open houses.

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