When you start sending out a lot of direct mail to many different lists that you purchased from list vendors, you will find that as you buy more lists, your marketing costs get increasingly more expensive. If you start tracking your results (you should be doing this already) then you will find that many of the sellers that you have purchased houses from in the past, ended up being on more than one of your mailing lists. You can test this easily by just reviewing your closed deals and running the seller’s name through all of your lists.
You can use Property List Manager to do this for you, or you can even just use the search feature in excel (control F) to type in the individual’s name and search all of your previous lists that you purchased to see how many times that seller showed up on different lists. The results may surprise you. You will find that many of the people that you are buying houses from are on more than one list. And the more mailing lists they are on, the more likely they are to be motivated to sell their property.
If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Someone who just filed bankruptcy, recently got divorced and is also in foreclosure is much more likely to want to sell their house than say someone who just got divorced recently. So if you purchased motivated seller leads for people that filed bankruptcy AND recently got divorced AND are in foreclosure and you cross referenced them then those individuals that are on ALL THREE LISTS would be the most motivated to sell. In fact, the more lists a motivated seller is on, the more likely they will be to sell their house.
Here is another example. Absentee owners with a rental property that also have a code violation on their property will be more motivated to sell. If you purchased a code violation list AND you purchased an absentee list then if you could combine them and see who is on BOTH lists you would have a way more motivated seller. And if you cross referenced this with an eviction list then they would be EVER MORE MOTIVATED.
Using a list stacking software like Property List Manager allows you to load ALL of your mailing lists into the program (which is cloud based). Then you can see which of your sellers are on more than one mailing list. That way, you can target your approach by sending out a much more focused mailing to a more targeted seller. This will dramatically reduce your postage and mailing costs, and will also substantially increase your conversion rate.
The program is really easy to use. You just map and import your different mailing lists that you have purchased. Then after you have done that, you stack, sort and filter the addresses to identify those sellers that are most likely to be motivated to sell. You can take this list and export it to a CSV or excel file. And then you can use that file by giving it to your mail house for a new mailing. Since your approach is much more targeted you could use a more higher end custom mail piece than a simple postcard (which you are probably using now). For example you could create a color letter with a hand written address and a real postage stamp (instead of a bulk mail stamp). Your open rates would increase and your conversion rates would increase. You would buy more houses with less mailing costs because your approach is more targeted.
It’s a pretty awesome tool for real estate investors. If you want to check out Property List Manager then click on the image below:
