I took the reripster course a couple years ago and Seth was all about using postcards with purchasing site. I actually set that up and had marginal sucess.
I used google and facebook/craigslist to promote my buying site and was able to generate quite a few leads that way.
But recently i am back on mail... I just sent my first 1500 blind offers, and saw a blog post where Seth was talking about how he is doing them now.
Which do you prefer? Do you think postcards are effective still? Pricewise they are about half the cost...
The whole "blind offers vs neutral letters" debate is really just a question of whether you have more time or money to spend on your business.
When I got started, I was very low on cash, but I had plenty of time... so it made a lot of sense to spend less money per mailer (postcards are very cheap) sending out neutral letters and asking people respond if they had unwanted real estate to sell. With postcards, I could reach a lot more people with a smaller budget. And since I actually had time to talk to sellers individually and get more information before making an offer, it gave me a better chance of finding a number that would make more sense for them.
However, I'll be the first to admit, neutral letters can chew up a TON of time. What made sense for me back then doesn't make nearly as much sense for me today (not unless I have someone else handling the phone calls for me). If you're someone who has a bigger budget for direct mail and not as much time, then I think blind offers can make a lot more sense.
While they do cost more, and take more time to formulate offer prices before the mail goes out, they're a MUCH more scalable way to get your offers into people's hands. You can also get to the point faster and dispel any misunderstandings the seller might have about you making them a full price offer (because they'll know from the first point of contact that your offer is going to be low, so if they don't want to play ball, you don't have to spend any more time talking about a deal that's never going to happen).
And of course, it's important to point out that the quality of your list matters FAR more than the mail piece itself. Neutral letters and blind offers will both perform terribly if you're sending mail to the wrong people... likewise, they can also both do very well when you're using the right list and being smart about your filtering criteria, so while the message is important, I wouldn't get as hung up on the type of letter as I would on the quality of your list - that's really where the gold is.
@retipsterseth (I've DM'ed you already abt some of this but will reiterate so the broader channel can chime in). OK, so I just completed the Beginners Guide to Deal Finding and I've yet to send my first campaign as we're setting up the overall system & automating as much as possible before hitting the launch button. My strategy is to source (super discounted) buy & hold rental properties. I have both time and money, but REALLY want to avoid arduous conversations w/ unlikely sellers. (And really just focus on the data / messaging / mail volume / conversion strategies, etc.). The engineer who's helping me is likely going to setup Twilio - as they've developed a voice transcriber service -->which should cut down on listening to long drawn-out VM's.
I was thinking about starting w/ postcards (and will try a ton of different methods), but I'd like to hit scale asap. I'm intrigued to know how blind offers for SFR/multi-fam properties would work? ... (AKA - how can I most efficiently send out 500 'offer letters' w/o having to individually research each property?) Or is that even possible? Any other suggestions for someone in my boat would be much appreciated! Cheers.
@James_Lee - I actually think houses would be even easier for doing blind offers than land, because the value is easier to quantify based on square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc (even though it doesn't account for the condition, you'd still have more data to work with than land will have available). The key would be including an "out" clause, or sending out more of a "letter of intent" rather than a purchase agreement. You wouldn't want to fully commit yourself to buying a property without an inspection and more due diligence... but just for the sake of getting a number out there and seeing if the seller is interested, you could save yourself some time this way.
I also think you'd probably have to make a higher offer based on the market value (more like 50% - 70% for houses, rather than 10% - 30% for land), but still, in theory (and that's all I have at this point, since I've never actually done blind offers for houses), it seems like it should be achievable.