Quick question for everyone doing direct mail or texting campaigns:
How often are you going back to the same list?
I’m trying to figure out the sweet spot for remarketing to the same people. Some folks say hit them every 3 months, others say wait 6-12 months, and I’ve even heard of people mailing the same list monthly (which seems aggressive to me, but maybe it works?).
So I’m curious:
How much time do you wait before mailing or texting the same list again?
What’s your approach to the messaging? Do you send the exact same letter/text, or do you change things up each time? If you change it, what are you doing differently?
Have you noticed a drop-off in response rates when you hit the same list multiple times, or does it stay pretty consistent?
I’ve been conservative about this, probably too conservative. I’ve been waiting 12+ months between campaigns to the same list because I don’t want to annoy people, but I’m wondering if I’m leaving money on the table by not staying more top-of-mind.
Would love to hear what’s been working (or not working) for you all.
Hey Charlotte- Great questions, I’m certainly looking forward to what others have to say. Ive only mailed, and only work in the same 3 states (NC/SC/GA)… 75% NC (I live here). I’m about 15 months into the business. I constantly remail since I mainly work in the same markets. I keep track of how many times I’ve mailed any parcel owner and what type of mail I sent (I do A/B testing a lot) using Pebble as my CRM. I talk to my sellers when they call, and I notice they often group all us investors together at times… so the more you can be in front of them, with something unique about your marketing, the better I think. Sometimes it’s just timing… sometimes sellers save the letters until they are ready to sell (I’ve had some sellers tell me they received 3 or 4 letters from me and saved them)…. I think if you have evidence that an area or market has value, it’s a good idea to stay in front of your sellers - my hot hot areas where I’ve done great deals, I mail every 4-6 weeks (believe me, the ones that don’t want to be mailed will let you know! Lol.) I mark those in my CRM “do not mail” and I also process any returned mail the same - you eventually become very efficient in one area lol. PLUS getting deals across the finish line is much easier when you worked in that area before.
I’ve done over 35 deals working in the same areas and re-mailing. And that’s in a very very competitive market… so IMO there is huge value in not only re-marketing, but focusing and going a mile deep in a market or two - you collect your own data and your able to make better decisions with that data (it’s hard to do that working in a bunch of different markets/states).
NP! Mail is trickly… bc we can only guess what sellers do with our precious letters lol (throw them away, save them in a junk drawer, ect) until they actually reach out to us. The best we can do is take the little evidence we track in our own land businesses and allow that to guide us (as best as possible)
I market to the same list for 6-8 months, and sometimes longer if I’m too busy to pull another. One of the things I’ve found, is that land ownership doesn’t change much over a years time. And those that do, are typically new owners who aren’t the motivated sellers that we’re trying to reach. Hope that helps.
Thanks for the intuitive response to Charlotte’s questions.
You have been extremely successful in just over a year with 35 closes transactions, great job!
I am new to investing in land and currently in the process of putting together the infrastructure to begin my land business. You mentioned pulling your own list, are you pulling directly from GIS map and treasure/tax assessor data and skip tracing or purchase from a data source or aggregator such as Core Logic, your local title company, List Source, or another data vendor?
Hey Ryan, Thanks for the kind words! I use LandInsights for market selection and The Land Portal for pulling and scrubbing my data. You can now do market selection and data pulling/scrubbing in both softwares (Orignally LI was made for market selection and The Land Portal for data pulling/scrubbing) but both softwares have come a very long way in just the last 12 months as the industry continues to mature… which of course means more folks will have the same tools - Which means we have to be even more unique + creative in our own businesses and figure out how to find (and work in) the “not so obvious” good markets.
