Epic Real Estate Investing - Direct Mail Got You Down? Here's What To Do About It | 277

Episode Date: June 26, 2017

Direct mail marketing got you down? Here’s what to do about it: First you must get to know your market and steadily promote your solutions to sellers. Then you should activate multiple strategies and spread your marketing for long-term success. Finally, the most important piece of the puzzle that will allow you to adapt to the marketing grind, and will set you up for investing success… Get it here on Epic Real Estate Investing. ______   The free course is new and improved!  To access to the two fastest and easiest strategies to a paycheck in real estate, go to FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com or text “FreeCourse” to 55678. What interests you most? • E.ducation • P.roperties • I.ncome • C.oaching Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Broadcasting from Terrio Studios in Glendale, California, it's time for Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. What's up? Hello. Hello, and welcome. Welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. This is the place where I show people how to escape the rat race using real estate. And if you're just getting started and or you're looking for new.

and creative ways of making money in real estate. I've put together a free course just for you, including a checklist on how to find motivated sellers. And why do we want to find motivated sellers? Well, these are property owners that are willing and able to sell you their property at a discount. Of all the real estate transactions that happen each year, 95% of them are by people or sellers that are not motivated, people that want to sell.

We want to find the ones that are motivated, those that need to sell. And these are property owners that are motivated, willing and able to sell you their property at a discount because they got something going on in their life where if they sell their property fast and they get it done easily, it's actually going to solve a problem that they got going on. So to access that free course, go to free real estate investing course.com. Never forget that sellers will exchange equity for peace of mind. And if you can be the person delivering the peace of mind, that equity that they exchange will be yours. All righty. So free real estate investing course.com. So, so free real estate investing course.com. So

the epic intensive weapons of mass production where you can get the highly potent and powerful tools and methods every real estate investor can use to find more motivated sellers, buyers, and private lenders in as little as 60 seconds. Even if you think you've heard it all before, it's coming up. It's on the calendar for August 3rd through the 5th in St. Louis, Missouri. There might be a few of the free tickets remaining. They've been going quickly. So I guess all of you that have been requesting us to move the epic intensive further east,

you are lying because you are snatching up those tickets. It's going to be a full house. And, you know, so if you'd like to join us, please do go to Epicintensive.com to reserve your seat. Epicintensive.com. And even if the free tickets are all gone, it's still essentially free. I mean, it's $197. That's the early bird price. That's going to go up as we near capacity.

But it's 197 right now or it will be within the next couple days, depending on when you're listening to this. And that comes with a 10 times guarantee. Yes, I'm going to take all. the risk away from you. If you don't feel you get at least 10 times the value of the price you paid for admission, um, simply let us know. And you will receive a full refund right there on the spot. So the epic intensive, it's really, it's quite, quite extraordinary. Um, something I'd never could have imagined. It's quickly becoming known as the go-to real estate investing event. It's rapidly becoming the industry renowned event as the all meet no filler real estate investing

workshop. It's pretty amazing when you, when you throw an event just, I don't know, I think we've only it five, six times and its reputation is already catching on and its reputation already precedes each announcement that we make for that event. So you're not going to want to miss this one. I promise you that. So go to epicintensive.com to grab your seat before they are all gone. And actually, actually before you do that, this week we are giving three free tickets plus a VIP upgrade away. Go over to our public Facebook page where this week I will award three winners with free tickets and a free VIP upgrade, which means you get to come to our mastermind event the day before,

and you get to have lunch with us the first day of the event, and you get preferred admission and preferred seating right up front. All right, so we're going to give three of those away, and I will pick one winner. My staff will pick one winner, and then I'll let you, the audience, pick the third winner. And to do that, all you have to do is go over to our Facebook group. This is not the private group.

This is the public group. It's the Epic Real Estate Investing Epic Pro Academy page. And just simply post and let us know there why you want to go and what it will do for your business. So go to Facebook, look up Epic Real Estate Investing basically slash Epic Pro Academy. And just follow the instructions there on the post. All righty. And we will pick three winners and you get to pick one of them. So this week I had the good fortune to appear on Joe McCall's podcast, Realist

State Investing Mastery. Great show if you're not subscribed. Joe's a really smart guy. It happens to be right there from St. Louis, Missouri. So we'll be seeing him shortly at the Epic Intensive. And he asked me a question about direct mail on his podcast. And it's diminishing response rate, what we were doing about it. And I just kind of got to thinking and thought it would make sense to share some of my thoughts here on that specific question. He asked me a bunch of questions. So go listen to that episode. But this specific question, I want to talk about that because I think it's on a lot of people's mind. And so what are my thoughts about it and what there is to do about it if that happens to

be your reality too. So indeed, direct mail is the response. It's getting smaller. It's reducing a little bit. But, but you know, historically speaking, direct mail response has always been in the one to two percent response rate. And we've really just been spoiled over the last decade or so since, yeah, I guess, probably eight, nine years, since the audience to which we, we've.

we market, has had an above average challenge. They've had above average problems. Therefore, we've had an above average response rate on our marketing. So that's first. Keep response rates in perspective. Direct mail, it's always been rather low. Therefore, being always rather expensive. And you've always had to send just a lot of mail for it to be effective.

It's always been that way. Like I said, we've just been a little bit spoiled. here in the last eight, nine years as the real estate investing, I don't know, industry, I guess, or the profession has really embraced that form of marketing and taken it on and put pumped a lot of dollars into it and have done really well with it. And you'll still do well with it. It's still our number one deal producer. So don't think it's not working. It's just kind of settling back to down to the way it normally does work. All right. Second thing, if you're relying on just one form of marketing, then you're going to experience some challenges.

I don't know of a form out there unless you just, you have a massive, massive marketing budget. I don't know of one form out there that's going to produce all of your results, meaning, I mean, all marketing works, right? All marketing works flat out. It doesn't matter what market you're in and what you're buying or what you're selling. Marketing works. But it evolves. It ebbs and flows. And it's really difficult to predict when and where it will ebb and when and where it will flow.

and different types of marketing, they ebb and flow at different times. And if you don't know what that means, it means it comes and goes, it goes up and down, the effectiveness of it, it gets good and it gets bad. It gets good, it gets bad, or it gets mediocre, and then it gets great, and then it gets terrible, and it just goes back and forth. It's kind of a living, a living, breathing organism. I was going to say mechanism. I guess it's both.

But, I mean, for example, in many markets, you know, bandit signs, they have proven essentially cost prohibitive because they're everywhere in some. some markets. Yet in other markets where they're not, they work really, really well. So to protect yourself against this type of uncertainty of when it's going to ebb, when it's going to flow you, you've got to have more than one form of marketing running. And I'd recommend you have somewhere between three and five different forms of marketing running. I mean, you absolutely want to have direct mail in your arsenal somewhere. I think you should have some sort of online marketing, whether it's

whether it is pay per click or it's Facebook, you can run Facebook ads really, really inexpensively. I mean, just having a post and boosting that post at $10 a day.

I mean, you're talking about $300 a month just to constantly have your message out there in front of people, whether you're promoting a property that you have under contract or a fix and flip

that you're trying to sell or you're promoting the solutions that you have to potential people that find themselves in some sort of destroy. property owners in distress. So those I think you should have running or whether, you know, you're posting consistently

or having someone post for you consistently to online classifies like a Craigslist. A lot of trash on Craigslist. It's really crowded. It's really noisy there. But it's still where all of the eyeballs are. I think it's the number two or three most visited website on the entire internet. So you've got to be there. It's just kind of a necessary place that you have to play.

And then other forms. I mean, you want to make a marketing. machine out of yourself. You know, you want to be a lead generator yourself. So when you go to Ria meetings or you go to networking groups, you want to know how to generate leads, that's got to always be running. You've got to promote yourself in that manner. Other things we're doing is we're seeking out vacant properties on property management websites and we are sending them just offers right in the mail. That's our direct mail piece. We just send an offer right there in the mail. So those are some of the things. You've got to have three to five of those things running. Okay. Third thing is

Sometimes it takes time for marketing to produce the results you're looking for. And many quit before they ever give that marketing channel a chance. So if you've got a budget for your marketing, spread it out over six months, at least. One of the big questions I always ask when people come into the office and we hook up their whole business and we schedule out their marketing and we ask them, like, okay, here's the budget you need to generate the amount of leads to generate the amount of business. money that you want to make. And I always ask them, like, okay, so if it's, if we focused on this amount of money each month and you don't do a deal in the next six months, is that going to cause any sort of

financial hardship for you? Because I don't want people going broke on marketing. So you don't have to start where you have to, I mean, you don't have to start there at the minimum to produce your desired income because you can do deals and you can scale up and and take a portion of your profits and redirect that towards marketing. Just kind of scale up that way. But I always ask that question because it is very possible you could do a bunch of marketing and not do a deal in six months.

It just depends on where you're starting, what you're looking for, what your experience level is, and, you know, just kind of where you are in your market, what types of opportunities you're creating for yourself. That's very possible. But in the same breath, it's also very possible to do three deals in your very first 30 days. We just don't know what we're going to get. You've got to give marketing a chance and you've got to do it consistently. So the point being here is marketing works.

You merely have to keep your finger on the pulse of what your customer wants and how to consistently promote your message and solutions to them. It's no more complicated than that. Let me just say that again. All you have to do to be a good marketer and you've got to be a good marketer in this business. You have to keep your finger on the pulse of what your customer wants. You've got to understand what they're looking for. You've got to know their problems.

You've got to understand what's going to take to solve their problems. And then you have to consistently promote the solutions to them. It's no more complicated than that. So if you feel your marketing isn't working, some things to consider. One, are your expectations realistic? Have you given enough time is what I'm asking you there? Other thing is, is your message relevant to your customer? You know, is your customer what you have on your marketing materials?

Is that appealing to your customer? Is that the solution they're looking for? right? And if it's the same solution that they're receiving from everybody, how can you make yours different? Is your customer consistently seeing your message? Are they consistently seeing it? All right? So those are all things to consider if your marketing isn't working. So know this. Your primary job here is not real estate investing. A lot of people think they're real estate investors. You're not, that's not your primary job. First, you are a marketer. Okay. That's your primary job. We are in the marketing business. Every entrepreneur, every business owner, you are in the marketing business.

second, you are a problem solver. That's the only reason people are going to give you money. That's the only reason people are going to buy your products or services. That's the only reason people are going to sell you their real estate at a discount is because you're solving a problem for them. So first you're a marketer. Second, you're a problem solver. Then third, you are a real estate investor.

But number one, you're absolutely a marketer. And if you get the first two down right, you're going to be a de facto real estate investor anyway because you're going to be buying property at a discount. You're going to be able to buy low and sell high. All right. But number one, you are a marketer. All right, next. If the response rates are dropping for you, what is there to do about that?

Well, there are probably multiple correct answers to this question. I mean, spend more would be an obvious one, right? There's some other stuff out there, I'm sure. But here's what we've done here in our office because we're just like you. We're in the trenches. We're doing direct mail. We're doing all the marketing. We're doing the paper click.

We're doing the Facebook. We're doing the classified ads. We are scraping FISBO sites. we are scraping property management sites. We are doing it all and we are marketing. Okay. But our response rates are dropping as well. So this is what we've done.

So to increase our response rate, almost everything at the moment right now, we are sending to a 24-hour recorded message. We're saying, hey, to hear how this works, call this recorded message. No one's going to answer. Now, I've gone back and forth on this. And this is what I mean.

We're marketing ebbs and flows and it changes and you've got to adapt and you've got to be flexible in your approach. Because this is how I started was sending everything to adjust to a 24-hour recorded message. Then I changed my mind a few years ago and said, nope, you have to answer every call live. That is the best time to do it. You got to call. You have to pick up that phone when that seller is calling you on their time. Because if you try and chase them down, then now you're trying to coordinate their timing there

so they actually will talk to you on your time. And that can be really challenging. and it's a lot of dialing and a lot of tracking down people that sometimes you just never get back in touch with. Now, I've come back, come back full circle, and we are sending everything to a 24-hour recorded message, and who knows, in six months, that might change again. But that's what we're doing right now because it increases the response rate. And when that response rate is being sent to a call capture phone number, all we want to do is just capture the data. We're just trying to capture the lead. Okay.

So that's why we're doing that right now. Now, to increase the conversion rate, we've kicked up the whole follow-up procedure, the follow-up structures of what we didn't have when I first started. I didn't know about these or I don't think the technology was available then. We still did a lot of follow-up. But follow-up back then was, that was a lot of energy. That's a lot of picking up and dial. There's a lot of doing those, you know, those mob belt arm curls when you're picking up the phone

and sending it down, picking up the phone, set it down. So here's an example. Our director mail promotes a 24-I recorded message. and for those that leave a message, we automatically get notified that someone just left a message and boom, we pick up the phone and call them back right away. I mean, the very instant. So we're still kind of getting a little bit of the best of both worlds.

I think that's the best time to follow up as fast as possible while it's still at the top of mind for your seller. So for those that leave a message, when they call our 24-hour recorded message, when they leave a message, we get a notification we call back right away. Now, for those that hang up, we do a voice broadcast to them the following day using a live answer number as the caller ID. So when they call back, now we pick up live.

And then as a backup, if we can't answer the call live, then we have a live call center that does that for us. Of which, as soon as they take down the caller's information, it drops right into our CRM and boom, we get notified and we call them back right away. So that's how we've increased our response rates. We've put this, we're just focused on capturing that leads information and then making that initial contact as fast as we possibly can. But we want to capture the lead information so we can follow it. We can put them in our system. All right.

So now that we've captured that all of that information, our leads are then sent a weekly email. They fall right into that, our email response for 52 weeks. They are sent a monthly voice broadcast. They are sent a monthly text broadcast. So we sent out a voice broadcast. the first Monday of every month. We sent out a text broadcast, the third Monday of every month,

to the entire list, to every lead that we've ever captured in history. I think we're up to like, I don't know, nine, 10,000 numbers now. And then they are continued to be sent a monthly piece of mail. Okay. And then they are sent a three option letter of intent. We send them a three option letter of intent every 90 days. And this is all automated or delegated. I mean, it's automatic.

It happens automatically. I mean, it's what we set up for our business. and just recently we started setting that up for our client's businesses as well. But the point being is less than 5% of your acquisitions are going to come from that very first phone call, that very initial contact, less than 5%. But 80% of your acquisitions are going to come from the contacts that you make, contact number 5 through 12. So your follow-up system is vital.

You've got to, but you need somebody to follow up with. So that's why we've changed our whole psychologist. around this, our whole method is let's just capture as many leads as we possibly can, put them in our follow-up machine, because we know that's where 80% of our acquisitions are going to come from anyway on contacts 5 through 12. So after that first or second contact, everything else is automated. So contact number three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, all happen automatically.

Okay. So number one, capture the data to follow up and keep following up. And just because your, you know, your direct mail might not be working. the way it used to doesn't mean sellers aren't selling their property that discounts anymore. All right. So that's how we've maximized our marketing dollars. So we're not just trying to crush it and hit that home run the very first time that they call because we know most of the money and most of the wins are after that first contact. So our whole goal is just capture the data and follow up with it.

Okay. And yeah, if your direct mail is dwindling, don't don't get all discouraged that there's a bunch of competition out there. and it's not like it used to be. Don't get discouraged that, oh, no one wants to sell at a discount anymore because property values are appreciating everywhere. No, people sell properties at a discount because they got a problem because something in life happened to them. And life continues to happen to people every single day.

And when it does, you just want to make sure that it's your message, your solution that's in front of them when that happens. All right? So I'll leave you with this. First, you're a marketer. Second, you're a problem solver. And third, you are a real estate investor. And to be a great marketer,

You must know who your customer is. You must know their challenges. You must know what they want. And then you must promote your solutions to them and promote your solutions to them consistently. If you keep that at the top of mind, you're going to be a great marketer. And indirectly, you're going to be a great real estate investor.

All righty, that's it for today. I'll see you next week on another episode of Epic Real Estate Investing. God bless. And to your success, I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream. You've been listening to Epic. Real Estate Investing, the world's foremost authority on separating the facts from the BS in

real estate investing education. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to visit iTunes and share your thoughts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time here at Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com. Thank you.