Epic Real Estate Investing - Everything You Need to Know About Direct Mail Marketing for Motivated Sellers | 700

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

Direct mail marketing works if you do it right. In today’s episode, we are showing you how to do it appropriately.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Matt here. You know, everyone is talking about real estate investing, right? It sure seems so. I mean, everybody wants to get in on the action. And we all know that finding off-market deals, it can be tough. It can be really tough. But what almost no one understands about real estate investing is the concept of finding truly motivated sellers.

Because it's not spending more on marketing to finding these motivated sellers that helps you buy discount of real estate. It's setting up a really good automated lead machine that finds quality sellers. around the clock. And that can happen, even if you can't stop trying every new strategy that you see at the Ria Clubs or hear about on a podcast. As long as you're also contacting your leads, setting appointments, and making offers. And before I forget, if you like the sound of where this is going and you want to go deeper, you might like to attend the live three-day Epic Intensive Lead Machine Workshop. It's July 18th through the 20th. And if that sounds interesting, then head on over to

Epicintensive.com. Get the details. That's Epicintensive.com. All right. Now let's get on with the show. Making offers and cashing checks. What's new? What's next? With Ashley Montaigne. Hey guys, what's up? Ash here, Matt's assistant. I wanted to real quickly share with you what's new and what's next at Epic Real Estate before Matt gets into the show.

So let's get into it. Let's start with what's new. Already, so if you like us on Facebook or are a part of any of our private Facebook groups, Matt has been going live nearly every day and he's covering a third. ton of different topics, just to list off a couple that he covered this week. What real estate investing in Facebook life have in common, negotiating tips, how to stay in control of the conversation with sellers, how to determine if a deal is a good deal, how to get the fortune out of the follow-up.

Again, all sorts of topics. Make sure to check them out. Like them. Comment if you have any questions. We're here to help every step of the way and we'll be answering anything you guys leave for us in the comments. Speaking of our private Facebook groups, I wanted to share a couple of wins from this past follow-through Friday in the Epic Pro Academy.

So Jack and Josh made just over $75,000 in profit from two deals that they closed. Mara, Mara shared that she currently has 11 deals under contract. Wow. So two of those were added to this number this past week. Wow, congrats, Mara. That's amazing. So Devin, Devin had two wins this past week. He found himself a deeply discounted property for under $12,000. and he made $15,000 in profit on a deal that he closed. Congrats, Devin. That is amazing. Richard. Richard closed a wholesale deal this past week with both the buyer and the seller happy.

That's awesome, Richard. It's always good when both parties are happy at the end. Thank you to all the investors who shared this past week. We look forward to reading your wins next week as well. All right. So let's get into what's next. So the epic intensive is coming up here soon. We're just less than a month away.

We're hosting it in Manhattan. Beach, California, July 18 through the 20th. We're giving away some major bonuses once you sign up, which include a paid in full one-year membership to the Epic Pro Academy, Matt's all-inclusive online training vault, a copy of Matt's book Epic Freedom, a copy of his latest book, No Agent Needed, another free book, The Lead Machine Architecture, and we're going to be giving away some additional bonuses at the event as well. Tickets are going fast, so get yours today. All right, so that's all I have for you guys. See you next. week for what's doing what's next. Enjoy the show.

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit rei-aise.com. Here's Matt. Are you having trouble getting your direct mail marketing working to generate leads?

Or have you noticed a difference in your direct mail marketing's performance lately? Or maybe you're just looking for a good place to start implementing this time-honored lead generation marketing strategy. Well, let's go over that right now. And I'm going to show you what you need to know regarding direct mail marketing for real estate investing and how to increase the odds of it greatly working in your favor so that it works for you in finding motivated sellers that lead to great deals. So direct mail marketing has worked for generating leads since people have been receiving mail. And believe it or not, in today's high-tech world, it's still one of the more reliable

strategies to generate leads for real estate deals if you do it right. And even if you do it right, sometimes it's not right, as it can be a moving target, so to speak, meaning the results can vary greatly, and sometimes what was working today can completely stop working tomorrow. But if you heed some basic principles around direct mail marketing, it's easy to get back on track and stay there. So you can keep the motivated sellers calling. So before you take on this lead generation strategy, this marketing strategy, let me set your expectations appropriately. Direct mail marketing is a shotgun approach to marketing, meaning you're going to send a lot of mail with the hope that a few pieces are going to land in the right mailbox at the right time,

and that those motivated sellers are going to call you for help. So with any shotgun marketing approach, a low response rate should be expected. I mean, that's the reason it's called shotgun marketing, because you're spraying a bunch of different bullets, a bunch of little pellets, a bunch of a lot of ammo, hoping that something hits the target. So, direct mail marketing as an industry, it averages between 1 and 2% response rate. So for every 100 pieces sent, most direct mailers, regardless of industry, you're going to expect one to two inquiries.

So for this strategy to be really effective and work fast, volume, that really helps. But sending a lot isn't necessary. But for direct mail marketing to be effective, it really helps. You know, for example, Michael Pendleton of The Your First Deal program that we have here, printed small numbers of mailing pieces at home, and they just sent them out every single week. And he landed three sizable deals inside of his first couple months. So at the other end of the spectrum, however, an epic private client, Brad Donnelly, he sends tens of thousands of mailing pieces every month. And at the time of this video recording, he's closing in excess of $200,000 of business per month. So, volume, not necessary, as Michael demonstrated, but you can see how this strategy can really scale by focusing on volume.

You know, when Mercedes and I, we got started each morning, we would just wake up and we'd write 10 letters each over a cup of coffee. We'd just drop it in the mail and then just go on about our day. So we did that for a few years, and you can see where we ended up. And so I say, if you can't do the volume, you must do the consistent. So direct mail marketing, it works. and there are many ways to do it. But for it to work, expect to do volume or to be consistent over time.

Obviously, if you can do both, hey, the sky is the limit. All right? So now the second level of expectations, the sellers that do inquire about the help that you can provide, they're going to come in four categories. And I refer to them as apples.

So there's four types of people you're going to meet. You're going to meet red apples. You are going to meet green apples. Uh-oh. I don't have a brown pen, but you are going to meet brown apples. Let's just pretend that purple is a brown, and you are going to meet rotten apples. So our red apples, these are people that need to sell. These are the people you're looking for.

The green apples are the people that want to sell. the brown apples are curious. They just want to know how much they can probably get for their property and what's this all about. How does this work? They got lots of questions. And then you have the rotten apples, who I refer to affectionately as crazy.

Okay? They're the ones that are angry. They're mad at the world. They don't understand what you're trying to do or what you're trying to pull over on them and they're just, you know, they're mad at other things in the world and they just tend to take it out on you

because you are the most convenient at that point in time. All right. So these are the four types of people you're going to interact. Now I'm going to give you the formula for success and how you delegate your time to them or how you allocate your time.

Or I'll give you the percentages first and then we'll go over the time. So about 3% of the sellers you interact with are going to be red apples. That's it. Only about 3%. The green apples is going to amount to about 12%. The curious apples, the brown ones, that's about 70%.

This is the majority of the people that you're going to be interacting with. And then down here, you've got about 15% that are crazy. So now you know what to expect. If you generate 100 leads, there's probably going to be three red apples in there. There's going to be 12 green ones. And then the rest will be curious, mostly curious and a little bit crazy. All right. So here's the formula for success as far as your time goes.

I want you to spend 90% of your time with the red apples. 90% of your time with the red apples. 10% with the green apples. All right. So it doesn't leave us a whole lot of time left, does it? Exactly. So once you've identified one of your leads as a brown apple, you were going to spend zero time with that.

them and you're going to let your follow-up system spend the time with them until they become green or red later on down the road because some of them well a lot of them well so the follow-up is really really important but I don't want you spending your time on these because you really don't know when they're actually going to turn green or red okay and then the crazy people you're going to flat out just ignore them sometimes a little bit more difficult to do than it is to say but ignore them They have nothing to do with you, nothing to do with your business. They got other things going on in their world, and don't just flat out ignore them. Okay?

So that's the formula for success. Let me show you the formula for failure. Those people that get into this business and they quit the business, this is typically what they do. This is typically how they allocate their time. They will spend 90% of their time with the curious apples trying to force them to be read. that can be a recipe for extreme frustration, disaster, and a quick exit out of this business. So they spend 90% of their time with the curious apples trying to turn them red and they focus on the crazies. They can't get those negative experiences out of their head and it messes up all of their interaction with the other apples that are out there.

The other, what's that 85% that are out there that are waiting for you? that are looking for what you have to offer. All right. So now, you know these are the four types. This is how they'll be distributed amongst your marketing and the leads that you talk to. This green row here is the recipe for success and how you allocate your time.

This red here, don't do this. Don't spend any time with the brown apples once you determine that they're brown, let your follow-up system do that. And these crazy people just flat ignore them. Don't do it. All of the people that fail in this business do, they focus on them and it interrupts.

it gets in the way. So now that your expectations are set, let's discuss what there is to generally do, and then I'll give you some specifics of what to do. So generally, you must follow the five commandments of direct mail marketing. And I share these with you right now because if you understand these commandments, direct mail marketing will always work for you. That's a powerful statement, isn't it? Will always work for you, unless, of course, they outlaw mail at some point. But if you understand these commandments, direct mail marketing will always work for you. And what I mean by that is, as a marketer, and that's who you are, you are a marketer before you're really an investor, because it takes the marketing to create the opportunity so you can actually position yourself

to invest. So as a marketer, you're going to always be testing because what works right now isn't guaranteed to work tomorrow. You'll be making adjustments throughout your real estate investing journey. And if you understand these commandments, you know exactly where to make these adjustments. So direct mail's five commandments. The first one is get delivered. Pretty simple and straightforward. And what could interrupt your delivery is obviously, you know, wrong postage or improper packaging for your mail piece. But more commonly, delivery could be thwarted by out-of-date data. And additionally, you want to make sure that you're getting delivered to the right person, a potentially motivated seller. And I'll go over that a little bit later on how to increase the

motivation within your mailing list. So make sure though you're using current information and you are indeed sending your mail to potentially motivated sellers. Like I said, we'll cover that in a minute. The second commandment, get noticed, meaning you want to stand out in someone's mailbox. And that can be done in a number of ways. You can use, you know, different color envelopes, window envelopes, unconventional shapes of your postcards, stickers, something called lumpy mail. It's like putting a little paper clip in your letters, so it has a little weight to it and it gets noticed that way, or an eraser, or a pen, or a piece of candy, just something that makes the envelope lumpy. Here's a hint or a clue or a tip. Start paying attention to your own mail. When you go to the

mailbox and you pick out your own mail, start paying attention to that and notice what you notice, as there lies a lot of really good clues and ideas as to how you could get your direct mail noticed as well. Right. Third thing, get opened. And this is closely related to number of number two, getting noticed. But making it look personal, like looking like a birthday card or a party invitation, that can increase your open rates, making sure something intriguing is there, maybe, like a check that shows through your window envelope, or enclosing the envelope with something special, like, you know, sealing it, closing it with the shiny gold sticker or a seal. You know, something that Mercedes and I, we used to do all the time is just to, we just fold the flap of the

envelope inside of the little flap. So it was like the envelope flap was tucked inside. And we'd do that instead of actually sealing it. And that always got opened. You know, Catalina, an Epic Pro Academy member, she used to send her mail in U.S. priority envelopes. Again, notice what you notice in your own mail. What do you feel compelled to open? So that's another clue as to how you could design your own direct mail campaign to get it opened also. So the fourth commandment, is to get read, right? You want the person to read it. Once the seller has opened up your mail,

doesn't mean they're necessarily gonna read it. You want them to read it and read it all the way through. So what's gonna compel them to do that? Well, one, first thing, it could be a strong headline. Second is it handwritten or is it personalized? Third is, they're a photo of the house, a photo of you and your family, or of you and your dog, or you and your family in your dog,

or a different color ink, or the tone of the words. Do they express a strong sales message, Or do your words convey genuine concern for the seller? Or do your words actually help the seller in some way? You know, at the end of the day, the seller is going to work with a person that they believe that can actually help them. And from my experience, the best way to do that is to, well, actually help them. It's a dirty little trick, isn't it? Helping people.

So I'm currently of the opinion, and I don't think this is ever going to change. Not anytime soon, that's for sure. It may, but I doubt it. And that is, the more technologically advanced that we get as a society, the more technology that gets infiltrated or implemented into our daily lives, the more old-fashioned service and help is going to prevail. So consider that as well. All right.

So just basically be nice and helpful in your mail's messaging. All right. So the fifth commandment is get action. You've got to have your mail. It has to get a response, right? You've got to get the action. So make sure there's always a strong call to action inside of your message. And a reason to take that action right now to create some urgency.

So tell the seller what you want them to do, how to contact you. Do you want them to text you? Do you want them to call you? Send you an email. Do you want them to go to your website? And then create some urgency around taking that action so they do it right now. Because if you don't, most people just aren't going to do it. You've got to give them a reason.

So you could write something like this. I'm going to buy a house this month, but I can't buy them all. So call me so I can look at yours first. That creates some urgency. Or I'm looking to add three more properties to my portfolio in the next two weeks, but that's my limit. Visit my website for a quick, fast cash offer on your property. So this is two examples, but there are countless things you can say and do to create urgency. I just want to give you two examples.

And with all that said, use your personal discretion about how your mail is presented once opened, as everything that can cause it to get red can also cause it to not get red. So put yourself in the shoes of the seller and just kind of ask yourself, what would I like to see, right? What would you like to see? What would catch your genuine attention

causing you wanting to read more? You got to constantly put yourself in your, I don't know, your customer's shoes. As a marketer, you've got to do that. And you're going to recognize how quickly your audience can catch on to your approach or the flavor or gimmick of the day. So be flexible in your approach

and be consistent in your efforts and goals. All right? So those are the five commandments of direct mail marketing, generally what there is to focus on. Now, what is there specifically to do? So let's go over that. First thing, the list, the mailing list.

Who are you going to send your direct mail to? What is the best list to send to? Well, you could send it to every house in your neighborhood, But the likelihood that everyone in your neighborhood would sell their property to you at a discount, that's highly unlikely. And it would probably be a very cost prohibitive approach for most people in this manner to find the ones that actually would. So we have to narrow that list down a little bit so we can increase the percentages, increase the odds in our favor. And so here enters the problem.

Remember, the first profit accelerated to attracting leads is you have to identify target. So ideally, you're looking for a property owner with a problem that a quick house sale, even if that house sale is at a discount, would solve or at least mitigate for the property owner. You know, problems we're looking for like divorce, vacant houses, tax liens, inherited houses, bankruptcy, code violations, stuff like that. Now, although these types of problems don't guarantee seller motivation, the chances that there is seller motivation, seller motivation are significantly increased if those things exist. So the likely presence of seller motivation, it can be increased even more when your mailing list consists of more than one of those

problem criteria. For example, if you had a list of people that were going through a divorce and were owners of a vacant property, that would typically be a higher level of motivation than just an owner going through a divorce. Got it? Further, imagine this. If your list consisted of people where the owners were going through a divorce, they owned a vacant house,

and they were behind on their property taxes, now we've got three motivating factors that we're looking at, right? This is called factor stacking. So the more factors you can stack the greater the likelihood of that motivation. Now, the other side of that, however, is the more factors you stack, the smaller your list is going to become.

So you've got to find kind of your sweet spot between the most potentially motivated list that you can create while still having a big enough list to mail to, to keep you supplied with opportunity. So there are a number of services that can generate a list like this for you. And if you want to stack your lists, you're going to need to buy multiple lists. You're going to have to buy a lot of lists. but sometimes that can work out for you financially, favorably financially, because you know, you buy a lot of lists up front, so there's a little bit more of expense there, but your mailing expense gets reduced significantly because you're mailing to a much smaller quantity of people.

So that makes sense? So you're going to need to buy a lot of lists and likely from various sources. I don't think there's really a one-size-fits-all source that I've found out there that can give you everything that you're going to need. Certainly everyone is trying, and that changes on a day-to-day basis. but just be open to buying from different sources. And then what you're going to do is you're going to compile all of those lists, and you're going to stack those factors.

And what I'll do is I'll just, I'll list below some of the list services that we've used in the past. But understand, we're not affiliated with any of these, not at the time of this recording. We're not affiliated with any of these companies in any way and cannot provide customer support for any of them, nor can we control how they run their businesses. All I can say is that we've been satisfied customers of theirs at some point in time. All right, so go ahead and do your research and, and do what you see is best. If you'd like to contact us directly

to see what we're using right now, that we're open to that as well. But all that said, when it comes to direct mail marketing, volume tends to trump all. However, most just don't have or don't want that kind of a marketing budget to cause volume to work in their favor.

So the next best thing, and quite honestly, it could be the best thing. We haven't been doing this long enough to really tell which one works better because they both work very, very well. this could be the best thing for the smaller operator is to create a smaller factor stack list and then just invest a little bit more into a custom mailing piece and message. Like Catalina I mentioned earlier, you know, she was putting her mailing pieces.

She was actually writing, putting signed offers inside of priority envelopes. So that was costing like, I don't know, $4 or $5 per mail. But you can't send that to a list of 10,000 people. But if you've got a nice factor stacked list of, say, 300 people, all of a sudden that starts to make a little bit more sense. So just consider that, okay? And you're not going to get the call volume when you do that either, but your calls are likely going to be of much higher quality.

I mean, you still have to be consistent, but you can compensate for the lack of budget and volume with a higher quality touch and more specific personalized messages. And that brings us to the second thing. The second profit accelerated to attracting leads is to create curiosity. So we just identified the target by finding the problems within the list that we created, right? Now we create curiosity by promoting. promoting our solutions to that list. So as investors, our solutions are, but not limited to,

the ability to buy a house fast, to buy it with cash, to buy it with no fees, no hassle, no repairs, we can buy the house as is, we can exercise some discretion, we can provide multiple options, we can preserve an owner's dignity, we can preserve their credit score, we can get the job done the first time, stuff like that. I mean, we can really solve their situation. So we as investors, we bring a lot to the table for motivated sellers. We deliver peace of mind with our solutions, and they compensate us with equity. That's how it works. And if we'd rather attract them, then chase them, then we need to promote our solutions.

So we do attract them. Now, when crafting your solution message, stay focused on what's in it for the seller. So many people focus on their business and their company and their reputation and how much experience they have, which is all important stuff. but the seller really doesn't care about it. They just want to know what's in it for me and are you really going to be able to help me? So keep that in mind when you're crafting your solution message. And so stay focused on what's in it for the seller

and how they're going to benefit by working with you. Because there are many different approaches to delivering your message, such as you can do it with company-branded corporate approach, you can do it with a personalized low-key approach, you can use an alarming or mysterious approach, you can use an educational approach or combinations of everything.

of those. And you can find a bunch of different examples representing all of those approaches by you're just conducting a Google search of, say, real estate investor marketing samples. And then just click on images when you do that. And then you're going to see all kinds of stuff. You'll be able to scroll seemingly forever and just see countless different ideas for your marketing materials. And most mailing houses are going to have large assortments of pre-made marketing materials that you can use. You can just select from them. They're already done for you. But keep in mind, the five commandments of direct mail, right? Three of those five, they've got to got to do with getting noticed, getting opened, and getting read.

And using inexpensive pre-made marketing materials that can violate one or more of those commandments depending on how many investors are actually using them at that time and for how long they've been using them as well. So as I mentioned earlier, you know, what's working today might not work tomorrow. And as the marketer that you are, marketers were always testing. So one approach to marketing that I don't think is ever going to go out of style is showing people that you can help them by actually helping them. So keep that in mind with whatever approach you decide to deploy. An owner with any of the problems that I mentioned, they're going to want

to work with someone that they believe can actually help them. So do what you can to help them in your message, right? Here's an example of what I mean. This is a letter that we've been sending out and we've been getting great response from it. And depending on, you know, how many people are going to end up using it, I don't know. I wouldn't be so concerned with that right now, but just listen to it in the context of the actual message is the example. That's what I'm really given to you. And you can rip it off and use it if you want. I have no problem with that. But I want you to pay attention more to the message. So the headline is, if you need to sell your house fast, read this. So it's high, insert the seller's name. Sometimes you've just got to sell your house fast, but then you've

got all of those things to be concerned with like, you know, flashy real estate dudes trying to lowball you, trying to steal your property from you, trying to convince you that your house isn't worth anything, what have you? Well, you don't have to deal with any of that. No one should have to. If you're looking to sell your house fast at one, two, three main street fast, and you don't want to deal with someone that's going to put all kinds of high pressure on you and try to trick you, then give me a call. And you can insert your phone number, of course. And I can't guarantee that I'll buy your house, but I can guarantee I'll offer you a fair price on it. And I can also guarantee that our experience together will be beneficial to you regardless of.

because you'll get a very good idea of what to expect going through the process. There'll be no surprises. I buy houses pretty regularly, but I can't buy them all. And in any event that I can't buy yours, the worst case scenario is I'll give you some free advice on how to navigate the situation. And you'll know what to expect and what to watch out for. At the very least, let's hop on the phone to discuss sincerely Matt, your name and number. Got it? So I just wanted you to get the context of that. It's very just straightforward and it's, hey, if this is going to be a good fit, I'll go ahead and buy your house, I'll buy it fast. I'll make it really easy for you. If it's not going to fit, don't worry about it. I can point you in the right direction and where it might be a better fit for you

and tell you to what to watch out for. That's the context. That's helping them by actually, or showing them that you can help them by actually helping them. All right. So you can see how it's helpful and actually offering more help even if you can't buy their house. That's the So that's called spreading goodwill. And a property owner with a problem or problems, that's exactly what they're looking for. And when possible, you want to be the messenger of goodwill and helpfulness. Okay, now, we have found the problem, the list, we've created the solution message that we're going to promote. Now let's trigger action. And then what we'll do is we'll automate it so we can get out of the way to spend our time on the higher value activities. All right. So that

brings us to this third thing. The third thing is to trigger action. And this is really important to your lead generation marketing. And the question you want to ask yourself is, how simple and easy is it for a seller to contact you through their preferred method without you losing the opportunity to follow up? It's a key question. How simple and easy is it for you right now, for a seller right now to contact you through their preferred method? They want to contact you. without you losing the opportunity to follow up. So there's two parts to this one. For example, the first part is,

some sellers will prefer to contact you via phone, others via text message, while others would rather visit your website and take a look and read through at their leisure. So you've got to remove all obstacles that may interfere with sellers reaching out to you. And regardless of which one they do choose, this is the second part,

is you must be able to capture their information so that you can follow up. Here's why. Most transactions, they're not going to happen until after the eighth contact. 80% of all transactions will happen between contact number eight

and number 12. So triggering the seller's action so that it triggers your follow-up action, that's the key part. So you're triggering them to take an action so it triggers your follow-up action. And we do that with the trigger and trap toolkit that we use here in the Epic Pro Academy.

So once, once you have these three components in place, it's time to automate the process. And when it comes to direct mail, we do that through what's called a mail house. So there are countless options to choose from. But all there really is to do is once you've chosen a service is to provide the mailhouse with your mailing list, your mailing piece, and then just tell them how and when you want your mail sent. It can be that simple, that easy. And many mailing houses, they're going to provide all three of these services for you. They'll do the list creation for you. They'll give you a little bit of you. They'll give you the postcard, they'll do the letter design, and they'll have several pre-made options for you

to choose from, and then they'll do the physical mailing for you as well, when you want it mailed. So I recommend scheduling your mail for 90 days at a time so that you only have to be concerned with it four times a year. Because if you want consistent leads, you need to be consistent with your lead generation marketing. And if its execution is dependent on you, life will get in the way at some point or multiple points and disrupt your flow. So just schedule it with the mailhouse and let them manage that for you. Remove yourself from that process so you can ensure consistency. All right?

So can you do this? You can, right? So when will you begin? God bless to your success. Now, go make it rain. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

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