Biggest Real Estate Direct Mail Mistakes | Postal Impact

Direct mail is all amount momentum and consistency. Once you have that momentum, don’t break it, keep it going and you will see the magic begin to happen.
Christina Krause

Direct Mail Masterclass #4 | The One Missing Piece To Your Direct Mail Marketing w/ Christina Krause

We’re coming at you with part 4 of our 4-part series on direct mail marketing for real estate. In the last two episodes of this series, we sat down with Todd Swaggerty of Yellow Letter HQ to get his take on direct mail marketing for real estate, what you should be mailing, and when. We talked about lists and how to hone in on your ideal clients.

Today, we are sitting down with Christina Krause of Postal Impact and Virtual Lead Managers.

She’s been with us at CarrotCamp and at our Market Leader Summit. I am super excited for this episode as we sit down and dive deeper into tracking, training, metrics, and all of the insanely strategic things Christina does for her clients.

So get out a pen, get comfortable, and get ready to learn about what your direct mail campaign may be missing: DATA.

Don’t Miss The Other Episodes In This Direct Mail Series!

Read the Full Show Notes Below…

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Here at Carrot, we will always advocate for a well-rounded marketing mix. Your PPC, your direct mail, and your social campaigns are all just pieces of a larger puzzle.

When done correctly, each part of your marketing mix will amp each other up. Your offline marketing supporting your offline marketing and vice versa. This is why we are so excited about this series covering direct mail for real estate.

To close out the series, having Christina on was a perfect choice. Her data-driven lead-gen has been helping real estate investors all over the country get more leads and close more deals.

While her company isn’t a mail house, they do oversee the campaign from start to finish. They will generate leads, oversee the mailings, and most importantly, track the data throughout the entire sales pipeline.

Mailing To The Right People

For her clients, Christina will often run a direct mail campaign that is 90% postcards and 10% letters. According to the data, letters have a higher response rate but will cost more to send. As such, the letters are reserved for the highest value leads. To find the highest value leads, you’ll have to get the right lists, study the data, and track everything!

Using Direct Mail For Real Estate? What You Should Be Tracking…

You see the threads on all the real estate websites. People will say to do this or don’t do that. Put this on your mailpiece. Don’t put this on your mail piece. Taking the advice of people online can help you learn a thing or two, but to know what is going to work for your business you’ll have to do some testing. You want to put your money into things that are working, not hearsay from things you read online.

Tracking your results is the only way to know what works. Christina recommends these three KPI’s or Key Performance Indicators.

Your Response Rate – This is anyone who called you because of your postcard. Even if they asked to be taken off of your list, your mailer got their attention and initiated a response. Be sure to remove any dupes, only counting unique callers.
Your Net Lead Rate – Now how many of those people who called actually had a house they are ready to sell? This is your net lead rate. Even if they aren’t ready to sell today, they may be ready in the future. These people need to be put into a follow-up sequence as they are a potential lead. (More on following up later…) When looking at the numbers, you should aim to have 50% of your calls be net leads.
Your Appointment Booking Rate – Of those net leads, how many are you able to schedule an appointment with? As Christina says, you should be aggressively booking appointments. Getting in front of your potential client’s faces is huge. Try to set appointments with 30% of your net leads.
Closed Deals – As a good rule of thumb, 10% of those appointments you go on should turn into deals.

To get even more granular with the tracking, you can use different phone numbers for your different segments. There are many companies that can get this set up for you, even using Google Voice to set up multiple numbers that ring to one place can work.

Tracking all this data may seem overwhelming, but if you have a CRM (And you should have a CRM), it should be able to do all of the work for you. If you are just getting started out and don’t have a CRM in place, you can just as easily take out a pen and a piece of paper to track these things yourself.

Creating A Mailpiece That Gets Attention

Letters have a higher response rate than postcards. Part of this being that people simply like receiving mail. Having a first-class stamp as opposed to a bulk-rate marking is another way to add value to your mail piece.

Another interesting thing Christina recommends is to use envelopes with a point that seal with a sticker as opposed to the straight-edged one that you moisten to secure. Pointed envelopes are easier to open, this increasing your response rate.

If sending a postcard, less is more. You will want to get your message across in as few words as possible. One one side, state what you can offer. The other side can offer a few more details as well as a way to contact you.

People taking the time to read your postcard will have piqued interest and will want to dig a little deeper into who you are. Including the link to your Carrot site on your postcard will improve your credibility.

A great tip Christina offered is to send the mailer to yourself. When rifling through your mail, does the piece grab your attention? You may see something on your computer and think it looks great.

But that same mail piece may give off a completely different feel when you see it in person, amongst your other pieces of mail. Before sending out a mailer, Christina will send it to herself and to her staff for feedback.

The Biggest Mistakes People Are Making With Their Direct Mail Marketing for Real Estate

Christina and her team are responsible for millions of mail pieces each month. She’s worked with clients all over the country and she sees the things that help people succeed, vs. the mistakes that cause them to fail. You could have a great list and a great mail piece, but the path to conversion doesn’t stop there.

Untrained Sales People

Leads are not created equally. So many salespeople have grown accustomed to dealing with leads that come in from the internet, people who have been searching for a way to sell a home.

With direct mail marketing, the leads are a bit different. Your mailer got their attention, but they hadn’t been out there searching you out. With these leads, you are introducing a concept, which requires a bit more nurturing. You will be having a different conversation with them and cannot give up easily.

Lack of Momentum and Consistency

With direct mail, it is all about momentum and consistency. It will take a little bit to get things dialed in, but as Christina says, there is magic to that fourth month of direct mail marketing. Some people will stop around this time because they aren’t able to handle all of the leads. But unless you are able to find a way to handle it and keep things going, you will have to start all over again when you decide to start another campaign.

Lack Of Follow-Up

Another problem Christina sees is a lack of follow up. 60-70-% of your deals will come from follow-up. You need to get these leads into a follow-up sequence, hitting them with your message from all angles. You can call, email, and retarget via Facebook.

Wrapping up this series, I want to leave you with this: your offline marketing will drive your online demand. Your website is just a piece of the pie.

You need to use direct mail to activate people who may not have been thinking about selling. Using direct mail marketing for real estate will help you to scale, grow your business, and ultimately close more deals.

EP 199: Direct Mail Masterclass #4 | The One Missing Piece To Your Direct Mail Marketing w/ Christina Krause

Direct Mail Masterclass #4 | The One Missing Piece To Your Direct Mail Marketing w/ Christina Krause