So, who will we be mailing these postcards to? Absentee owners.
What are absentee owners? Absentee owners are property owners whose address of where to send their property tax bill to is not the same as the property address. This usually means that the owner is not living at the property since most property owners have their property tax bills sent to their home address.
Why absentee owners? Absentee owners are usually real estate investors that have purchased other real estate investment property. If we limit the list of absentee owners to people that have bought their houses in the last 6 months, your list will reflect active investors more accurately.
Where do you get your absentee owner mailing list? Many county assessor offices will sell you the absentee owner list for a very small amount of money. Or, you can order it for about 15 cents per name from a mailing list company like ListSource.
What do we typically mail to them? An inexpensive white (or yellow) 4"x6" postcard with simple black text. I prefer to use the US Postal Service's Click 2 Mail website, which makes it super easy to send these. You upload your mailing list, upload what you want to have on your postcard and then the US Postal Service will print and mail the postcards for you at about only 30 cents per postcard (yes, that includes printing and postage).
What do I put on the postcard? I have tried several different approaches, but I usually like to put my website and a telephone number for them to get more info about the deal, as well as a little info about why they are getting the postcard. For example, I might say: "I see that you purchased a property at 1234 Main Street on March 17th earlier this year and I have a great real estate investor deal that I need to sell significantly below market at 5678 Apple Lane." This way I reference that they bought a property recently and then I tell them why I am mailing them.
Be sure to give people multiple ways to respond to you. I was recently reminded of this when I sent out almost 10,000 postcards with just my toll free number on it, only to find out that my toll free provider had technical difficulties the day my mailing hit. I was not amused, but learned my lesson to always put multiple types of contact information on every mailing.
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James Orr is a professional real estate investor, marketing expert and founder of the LearnToBeRich.com on-line investment game. He works with a network of real estate agents, brokers and real estate investors across the United States through the AnalyzedDeals.com website.
