Joe McCall:
Where do I send postcards? I use Click2Mail. I have not outsourced downloading the names, although I could. I want to make sure I’m getting a good quality list of absentee owners, so I like doing this myself. Once I have my list of 6,000 absentee owners that I want to mail, I put that in the spreadsheet. I put it into Google Docs and then my VAs once a week will go into Click2Mail.
What Click2Mail does is I already have my postcard templates in there. What they do is they will upload the names and the addresses from my spreadsheet, they’ll upload them into the template that I’ve already created for my postcard. I have already uploaded money into Click2Mail as well. It’s not like they have to have my credit card number. I’ve already uploaded money into Click2Mail. They’re going to upload the names, Click2Mail will do all the merge fields. Click2Mail will bring in the date, it’ll bring in “Dear Mr. Smith, We want to buy your house at 123 Main Street,” so it will bring in all the merged fields. They upload it and 30 seconds later they click “Submit” and I just sent out 2,000 postcards. I love Click2Mail. Why anybody would try to do postcards by hand I’ll never understand.
Click2Mail will print ugly, yellow postcards which convert the best, ugly yellow postcards that don’t have any pictures or graphics.
In fact, this is what my postcard looks like right there. It’s about that size, as well. It’s maybe four or five inches by three inches. It gives a date, their name is in black, it’s highlighted. “My company is interested in buying your property located at 3037 West Ina Road in Tucson.”
By the way, I got this postcard from some guru a long time ago.
Jason Medley:
Chris Chico.
Joe McCall:
No, this isn’t Chris Chico’s. It’s close to his. I think this is Richard Rupe’s postcard.
Jason Medley:
I gotcha.
Joe McCall:
Chris Chico borrowed heavily, I’ll just say, from Richard Rupe. They’re both very similar and they both poll the same.
“We buy several houses each month and we’re looking to buy more in this area. Should you have any interest in selling quickly and easily at a fair price, call us at this number. You can also go to our website and submit your property information. Here are the details. You can have a 24 hour free recorded message to this number. If you’re not interested,” etcetera.
That postcard outperforms every other postcard known to man. I am not kidding. Why realtors constantly send these glossy postcards, I just saw one the other day. It so annoyed me. It was a realtor who was super huge, standing on top of this house saying, “I can sell your house fast. I’m on top of it.”
Jason Medley:
Was he also on his phone?
Joe McCall:
Yeah, pretending to be busy. I don’t know, maybe that postcard does convert but I can pretty much guarantee it flopped. He just wasted $2,000.00 sending these pretty postcards that show him standing on top of a house saying, I’m on top of it.” Realtors do these plays on words with their last names and they’re talking on a phone. It’s just, stop it for heaven’s sake. You just don’t get it.
This type of marketing is personal, it’s ugly, it grabs their attention, and it works. The cool thing is, I don’t have to lick any stamps. My VAs can send all these postcards every day. In fact, if you wanted to you could have your VAs schedule that it sends out 50 postcards every day and it just sends out 50 or 100 postcards every day to these sellers.
The thing that’s really important is I am laser focused. These VAs are sending postcards to zip codes that I’ve done research on. You can train the VAs to do the research yourself. I’m targeting where the hottest activity is, the best zip codes where there’s the highest demand, there are the most cash buyers, and I’m sending postcards to absentee owners who bought their houses 10 years ago, so there’s still some equity in them.
You couldn’t do this stuff five years ago. This is what technology has done and this is what allows us, Jason, to flip these properties from anywhere in the world. I don’t have to be in an office. I don’t have to be in my house in St. Louis. I can do all of this from Prague, from Costa Rica, from Panama, it doesn’t matter.
It’s the same if you’re making offers on MLS properties. You could get access to the MLS from anywhere in the world, you can go to Realtor.com and you could just spit out numbers and have your realtor submit offers for you. Anyway, that’s a whole other story.
Yellow letters – I’m going to give you a great recommendation for yellow letters. YellowLetterMail.com. The guy who runs that company is an investor himself. You can’t get your yellow letters cheaper anywhere else. YellowLetterMail.com. If you give him my coupon code you’ll get $.10 off per letter. It works out to be about $.89 or $.99 per yellow letter. They’re red, hand written yellow letters that are personalized with the name and address, folded four ways, stuck into an invitation envelope, hand addressed at the top of the envelope with a live stamp. It converts like gang busters, 8-10%.
You get about double or triple the response rate that you do with postcards. This guy is cheaper. The coupon code if you want it is JOE McCALL. If you send him an email, tell him you heard about him from me. He will give you a good deal. He’ll give you a discount. Nobody can do it cheaper. You can also buy your absentee owners lists from him.
Let me show you the yellow letter that I send real quickly. I’ve tested this. I used to send letters that were a lease purchase, “Hey, I’ll lease purchase your house,” and it just flopped. It didn’t do well. Now, the only letter that I send is, “Hey, I want to buy your house,” and it reads like this:
“Dear Name,” and I do this from a husband and wife. “My name is Shannon. My husband Keith and I would like to purchase your house at,” and it has the address of the home. “If you’re interested in selling, please call Keith to discuss options. You can act quickly with no long, drawn out bank approvals – a typical hassle when you sell your house for sale by owner or through an agent. Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t do anything to your house, as we are willing to buy it as is without any need for you to fix it up. Please call anytime during the day. Keith’s direct cell phone number is… Or after 7:00 p.m. please call his work number,” which is a 24 hour answering service. “We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Shannon.”
You see how all of this marketing I’m doing is very personal. It does not look like it’s coming from a big corporate fat cat investor. It’s coming from Joe Blow, a little small town investor who’s looking to buy some properties. Your VAs can send this for you. I love it.
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