Beginning wholesalers are often overwhelmed with the task of crafting a full impact real estate marketing letter. In the absence of experience, it is difficult to guess the impact that the various content elements could have on the conversion of potential customers. In addition to the challenge, there are countless sources of advice on marketing content, and combining or sampling the recommendations produces a piece of marketing that is unnecessarily long, complex, or ineffective.
Marketing materials are usually among the top in terms of the most expensive business expenses. Given this fact, it is clear that a losing streak with poorly constructed marketing campaigns can be enough to sink a new business. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to isolate the root cause of poor direct mail marketing results. The investor may unknowingly blame the target market segment for the results and re-implement the same negative marketing in a new segment. Avoid the guesswork and costly mistakes by implementing the 5 key principles explored in this article.
Customize your lyrics
It is important to personalize each of your marketing emails. Think about it, when you collect your mail, you tend to sort and discard any items that are clearly junk mail or bulk mailers. The same fate awaits your marketing pieces if they fail the junk mail smell test. To avoid the pile of discards and increase the chances that your marketing will be seen, use mail merge techniques to personalize each letter. It doesn’t need to be complicated or lengthy to be effective. Many times, simply addressing the owners by name on the envelope and in the letter is enough for the recipient to realize that the letter and the attached offer are for them. It is also good to specifically mention the property that interests you in the letter.
Keep it simple
Once open, your marketing should be so clear and simple that your prospects can reap the benefits of your offer at a glance. If your prospect is reading your marketing article, congratulations on overcoming the first hurdle, which is getting them to open the letter. It would be a real shame to lose that momentum with a complicated and hard-to-digest letter. If the benefits are not clear and it is difficult to digest, the letter will be postponed or, worse, it will be discarded.
Add a call to action
Effective marketing includes a call to action that forces the consumer, with easy-to-follow instructions, to act. Remember that most recipients will dismiss your letter as it does not appeal to them in any way. A smaller portion will file your letter for reference when the time is right for you to take action. Others may leave it with good intentions to return to it, but they never will. For that same reason, effective calls to action often include a fear of loss that suggests the reader act now or risk losing the promised benefit. The fear of loss is a powerful emotion that serves as a push to overcome the obstacle.
Various contact options
To improve the chances that your prospects will take that important step to communicate with you, it helps to provide multiple means of communicating with you. This will accommodate the many ways people prefer to interact, including on the phone, email, social media, online data entry, and mail. The many contact mechanisms also allow them to choose the method that is most convenient for them, improving the chances that they will make the effort to contact you. For example, a person who works nights may need to sleep during the day and will not be able to have a telephone conversation when he would normally talk to his other clients. They can choose to contact you by email, which you can use to communicate asynchronously.
Split test your marketing
The last and perhaps the most important principle is the test. I encourage you to adjust your marketing pieces incrementally and test the resulting response rates. For example, you can send two different marketing pieces to the same subdivision. This is called a split test, and it will allow you to measure differences in lead conversion while excluding wide differences, such as demographics.
Keep these five principles in mind when preparing your next marketing campaign, and you’ll be well positioned for continued growth.
