How to Make Direct Mail Profitable...
the Key is the "Personal Touch"
Dear Friend and REALTOR®,
An agent of ours who mails over 300 prospects every month explains how she creates the personal touch, "My contact manager mail merges a nice personal letter to each one of my prospects. Then I have my niece hand address each envelope. She then signs my name, folds, stuffs, seals and stamps each envelope with a first class stamp. I pay her 15 cents per complete mailer. She makes a little money and I save myself a ton of time. Plus the mailers have a real nice personal appearance."
The keys to the "personal touch" are:
- Always mail merge the prospects name into your letter
- Never, ever, ever, use mailing labels - it’s cold and impersonal
- Either print envelopes or have someone hand-address them for 5-7 cents each
- Sign every letter, pay someone 3-5 cents to sign them for you or laser print your signature with a good enough laser printer that you can’t tell it’s printed
- Use a live first-class stamp - don’t meter or bulk mail
You can pay people to put together mailings for you and you should be able to get them completely done and mailed for about 50-60 cents a mailer. Also there are companies that will do the job from start to finish for a little bit more, generally about 70-75 cents per mailer.
Again, if you are going to prepare the mailings you’ll need a good word processor and contact manager. With these programs you can "personalize" literally thousands of letters and prepare them with little to no time spent. And that’s the key -- little to no time spent! You need to develop ways of getting things like this done without exhausting your time. Your time at its highest level is worth $300-$500 an hour. By developing systems for getting the $7-$8 an hour work done, you can spend the majority of your time creating strategies for getting face-to-face with more good, quality prospects.
My very best to you in your business-building. Until next time...
Warmest wishes for your success,
Gary Elwood
Founder and Chairman
