Real Estate Mailings 101: The Basics of Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail is one of the most cost-effective ways for new realtors to generate buyer and seller leads. Over time, a small, targeted real estate postcard campaign can give your business a steady, consistent flow of new customers.
Sounds great, right? Before you get started on any direct mail marketing campaign, it’s important to understand how and why direct mail marketing works, and how it can be used to help your real estate business achieve its goals.
What is Direct Mail Marketing?
Direct mail marketing is direct communication between your business and its target customers carried out via regular mail. The goal of a direct mail campaign is to make your target audience respond to your offer.
An easy way to determine your direct mail campaign’s goal is to ask two basic questions:
- Who is my recipient?
- What response do I want him or her to take?
Direct mail campaigns are usually targeted at prospective customers. In this case, the goal of any campaign is to get prospects to respond to your message by contacting your business to enquire about a property or to list their property for sale with you.
You can also use direct mail to target existing customers in order to keep in touch and retain their business.
What Type of Response Do You Want?
Most direct mail campaigns are designed to create a certain response. In the real estate industry, most realtors want recipients to respond to a direct mail message by expressing interest in buying or selling a property.
There are also other responses you can design your direct mail campaign for. Some of the most common direct mail responses include:
- Requesting information from your business
- Visiting your business’s location or website
- Purchasing a product or service directly from you
What makes direct mail such an effective marketing channel is that all of the above responses are measurable. This means that you can determine the exact return on investment each of your real estate direct mail campaigns produces.
The Purpose is Simple: Get the Recipient to Take Action
Every direct mail campaign, whether it’s designed to promote a local business or generate seller leads for your real estate agency, should be designed with a clear goal in mind: get the recipient to take action.
In order to get recipients to take action, your direct mail postcards need to feature an offer – for example, a free consultation for prospects – and copy that encourages the recipient to act on this offer.
They also need to feature a call to action – a statement that tells the recipient what they need to do to respond. It’s important to work out these three things – the goal of your campaign, your offer, and the desired action – before you begin.
Without a strong offer and a clear path to action, even the most persuasive copy is unlikely to generate many leads for your business. Successful direct mail campaigns are often just as much about planning as they are about execution.
What is Your Goal, Offer and Desired Action?
What would you like to achieve with your first direct mail campaign? What is your business’s offer? What is the most effective way for your target customers to take action and respond to your offer?
Once you can answer the three above questions, you can move on to the next step in launching your direct mail campaign.
In the next part of our three-part guide to direct mail for new realtors, we’ll look at the specific advantages that make direct mail so effective and the best ways to use direct mail to promote your real estate business.
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