84 – Direct Mail Marketing Tips and Tricks with Justin Silverio

This transcript was generated automatically with Otter, there may be some grammatical errors.

Sean  0:13

This is the everything real estate investing show with Sean can we interview local real estate investors, professionals to go over tips, tricks, and investing strategies to help you learn about the business and to enable you to achieve your financial goals. And now, welcome to the show. Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of The everything real estate investing show with Sean Penn. Today we have Justin so very you. Justin is a founder of open letter marketing, a direct mail company that helps investors with their marketing campaigns. Justin will tell us how to send out direct mail and why first class stamps are important. This episode is great if you’re just starting out and aren’t sure how to effectively send direct mail pieces. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to the show and leave a review. We release episodes every Wednesday and Sunday and we use the show notes on our side. Everything Rei com. Enjoy this are coming on the show today. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Let us know who you are. And how did you get into real estate.

Justin  1:08

My name is Justin Silbury, I’m in the Boston area I got into real estate I was actually an account for about 15 years and always had a passion for real estate, my father’s a general contractor for about 40 years, 45 years. So I always love real estate. But I never wanted to be a contractor. And I didn’t know how I could get into real estate until I think I started watching the flipping shows on TV, HGTV. And then it really clicked and and it was at that point that I was I said, or I saw the opportunity to get into real estate, but not so much as a contractor and be able to take my accounting skill set and analyzing deals and use my basically leverage off my father for his construction knowledge to really dive into real estate.

Sean  1:57

So then what did you do when you first got started? I mean, it was too

Justin  1:59

doesn’t attend when I really started looking into real estate and figuring out how I can get involved. And I saw flipping as a great opportunity. And I’m very conservative by nature. I mean, I’m an accountant. So most accountants are conservative. So I knew I understood the numbers, but I wasn’t very comfortable in the construction. And I kept on saying it over and over. And my father heard a ton and he said, you know, stop talking about it and just actually do it. And he’s like, if you need my help, to help with the construction, he’s like I’m there for you. Let’s just partner and do it together. So you can get your feet on the ground and get running. And then once you’re good, he’s like, I’ll let you go. So I was like, Alright, that sounds good. So I knew it was up to me to find our first deal. So just a lot of networking with with people trying to find good opportunities. And this was back in 2011. So really wasn’t all that difficult to find a deal back then on the MLS. So network with some real estate agents found a property, work the numbers so that it made sense, and then dove headfirst into that first project, which was a very big undertaking for somebody whose first project it was a ranch style home. But we had in addition, we completely gutted the whole property, we had to do some work in the basement, for water seeping in. So it was actually a very big undertaking. But I felt comfortable because I had my father’s guidance to show me the way as we went through it to teach me all about construction, and understand the right way to do things. And what to look for, and all of that. So that’s how I got started. And we continue to do that for about two and a half, three years. Until at that point, I felt really comfortable that I knew construction well enough to go on my own. And he said, All right, great, just keep going. And he’s like, I’ll just if you need private lender, he’s like I’m here for you to, to lend. So even today, my parents still land on a lot of my projects. And he still is kind of a advisor if I don’t know anything, or just to check up on my projects. Now that he’s retired, he loves to walk through and just to check things out.

Sean  4:06

Yeah, it’s always good to have that guidance to help you, especially when you’re new, you don’t have that much confidence, he can help you with all these miscellaneous tasks, yet,

Justin  4:14

I mean, not only from the guidance perspective, but from the support. He owned a company as I mentioned, for a long time, my uncle’s own their own company, my brother owns his own company. So they understand the mentality from an entrepreneur, and the support that I had kind of in my network, I can’t even tell you how impactful that was for me to really, you know, create, have the mindset and the positivity, that I can do something. And it took me five years to do real estate part time while still having my full time job. Before I actually left my full time job. It just got to the point where things were busy on both sides, and one had to give and I knew that I would, you know, when I started out, I knew the goal was to do real estate full time, and to have the life a better lifestyle where I don’t have to commute going to Boston, miss a lot of events and all that stuff. So I knew what my goal was, and I was focused to get there. And five years after I started real estate, I jumped ship from my daytime job and really never looked back.

Sean  5:21

Cool. So then how did you get into your business now, so you’re doing a direct marketing company. Tell me about the origination to that story.

Justin  5:28

Sure, from the very beginning, or I should say my second property I found, I found my second property through direct mail. I’m a big researcher finding out the ways to identify different properties and locate properties. And my personality, I am one that has to have a lot of control. And while I got my first deal through a real estate agent, I knew that I didn’t want that to be the only way to find deals. And I needed something to sustainable that I had direct access to regulate how much I’m going to put into it and how many deals I can find. Right, I want it to be internal and not have to rely on other people. So after doing research and finding direct mail, that worked really well for me just on my wife and I could, you know, type up the letters, we could we could hand write them at night, we could start sending them out. And over the years, I mean, I always was consistent with direct mail, and I still am to this day. And as competition started to increase and more people started to do direct mail, I started to look at different opportunities in different ways to do direct mail, through messaging through imagery, the whole creative mail piece, and all that to really get my responses to maintain or increase over my competition. So over the years, I just started working and trying different things until I had a really good system. And then it was at the point when I was looking to leave my full time job that I wanted an opportunity to start another company that was more cash flow. Right. So I was looking at, I knew I had a great a very unique approach to direct mail that worked really well. Because I’ve tested it a lot through through the years. And I actually tested it against yellow letters. And I knew that there was a huge void in the market. And I said, Well, really the only thing that’s out there is yellow letters. And I know I have this unique approach that from my testing is 26.7% more effective. That’s how many more responses I’m getting over yellow letters. I felt very comfortable that I had something great and that the market really needed. And that I could stand 100% behind because I’m literally testing my own product. So with the combination of being able to provide a lot of value to other real estate investors, and also from my side to create a business that’s more cash flow than real estate. I thought it was a great opportunity to kind of segue and kind of mesh the two together to open open letter marketing.

Sean  8:15

Nice. And how long ago was that? Did you start the company? January 2016. Okay, so about three and a half years now.

Justin  8:22

And it’s interesting with, with every business, you go through different patterns, and where you put your focus is where it grows. And over the last year or two. Well, really, since I started Open Letter marketing, I put a lot of emphasis and focus on open letter marketing to really make sure that we’re not only the best direct mail company out there for real estate investors, but always looking for new ways to get an edge to provide our customers with higher response rates than other people. So branching out and doing other things outside of direct mail, like using ringlets, voicemail, IP marketing, world going into layering, text messaging, and really create a, a whole marketing system for somebody. Because I know the timing of when to send direct mail, and these other layering approaches, why it’s the most effective when it’s the most effective that I can. That’s really been the focus the last couple of since I started, and, and things have been just going really well. And we’re growing quickly. So we’re actually planning to move out of our space in September to double our size, our office size, which is awesome.

Sean  9:35

Congratulations. So what are some of the differences? Yeah, what are some of the differences between what you’re saying that you guys are more effective than just the typical yellow letter companies? Is it because you’re sending out different pieces and trying out? Like you said, voicemails and stuff? Or is it something different in the actual letter itself?

Justin  9:51

Yeah, good question. At the very basic level, just comparing, you know, letters to each other, and like just a camp, a letter camp, or even a mailing campaign, we have very unique style envelopes to start. They’re very eye catching. They’re fully colored with patterns, we use specific colors to instill different types of emotions from them. Like we use a lot of blue and some of our envelopes, which instills trust. So we do things for a reason. And so from our envelopes, they’re very colorful, they definitely stand out in the mail. And I get, I get a lot of calls that say, Hey, I’m not really interested in selling, but I’m giving you a call back because your letter, your envelope or letter really stood out. And I want to at least give you a call. It’s those types of conversations that I love. Because even in that instance, they’re not looking to sell, we can still have a conversation. And maybe they know a neighbor that knows that is going to sell. And it’s just opening up conversations that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

In addition to the envelopes, the letters,

we use our handwritten font and internally generated, we just launched one font that it took us months for a developer to create that has, you know, all the letters are different. They have it has bleed marks, it has Lyft marks, it is authentic as you possibly can get. So it’s a really cool font style. So doing things like that making it look as authentic as possible, using our logo at the top because people can remember a logo or an image better than they can remember somebody’s name. Ok. So again, yellow letter is usually a white envelope and doesn’t have any imagery and the inside just as someone buddy’s name, I always look back and say if a person gets 10 of these letters, yellow letters in mind, who are they going to remember more a name or an image and an envelope that actually creates an emotion, they’re going to remember me, that’s where we start with very unique kind of mailers. And then over our campaigns, we don’t just send the same mailer every single time. We like when our customers do mail campaigns with us, because direct mail is all about consistency. And we very much focused on creating a campaign that creates a conversation with the seller. So we don’t just send the same mailer over and over again, we want to actually have a conversation with the seller. So as the campaign goes along, you’re actually you’re actually screening them out a little bit more. Because as we move along, we’re providing them a little bit more information on the company us and how we can provide a solution for them. So by the fifth mailer, six mirror mailer, they’re going to have a really good understanding of us. And when they call, it’s usually the quality of a call is much higher.

Sean  12:46

So imagine my new customer, I reach out to you guys and say, hey, I want to flip houses here in the Bay Area. What kind of a campaign package would you present to somebody like me?

Justin  12:55

So again, your investment strategy, you’re a new investor you’re looking to wholesale to, to rehab yourself? Sure. Yep. So it all goes back to strategy. We don’t just say, all right, just do whatever you want, and give us money. We want to make sure that you guys, everybody set up for success. And we tell them, consistency is important. If you can’t be consistent with direct mail, we honestly tell them, just do something else. And until you have money to be consistent, then you can use us. We’re not just looking to get money in the door, we really want people to be successful. So if it’s a new customer, that’s new to direct mail, that’s new to real estate investing, we would probably first ask what’s your lead list? Who are you trying to target? Because lead lists to me are very important, especially when you’re new, you don’t have much money to spend, or you have a limited budget. So you want to make sure that you are more niche lyst heavy, rather than being having a generalist. So we want to start people off on the right foot and say, all right, well, what list are you sending to? If they’re like an equity list? Okay, well, just to give you some information, like a niche, lyst is a little bit better. And we would recommend that, you know, driving for dollars, you can do tax liens, you can do code violations, you can do add in some absentee lists, as well. We want to make sure that they come with the best list possible when they mailing with us, especially when they’re new, because we’re going to set them up with better success. Assuming they have that all narrowed down. We also want to understand like, you know, these is it, entry level homes mid level high end homes, because we found generally people respond differently to different types, depending on their demographics. With that said, we like to start people off with a letter campaign. So we would likely have people come in and say, let’s start you off with a formula campaign that cycles through handwritten letters and professional letters in a way that again, creates a conversation with the seller,

Sean  14:57

what kind of frequency are we talking about here,

Justin  15:00

we generally mail or recommend that we mail they mail once a month. So if they have like, you know, 1000 leads or 5000 leads, let’s say, we recommend that if they’re starting out, do not send all 5000 at once, because you will be inundated with calls and you’re not going to get back to the calls are answer them in a timely fashion. And you’re actually going to lose deals because of it. So spread those out if you want to hit them once a month, spread those 5000 out over the four weeks. So send 1250 a week, every week and for four weeks and then start the mailer at the new the next Miller campaign.

Sean  15:39

And do you think 5000 is a lot for a new investor? Like what size? Should they be starting out with? Even if you had an unlimited budget, right? There’s no reason to send 100,000 in one month?

Justin  15:47

No, I completely agree with you start off small. Because if you sent out a lot of mailers, like I said, you’re not going to be able to answer all them unless you’re a team. Okay, so don’t end and you’re going to learn you’re going to be learning over though, the way when I started answering calls from direct mail, I was so scared, I didn’t know what to say I was fumbling, I probably lost, you know, a good amount of deals because I didn’t know what to do. So there’s going to be a learning process that people have to understand. So I would not recommend going out and doing you know, 10s of thousands of mailers, we recommend if they’re starting out, if you have a good niche list. Really five to 600 leads is like really the minimum that we want for a really good niche list. If they’re more generalists, we’d recommend at least 1000 leads to start mailing. Because again, niche lists you’re probably going to get their higher quality data, generalist, they’re less quality. So you’re going to it’s going to require more leads to get deals.

Sean  16:46

So you saying for a new investor, 1000 a month is probably a good starting point, right? You said those same guys over and over again.

Justin  16:53

So for me, what I personally do is I once I start mailing to somebody, I never stopped mailing, so I’ll mail them for years. And, and the only time that I take someone off is when they call me and say take me off the list or when they sold their house. Okay, because I do a lot of upfront scrubbing. And like the last list that I created, which was the beginning of this year, because I’m going into a new new market, it took me two months to create that list. I have a list of 40,000 Records. But of those 40,000 Records, I have about 8200 that are really high quality, that I really focus heavily on for marketing, I have another 10,000 that are mid medium quality, and then I have the rest low quality. So I spent a ton of time on my lead list because ultimately, I spending a lot of money over years mailing to those people over and over again. So I want to make sure that I scrub them upfront very heavily.

Sean  17:51

And then how often do you re scrub that list? because like you said, month a month people may have sold her house or transferred it or you know, till you take them off? How often do you actually update that list.

Justin  18:02

So I have to list every quarter for sold. And then I’ll add to that list for like tax liens, a look over tax lien information again, every half year. And then I’ll add more people so I can continuously add to the list because of new data or I’m increasing my my geography. But generally I’m still knowing those people over and over again. And those are the best calls when I get a call from somebody. And I see that I’ve how long I’ve been mailing them for. Those are the best calls, I know that there’s a time and circumstances that have change that is going to be it’s going to be a very high quality lead. So I’m like excited to answer those calls. Exactly. And can you tell me the difference between the response rates from the letters versus wingless voicemails or internet marketing with reckless voicemails and IP marketing and text messaging, I always use them as a layering approach. I always have direct mail as my basis. And then I do these additional layering strategies on top of it. So what I’ve seen the combination of direct mail and let’s just take ringlets voicemail, for instance, I’ve seen increases with that layer, just that layering strategy, direct mail, and ringlets voicemails and a specific sequence, I’ve seen it Chris increases anywhere from five to 20%. Higher than if I just send direct mail by itself. So absolutely, it makes a huge difference. Now the quality of the leads might be might not be as great. But again, it opens you up to more conversations with sellers to maybe identify somebody and somebody else in their neighborhood or another property that they might own that might they might be interested in selling.

Sean  19:42

But so it’s not like an either or thing. It’s like you always do direct mail. And on top of that, sometimes you do ring this voicemail, or IP marketing, depending if they’re probably a better quality lead is how you determine whether to send it. Yeah.

Justin  19:54

Yeah, yeah. And the reason why I do direct mail is the basis is because any other learning strategy often that it’s so much easier to do it because you’re going you’re basing additional marketing off of a marketing sequence that you’ve already sent. So for instance, with ringlets voicemails, instead of just having sending a cold ringlets voicemail, Hi, this is Justin from GST homes, I’d like to talk to you about whatever you can come from an approach, hey, this is Justin, I sent you a letter the other day in the mail, I just wanted to follow up, make sure you got that about your property, if you can give me a call back, right that has a much different feel to it. And a much more authentic feel. And that’s all that we’re going for is being more authentic in our marketing approach.

Sean  20:42

Makes sense, doesn’t actually matter what you write in the actual letter itself.

Justin  20:47

The only times that I see that it does matter is when you have an area that either really like something or very much dislike something, and I’ll give you I’ll give an example. So I’m market to Boston, the Boston Market in suburbs of Boston, and the suburbs of Boston, you don’t really come across a lot of people that are anti development or ton of people that are anti development. Yeah, there are definitely some people in Boston though, a lot of people I would say it’s very heavy that they do not like development. And the reason why is because developer, some developers are going in, and the few that are going in and creating very modern style properties. Next to very historic properties. People are getting very upset because it’s changing their neighborhood in the landscape of Boston, and the history of Boston. So people are very anti development when it comes to that. So in my mailers, I always mentioned that I’m interested in purchasing your property, because I love the aesthetics of the neighborhood and want to make sure that I keep that intact, right. So it’s speaking to the potential home seller and showing them that I’m trying to you keep the historic nature of the neighborhood. Boston, people do like to deal with other Boston people. So I have a Boston, I have a Boston mailing address. So all my return mail goes to a virtual mailbox in Boston, because I have a Boston phone number. So all of that, you just have to understand your sellers. And if they have very, very important or big things that they like or dislike, and try to just adjust to it. Now if they’re just kind of here and there some sellers do this, some sellers don’t. It’s really not the at the end of the day going to make a big difference. But it just so happens in Boston, they have a big preference on development and dealing with people that are live in Boston,

Sean  22:47

you send out mail, I’m assuming you also send out postcards to is there a difference between either one mail versus postcards?

Justin  22:53

For me, and I get this question asked a lot. Should I send postcards or should I send letters? Honestly, what I tell them is try both. Because I know what works in my market. And in my market letters work way better than postcards, postcards don’t really work all that well. The only time I send postcards is on my very low quality leads, and I only send them quarterly. Anything else, I always send letters. And I only send postcards because I still want to keep in touch. And I know the response rates not going to be huge, but I want to create my brand presence with them. So I still have my logo on it. But I know that postcards do not work well and I don’t send them to good quality leads. However, that doesn’t mean that postcards won’t work in other areas. And what I found is actually, there are certain areas in the country that postcards work just as well as letters. So in that case, I always tell people, if you’re producing the same results, or even a little bit under for response rate with postcards, the newsletter postcards, because if letters cost, you know 60% more than postcards, but your response rates are only 20% less than letters, then it still makes sense to send out postcards rather than sending letters. So really, the testing approach is what I recommend for anybody that really wants to narrow down and really be effective with their marketing is test a lot of things, track it, see what works, tweak things, repeat the process to really hone in your marketing skills. And that’s for anything.

Sean  24:33

Can you talk about the prices for your campaigns, where the cost of send out X amount of letters and stuff,

Justin  24:39

it’s all dependent on how much how much you’re going to be sending. So depending on what people are going to be sending, how many times they’re going to be sending the mailers will change the pricing, everything’s on our website for the prices were extremely, extremely competitive. Even though the quality of our envelopes and our mail pieces, you’re not going to find the quality better than ours, because we use thicker stock than everybody else. Because everything has to be, we look at all angles, the touch the feel of the material, the look of it, the quality of the the letter, the logo, everything plays into it. And we will not compromise the quality over just making more profit. We want these to work. So but we’re still able to be very competitive. So I guess, to give you an example, if somebody said, I want to send out 1000 mailers and do a formula campaign, they’re doing 4000 mailers in total. So that’s that’s what we look at where they’re going to be sending out 4000 mailers. So for first class, they would be looking at 90 cents for a standard class, they’d be looking at 73 cents,

Sean  25:55

does that make a difference? First Class dad versus standard,

Justin  25:58

here, here’s what I would say the differences because a lot of people don’t know what the differences are, the difference between standard class and first class mail one first class mail is roughly 17 cents more expensive than standard. So it’s a lot more expensive. However, first class is guaranteed by the post office to get anywhere in the country, within, you know, three to or I would say under six days. Standard class could take up to two to three weeks, really haven’t seen it take that long unless it’s around like a big holiday or something like that. The other thing is you do not get returned mail with standard class, first class you do. So when people are starting with a new list, I tell them if they’re local to us, and we can pretty much even time out the standard class mail. But I would say when they’re starting out in a new mailing campaign and new lead list, you want to send your first mailer first class, because you want to get all those returned mails back to you to then further scrub skip trace, identify where the people now actually live, or take them off their list and either follow up by phone call, because sometimes it’s easier to find a phone number for them. So I always tell people send your first mailer first class. And then if you want to reduce the cost, you can send her standard class thereafter, just know that there’s going to be a little bit more variability and when it’s going to hit, hit people. So again, people that are really trying to narrow down what is working the best and really trying to land their mail on specific times, they usually up for first class more often than not, because first class is much more dependable to get there. I still use first class to this day because because with standard class, it does say like pre sorted first class and there’s you’re going to use the power code and all that. But first class, you don’t have that. Even though the you put USPS puts a barcode on every mail piece. First Class still looks a little bit more authentic.

Sean  28:04

That’s a really good answer. I never heard that before. Most people were just telling me Oh, like, because it has a stamp on instead of just the print, it looks more professional people open it more, which said nice last, yeah, you do want to get your mail back. So you able to say, look, these numbers are not right, we need to go back and scrub the list or skip trace those return mail pieces.

Justin  28:24

Yeah, and we try to provide that. I mean, we try to provide that, that information to like when somebody asks a question, like, me, my whole philosophy is when somebody asked me a question, I don’t just give them the answer, I give them the answer. And then I give them why it’s the wise to answer. Or because the Y is sometimes more important than the answer. And when you understand the why it creates a you know, a much more fundamental understanding of it. So when customers are calling in, and they’re like, Oh, I want to do standard class will always ask them, oh, why are you doing standard class over first class, because we want to understand if they really know the difference, or if they just heard it from somebody else. So we can give him the full understanding?

Sean  29:06

Yeah. Do you have any clients that are actually in the Bay Area right now?

Justin  29:10

yet? We have some clients out there as well.

Sean  29:12

Cool. So one of the challenges that we have here, maybe you guys have seen in Boston, but the typical lyst like tax liens, foreclosure, pre foreclosures, those are very, very rare. And if they happen, you get a bunch of people calling them or sending them mail as well. So I mean, do you have any recommendations for what to do if you’re

Justin  29:32

Bay Area specific, a lot of very competitive like highly competitive areas, like the Bay Area’s, I would say, very competitive, I would even say the Boston area is extremely competitive, you guys can actually get your data is a little bit more available online. Like Revo gateway, I know they have like niche lists, they don’t have that stuff for Massachusetts. So you’re actually have to do a little bit more digging for that information, which gives the person that does the extra legwork, the kind of leg up in Massachusetts, but for the Bay Area, I mean, for me, and for people that aren’t doing a ton of marketing, I would say the most important thing is like scrubbing your list and identifying and scrubbing your list not only for the niche lists, but then overlaying all the list together, and identifying what leads are on multiple lead lists. So for instance, and this is what I do for my my lead list, I pull all my list and then I put them together. And then I identify the all the properties that are duplicates over multiple lead lists. And then all of those ones, I call them my super leads, because a lead that is on your, you know, tax lien, pre foreclosure probate, you know, lyst, if they’re on those three lists, and then driving $4 lyst, if you have that lead, you know that lead is way better than a lead that’s maybe just on an absentee list, or something like that. So now what you’re able to do is you’re able to segment your lead lists and identify the really high quality leads versus the medium to low quality leads. And then from there you can I you can really market very specific to the quality of leads. So the high quality leads, you might want to, you know, send direct mail or cold call, send ringlets voicemails, you want to spend a lot more focus on those, and then less focus on the other leads. So now your time invested, is going to be have a higher probability to find a deal because your focus is on those higher quality leads.

Sean  31:44

Does that make sense? Makes sense? Yeah. I mean, they pass multiple filters, right? And so these are the best of the best. Okay, absolutely. So I’m wondering, also, are there any challenges in your business,

Justin  31:55

I’ve spent a lot of my focus over the last few years on Open Letter marketing to get it running the way I want to be very systemized, and the process driven, that I’ve taken, real estate has taken, I guess, a secondary seat. So now this year, my focus, open letter marketing is running very well. We’re continuously building out new stuff, we have systems and all that. So my focus is on growing real estate investing and, and over the last couple of probably the last year, I’ve been struggling a lot with being able to call people back in a timely manner, from my direct mail from my marketing. So the focus has been very heavily on one creating, I spent the last year and a half, two years creating a very advanced CRM, and I use po po do based a very advanced CRM to basically helped me and not leaving any lead behind. But all so I’ve been very focused on hiring. So So hiring for lead intake and an acquisitions manager, those are the two positions that I’m filling right now. And that I’m working on to to assist me in on the acquisition side,

Sean  33:17

that’s really good. I know some of the biggest investors in my area, they have like four acquisitions managers, and all they do is taking the calls, it’s so easy to get a phone call when you’re in the middle of doing something, and then they call someone else’s letter and you lose a lead. Oh, it’s so it’s so true.

Justin  33:31

It’s so true. And I had an acquisitions manager for for a while for for about five months, he just actually moved back out of state, but he was he was struggling to keep up because new calls are come in, he’d be talking to those, he’d have to go to appointments, other people would call up, and they just keep on piling up piling up. So my biggest thing right now is getting a lead intake person to handle all the calls to, to screen them to pass them over to me, I’ll be in the acquisitions manager role until that person is trained up. Because I’ve been spending a lot of time creating procedures for both positions. So a lot of my time has been on the procedural side. And now that it’s built out, getting that lead and take person up to speed, once they’re up to speed, immediately hiring a acquisitions person, getting them up to speed. And then we’ll be running from there.

Sean  34:31

Would you ever consider creating like a cost center for your clients? For example, you they are using your guys’s services for the letters, and as a callback number, my callback number is for a certain client, some generic person in Boston or wherever can be just Hey, you know, Oh, are you looking to sell your property? Were you looking to buy for an appointment, and then you can send that to the to the actual investor who can then go through. And that way they screen out all the hate calls and stuff like that?

Justin  34:56

I mean, I have thought about it, I don’t think I do it. It’s very heavy on human capital. And anytime it’s very heavy on cap, human capital firm, it takes a lot of time from management perspective, whether that’s me or hiring a manager to then manage that side. And it’s just not something that I’m really looking to build out at this point in time. I have, we’re going to be we’re planning to do other things within the marketing space to make it much more of a whole marketing kind of strategy for somebody. But the call center is not something that we’re kind of really looking at right now.

Sean  35:32

Yeah, it makes sense. It’s kind of like we’re flippers, but we don’t want to be general contractors, because then we have to manage the people to do the work.

Justin  35:38

Yep. Yeah. Right.

Sean  35:41

So do you guys have Do you have any last tips that you’d like to tell to our listeners before we end our show today?

Justin  35:46

Yeah, I mean, just because we’re talking about marketing a lot, whether you use direct mail, or any any other form of marketing, the most important thing that I could possibly say is just be consistent. There’s so many people especially start starting out that I see that will start something, they’ll start a marketing strategy, because they’ve heard it from somebody else that it’s working well. And they’ll try it for maybe a month or even a couple of months. And then if they don’t see results, they’ll stop. And that’s the worst thing that they’ve could possibly do. I fully recommend that if you’re going to start something, at least give it six to nine months to test it out to see if it works. Because there’s so many other variables, especially when you’re starting out, you’re going to lose deals just because you don’t even know what to do. But you might blame it on the marketing strategy that is not working. marketing works when you’re consistent. And that is the biggest the biggest tip I can actually provide is just be consistent with whatever you do.

Sean  36:43

That’s right. Be consistent. So Justin, how can people get ahold of you?

Justin  36:46

Yeah, absolutely. They can there. They can shoot me an email at Justin at Open Letter marketing. com. They’re Welcome to get in touch with me there. I’m on Facebook and Instagram. They can get in touch with me there as well.

Sean  37:01

Perfect. Well, Justin, thank you so much for your time, and giving us all his advice on direct mail and marketing.

Justin  37:08

Thank you. It’s been great. I appreciate you having me on.

Sean  37:10

Yep, thanks. Here’s some of the key takeaways from this episode. It’s much better to spread out your mail drops because you won’t be able to effectively handle them at the all come out once. You’re also going to suck when talking to your first few home sellers spread it out. A first class stamp will hit the sellers home in three days and allows you to get return mail and this allows you to remove names off of your list so that you save money in the future or let you skip trace those letters. And the most important thing is to be consistent with your marketing. Send them a new piece of mail every month and hit them with a text or ringlets voicemail periodically. If you’re interested in working with Justin’s team, contact him directly on open their marketing. com and then another chance that you hope you learned a lot. You can find the show notes on our site. Everything, Rei com. Thanks and have a great day. This was another episode of The everything real estate investing show. Sean the show leave us a five star rating will take less than a second and they’ll help a lot. You can contact me at sean penn realty at GO. com. That’s svanpanraotyigo.com Thanks. Have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai