Direct Mail vs Email is the million-dollar question.
As a part of the ever-bustling New York’s real estate market, we at RSOLOGY LLC, Brooklyn, NY have always tried to be innovative in getting in touch with our clients.
The ushering of the digital age did widen the scale of marketing avenues, however, all the noise began to confuse the results. We realized a pattern in the response rate of digital compared to direct mail that we were running on a small budget.
As it turns out, direct mail response rates were about 10 to 30 times higher than that of digital.
That is exactly what my real estate company, RSOLOGY LLC, Brooklyn, NY noticed when we compared ROI and response rates of Direct Mail and digital at several places, including the thriving New York real estate market.
Here are some of our key takeaways after running multiple successful direct mail campaigns.
The 3 Big Yes for Direct Marketing
Better response rates: The Direct mail response rate is about 4.4%, according to several studies and surveys. Compare that to the response rate of 0.12% for digital mails. You have a clear winner here.
The feel: The age-old ritual of checking your mailbox and the excitement of opening an unexpected envelope has never failed.
Make your message an experience.
When your pitch is coupled with the experience of interaction with direct mail, conversion is almost guaranteed.
Targeted audience: You can target your audience and track your specific leads unlike digital mail and ads which are hard to track.
The Strategy:
Who is Your Target?
Knowing your audience is the most important thing in direct mail.
For example, in a certain area we got a spectacular response rate when we targeted prospective leads for Probate lists or a Pre-foreclosure lists. We’d gotten 0 responses from the same area if we’d targeted the leads with messages for absentee-owned property.
Unlike the popular opinion, tracking and targeting in direct mail is very much possible. To give you an example, I just love the USPS Every Door Direct Mail Tool.
Just enter the Zip Codes based on your area and it shows you the number of residents, number of businesses, age range, average household size, and average household income of that zone.
Consistency is Key:
Be consistent with your message. Approach multiple times otherwise no one would pay attention. We would commonly arrange for at least 5 touches. It is ideal to determine the length of the probate process in your state and spread your campaign accordingly. The idea is to be in front of the client when he decides to sell/ buy.
Be Memorable:
Small efforts goes a long way
Working on the aesthetics of your direct mail does wonders.
When someone receives a beautiful, hand-written, aesthetically pleasing letter in their mail box, they feel compelled to respond, according to the concept of “reciprocity” in psychology.
In our case, instead of spending a lot of time, we used scented and colored envelopes and handwritten notes made by Yellow Letters Complete.
YLC also took care of writing our messages on the beautiful cards and sending them to the addresses.
Neither did we have to worry about tracking the letters over the 5 touches. It was an automated process where the dates were set for the letters to go out.
Outsourcing the whole process to YLC and focusing just on own expertise was dramatically effective for our productivity. Visit us here to learn more now!
Shruthi Banjan
RSOLOGY LLC
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