What qualifies as a lead? Anyone giving you a phone call? Anyone giving you a phone call that sounds somewhat motivated? Anyone giving you a phone call where you end up making them an offer?
I’ve sent very targeted direct mail … over 2000 post cards to homeowners in foreclosure. So far I’ve received maybe 1/2 a dozen phone calls. Of that, only 1 or 2 seem like “leads”. The first was a homeowner whose financials were upside down (owed more than it was worth). The second was a homeowner that had to sell in less than 2 months, but still wasn’t willing to budge too much from retail prices. But I will follow up with them after a few more weeks have passed and they are more motivated.
So, response rate is around 0.3% and lead rate is about 0.1%. I pay $0.39 per post card (glossy color post cards), so right now I’m at about $800 per lead.
Actually, when I spell it out like that, it’s kind of depressing that I haven’t gotten a deal yet, sheesh.
Just wondering what some of you are experiencing for your average cost/lead. In other words, how much are you spending per month to generate, say, 30 leads?
I’ve been involved with a group that does commercials and I’m spending $2k per month to get about 25-30 leads. I’m not sure if I can do better by just doing direct mail or if my costs are fairly typical.
I typically get about 10% response from postcards, so that’s around 300 cards for 30 leads. I use very targeted lists and find that a simple and subdued message gets the highest response.
DP, is that ON as in Ontario? Would you mind sharing information about your local market, who you send your postcards too, on what sort of timeframe, how often you mail them, what they look like, etc? I’ve mailed over 2000 postcards to foreclosures in the past 4 months and have received a dismal response.
Yes, and that’s Ontario the province in Canada, not the city in California.
My local retail (realtor) market has been a hot seller’s market for the last 5 years or so. It is currently in a cooling trend with rising inventory and increasing days on market and expireds. So I expect my response and more importantly my closed deals to increase over the next few years.
I won’t share my list because very few people are targeting them and I’d like to maintain my competitive advantage for as long as possible.
I would recommend mailing the people I target every 3 weeks, but I haven’t been as consistant as I should be.
I use very simple (and cheap) bright yellow cards with black text. No color text, no graphics, no glossy finish.
I used to send sellers to my direct line. Then I switched to a 24hr recorded message and my response jumped from 2 or 3% to 10%+ Then I started adding my website and call respone went down about 1% on average but online response more than compensated. Now I only use my website because no matter what I did I couldn’t get ONLY motivated sellers to call me, and I don’t want to talk to testy, demanding, tire-kickers.
Although I don’t have statistics to prove it. My gut feeling is that sellers tend to bookmark my website much more than they used to save the card with my number.
In addition, I find that voice broadcasting to the same group also generates a fantastic response. For every 100 voicecasts I get at least 50 hits. Out of those I might only get 2 or 3 leads, but that’s the beauty of using a website. It gives people a place to learn all about you without wasting your time if they’re not interested right now. And if you make a good impression on the site then they might just come back when they need you.