Welcome back to another great Solocast today and Unstoppable Real Estate Investing Wealth.
Today we are discussing one of the vehicles we utilize which is direct mail. Now this particular method of growing your real estate investment business could assist you with scaling up rather quickly, but there's tools and tips and secrets and strategies that you have to understand and deploy in order to do this right.
First things that you want to understand when you're getting into direct mail? Is there are certain elements that you have to bring to the table? One of them the most important is your list.
The most important aspect when you're starting to direct mail is your list. You can't go out and do a broad array of just every zip code, every home in a zip code, because you're not going to be hitting specific targeted people. You're going to be wasting a lot of money with mailing that way, because you want to be talking to people who need to be spoken to at the time.
That they needed to be spoken to. And so what that means is if they're in bankruptcy or foreclosure going through divorce, you want to hit them at a certain time frame in a certain cadence, cadence meaning every 30 days, every 60 days, every 45 days, every 75 days, whatever you plan your marketing campaign out to, but you want to hit them in a certain cadence.
That list by far is the most important thing that you want to focus in on. You want to focus in on those that are going to have the highest response, foreclosure, vacants, probates tax lien, landlord, tenant issues, foreclosures.
Those are the ones you're going to want to hit on. Now, once you get your list put together and you want to start to grow or scale, you're going to realize there's only a certain amount of names that you're going to have you niche. Like we do a fire campaign. We might only get 15 or 20 to twenty-five tops in certain areas on a monthly basis.
That's just not enough to grow and scale your business. It's enough when you're getting started.
You hit them with phone calls, with texting, with emails. You're not going to endure through the smokescreen. You do whatever it takes to get these people to call. But when you start to grow and scale, your list is going to be, it's going to be everything. To get a broader array of people for your list when you are scaling, not when you are just starting out.
I know I am giving away a few tips here, tune into the episode if you want more, I am never going to hold back. I am giving you all the tips, tricks and tools that you need to build and scale your real estate empire.
As always if you need anything come find me at billyalvaro.com and billyssecrets.com
Talk to you all soon!
welcome to Unstoppable Real Estate Investing Wealth. My name is Billy Alvaro, AKA the Unstoppable BA former billion dollar mortgage banker gone bankrupt turned professional real estate investor where each week you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems, and secrets myself. And other, a highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs use to start, grow and scale their businesses, creating massive profits and how you can too.
[00:00:31] And we'll teach you how to put those profits to work. So you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth. Now let's get started.
[00:00:43]Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back Carter over here. So welcome to episode. I think we're in number 36 here. This is going to be a solo cast. Now, if you don't know me, my name is Billy Alvaro. I am the unstoppable BA and if you are looking to start to grow or to scale your real estate investment business, this is the podcast to listen to what and/or to watch on YouTube.
[00:01:07] And here's why.I really want to just unveil, let you guys in on all the tools, tips, tricks, strategies, secrets, and systems that I use, that people I interview use that got them from where they are to where they want to go. Now in the last couple of weeks, I've been going through and really taking a deep dive into.
[00:01:27] Growing your real estate business. Why either push, marketing and pull marketing. If you don't know what that is. Go listen to episode number 35. And also I spoke about riches and niches, right? So if you want to start really getting into a making fat profits in this real estate best business, the way to do it, focus in and hone in on a niche.
[00:01:47] If you want to scale your real estate business. You have to realize that you're going to have to then do a lot more marketing, which means you're not going to be. So laser focused on specific niches, there'll be in your list, those specific niches. And I'm going to teach you and go over to that. We realized that a friend of mine developed, which is killer.
[00:02:06] On how to niche down, but you're still, when you start to scale, you're going to have to go out and actually start going to a broad array lists, which means that your response rates are going to go down. And the quality of the names that are on there might be degregaded slightly, but that's the only way to scale, right?
[00:02:23] There's only so many people who are in distress. And I'm going to go into and explain to you how we do it. When we started the scale, how we did it when we started, when we were growing and where we're scaling. So it's my hand and my pen, if you don't understand, because you're not watching you're listening, this is what we're going to do today on 34 35, like I said, riches in niches, push, pull marketing.
[00:02:43] If you didn't listen, go back and listen to that today's podcast. I want to go over. It's going to be a solo cast again today. I want to go over and I want to explain to you the elements. If you're going to start to scale your real estate investment business, the way we did, we did it through different marketing channels.
[00:02:59] But when we really took off is when we started to do. Consistent marketing. And we had a plan on the deli to grow a real estate investment business. One of the vehicles we utilized and there were many today, I'm going to go over the one, which is direct mail. Now this particular method of growing your real estate investment business could assist you with scaling up rather quickly, but there's tools and tips and secrets and strategies that you have to understand and deploy in order to do this right.
[00:03:32] Now, what are the first things that you want to understand when you're getting into direct mail? Is there a certain elements that you have to bring to the table? One of them the most important is what if this was live, I'd be asking, but it's not the most important thing is your list. Right? We went over that in number 34, episode number 34 riches and niches.
[00:03:57] The listen, go back. The most important aspect when you're starting to direct mail is your list. You can't go out and do a broad array of just every zip code, every home in a zip code, because you're not going to be hitting specific targeted people. You're going to be wasting a lot of money with mailing that way, because you want to be talking to people who need to be spoken to at the time.
[00:04:19] That they needed to be spoken to. And so what that means is if they're in bankruptcy or foreclosure going through divorce, you want to hit them at a certain timeframe in a certain cadence, cadence meeting every 30 days, every 60 days, every 45 days, every 75 days, whatever you plan your marketing campaign out to, but you want to hit them in a certain cadence.
[00:04:38] But that list by far is the most important thing that you want to focus in on. So. When you're building out your niche lists, this is starting when you're starting your business and you're building out your niche list. You want to focus in on those that are going to have the highest response, foreclosure, vacants, probates tax lien, not on rock, landlord, tenant issues, foreclosures.
[00:05:03] Those are the ones you're going to want to hit on. Now, once you get your list put together and you want to start to grow or scale, you're going to realize there's only a certain amount of names that you're going to have you niche. Like we do a fire campaign. We might only get 15 or 20 to twenty-five tops in certain areas on a monthly basis.
[00:05:22] That's just not enough to grow and scale your business. It's enough when you're getting started. Right? If you're a solo preneur and you're getting started, you only need. A few highly targeted names on your list in order to hit them. And if you had a few highly targeted names on that list, you hit them with direct mail.
[00:05:38] You hit them with phone calls, with texting, with emails. You're not going to endure through the smokescreen. Like I said, like you do whatever it takes to get these people to call. But when you start to grow and scale, your list is going to be, it's going to be everything, right. Like to get a broader array of people.
[00:05:52] So there's two companies out there that we utilize that you can utilize. Let me just pull this up. Two companies that we utilize. So the first one we utilize is called ListSource. Now with ListSource, you're going to be able to go in and sign up for this thing for free go to listsource.com. And when you go in there, you're going to want to start figuring out how to get a larger, broader range of people on that list.
[00:06:19] But also at the same time, it's going to be specialized. Obviously they're going to own real estate. They might be behind the new mortgage. They might be. I'm living in that property for 30 plus years, you might want to target people who have high equity. You might want to target those that have, that are just not on the rocks.
[00:06:35] So with ListSource and with ListAbility, that's the next one where they've utilized. Let me see if I can pull it up here. And listability.com. These two source providers list providers. When you starting to grow and scale, you want to bring in. So your arsenal, it's one of the tools you want to utilize. So you could have highly targeted lists of people.
[00:06:59] They're all going to be homeowners. So that's going to be the targeted piece, but then you can start this segment with high equity, with landlord tenant, with not on a rock with 30, 60, 90 days late on their mortgage. There's different things. You can start the hit. But you can build lists of 5,000, 10,015, 20,000 names on that list.
[00:07:18] So you can start direct mailing a little bit more. Now, one of the things I want to warn you when you're getting into direct mail, when you have a very small targeted list, your response rates could generally are, are generally higher because you have extremely laser-focused targeted when you start to go broad.
[00:07:37] Your direct response rates are going to come down. Sometimes it half really depends on your list. It depends where you're at, but they could drop down substantially. Now I want to go into if number one, the list is the most important. Then what do you think the next most important thing is that you have to have when you're marketing?
[00:07:56] Well, the element is you have to have a piece, so sort of a marketing piece that you going to be sending out, but on that piece, you have to have the right message. To the right market. Now I used to study Dan Kennedy and I still do. I've studied him for years. He's a direct marketer. And Dan Kennedy says the message, the message to market must match.
[00:08:17] And what that simply means is you have to talk to the people that you're going to be targeting. I hate to use the word targeted, cause it sounds like we're trying to kill them, but you're, it's target marketing. You're going. And sending direct mail pieces to a specific audience. That's your target audience.
[00:08:31] And you want to talk to them in such a way that you're going to get a response. And so the first thing, your list, the second thing, the message on that list. And even before the message, the number one thing to have on that list, whether you're sending out a letter, a postcard of a lumpy mail, it's going to be the headline.
[00:08:51] On that, uh, if it's a postcard is going to be the headline. If it's a letter it's going to be what's on the outside of that letter. So let's talk about this now because we're starting to get into the, to the elements of getting people to respond with you direct mail, right? You got your list, you got your message.
[00:09:07] You got your headline. Let's talk about the different types of pieces we can send out to them because depending on the piece is going to depend on what we talk about first. If it's a postcard, We're going to be saying, okay, if you're sending out a postcard, you're going to want to have in that postcard, that headline standing out and grabbing the attention of the people.
[00:09:25] Who's reading that postcard, that's going to grab their attention. And then every small paragraph underneath the one job of that paragraph is to get them to read the next paragraph after and on a postcard. When we send them out, we send out the cheap, tiny postcards, the three by fives. That's the cheapest one to send.
[00:09:44] We also send out the large jumbo cards. We send out letters, but when you're sending out postcards send that those cheap little ones to start. They're inexpensive. You don't have a lot of room. So headline grabs our attention. The next paragraph sucks them in something like we'll buy your house, all cash, hassle-free closing 30 days or on your timeline.
[00:10:04] So you want to have the copy drag them in. And that the end of that copy, the two things you're going to want is you're going to want a call to action. You can want a call to action. That's whole now for a free quote, call now for a cash offer. Call now for whatever, or you can send them to your website. I highly recommend if you starting out new that you do not send them to your website, you want to be able to track every single dollar.
[00:10:31] That you're spending. You want to be able to track it in your marketing. The way to do that is through telephone number. And we're going to go into that in a second. So you have your lists. You have, if it's a postcard, your headline, your message to the market, what's matching must be talking to these people.
[00:10:46] As they want to be spoken to, you have to have the body of the copy, allow it to drag them in, suck them in. So they read the next paragraph that that copy. And from there is going to be your call to action, right? Your offer in your call to action. I forgot the offer, which is one of the most important parts is will your offer is, you know, we'll buy a house, all cash close in seven days.
[00:11:07] Call, and this is your call to action. So when you have your call to action on your postcard, on your letter on anything, what we do is we utilize a different telephone number. This is key. If you're starting, you don't have to do it this in depth, but if you're growing and scaling you, you don't want to follow what I'm saying.
[00:11:27] And if you're starting, you want to do something more, but not exactly what I explain what I mean the second. So if you're starting out, you want to have one single number. For all your direct mail campaigns. And that one number is going to track you direct mail when it goes out. So, you know, when you get a phone call, that particular phone call is coming from a direct mail piece.
[00:11:50] And I'm going to tell you who to go to in a second. Now, as you're growing and scaling, you might be sending out direct mail to a probate list. You might be sending out the red mail piece to fire campaigns, the foreclosure campaigns to high equity campaigns, the vacant. So if you're sending out all these different.
[00:12:06] Marketing campaigns to be special niche lists that you're putting out the proper way to market the property to track your marketing dollars is to have a certain telephone over a specific telephone over for every single marketing channel that you're doing, not channel every single marketing niche that you're sending it out through.
[00:12:26] So if it's probate and it's your direct mail list that you're sending it out to, you want to have a telephone number for probate. You would have a telephone number for foreclosure telephone number for tax lien and a telephone number for vacants. Each niche list is going to have its own telephone number.
[00:12:40] That way, when somebody calls you, you're able to know instantaneously one what marketing list they came off of. So you know how to immediately speak with them too. And most importantly, this is going to explain to you and tell you exactly how much money you're spending for that particular list. How much more can we spend on marketing dollars?
[00:13:00] And what the cost is per call per appointment and per deal. This is where you start to dial in your KPIs. That's where another podcast that we're going to go into, the most important thing I want you to get out of this with telephone number is that you have to have a specific number to use that number has to be for each individual niche list that you're sending it out to.
[00:13:19] If you're starting, you could have one telephone number. If you're growing or scaling. If you're growing, you want to have one number for each niche list. If you're scaling, what we do is we literally have like 95 different telephone numbers. Why? Because every single. Marketing campaign that we put out has a telephone number on it, attached to a list.
[00:13:41] And then every single we get a little crazy. Every single step in that campaign has a different number associated with. So we know if we're on mailing number 11, that telephone number has that campaign has a different telephone number on it versus the one that was in. Campaign number one, let's just call it for the fire damage.
[00:14:02] So it's kind of elaborate, but we track everything and we track it right down to know exactly what campaign they're on, what step of the campaign are on. And then we measure how much money we're making, how much money we spent and what the ROI is on every single marketing dollar we're putting out now, who do we use?
[00:14:19] Right? This is, this show is all about. Tools tips, tricks, strategies, system secrets, start, grow, and scale. So one of the tools we use two of them. We're going to give them to you. Now, write this down. If you go to Billyssecrets.com, one of them on there is if CallRail and CallRail is multiple different telephone numbers that you can track and utilize.
[00:14:42] What I love about CallRail is it's great with. Online marketing. So it tracks all your Google pay-per-click telephone numbers and ads and anything online and also your offline stuff. The one thing I don't like about CallRail for us and we do use it. But the one thing I don't like is that it doesn't integrate easily with my CRM.
[00:15:03] Our CRM that we utilize is Podio. And again, if you go to Billyssecrets.com and pull this up, Billyssecrets.com, you will see it on here. Billyssecrets.com it is right here. The investor CRM that we utilize. So on there with Podio, we utilize smartphone. And that's right on the needs of right. Your smartphone, all these telephone, arms and smartphone.
[00:15:26] What they do is it tracks every single marketing campaign that you're doing. But more importantly, it takes every single call when it comes in. It auto calculates the cost per call in our Podio CRM. It auto calculates and re I'm sorry, auto record, every single call and stores, the CRM. And it tells you exactly how much money you spent.
[00:15:51] How much money you made, what the course was per call what the course was, prep, location, what the cost was per deal. So CallRail, phenomenal piece of software. We utilize it. We utilize that more for offline, but what we do is we forwarded over to smartphone. We don't use smartphone online because honestly, a CallRail has some really killer analytics that smartphone does not.
[00:16:15] But in any event, the tools that we utilize for tracking the coals is smartphone and CallRail. Now. One of the other things we do when we're sending out direct mail and we have our lists, we've narrowed it down or we're going broad. Cause we're, we're growing and scaling. We have our marketing piece that we're figuring out.
[00:16:32] Now let's go with the marketing pieces before you even get into the next thing, marketing pieces. There's a broader rate that you're going to spend on marketing pieces. Now you can spend 43. I think it's 43 cents. Now we've gotten our postcards down to 32 cents per postcard for three and a half by five, because we're doing volume.
[00:16:52] You might spend 40 cents per postcard for the small ones. Step up a little bit to the five eight you might spend 60 or 70 cents for five, eight bigger postcard. You could put more, copy more images. The jumbo postcard, you might spend a dollar, dollar 10. The handwritten letters. Let's see if I have something on here, I'll pull it up for you.
[00:17:12] I have a on Billyssecrets.com. I'm going to show you some of the direct mail pieces that we utilize in some of my students utilize where to hell isn't on here. It is this one, right? So here's the direct mail. Let me show you what we have. So when direct mail you have multiple. Different things. You can sound that you can send out yellow letters that look like this.
[00:17:35] These go for a little over a dollar, a piece. You can send out handwritten postcards, these go for anywhere. Cause they're color anywhere from 60 to a dollar, a piece, depending on how big they are and the elements that I want you to see on here on the postcard. And this is something that you sending out, it's not inside an envelope.
[00:17:53] It says I buy houses and I want to buy your house for cash. That's the headline. That's going to catch them. If you're sending something out to them in the handwritten letter, the yellow letter. And by the way, you can find all this information@phillysecrets.com, just go right on there. Look for the thing that says direct mail.
[00:18:09] I'm giving you all this shit. We utilize. Why? Because they want you guys to succeed and what you're doing. So just realize when you're going through, when you're doing your figuring out your direct mail pieces. The smaller, the postcard. If it's in black and white, it's going to be the cheapest. As you start scaling and postcards with the size, they're going to be more expensive.
[00:18:29] If you add color to the postcards, they're going to be more expensive. If you do a handwritten letter, it's going to be expensive. If you do a hair in envelope, it's going to be expensive. Right? So all these little, these little, I guess, things you add on, or as you start scaling up with the sizes, they're going to add expenses to your overall marketing campaign.
[00:18:48] So I wouldn't recommend coming out of the boat and doing the most expensive marketing campaign. Cause you could be cropping down five, 10, 15, $20,000. Pretty quick. You want to do something with your marketing before you start scaling it. The one thing you want to do is you want to test it. You want to make sure all this shit you're sending out works.
[00:19:10] How do you do that? You do it with a small sampling of about a thousand pieces. So send out a thousand pieces, made sure when you send out those thousand pieces, you have a certain telephone number on it. That telephone number is going to track how many calls came from that marketing campaign. The next month send out another thousand pieces with a different, maybe a completely different piece.
[00:19:30] So you just change the headline to see what kind of response you get. If you really want to get into direct mail. Do what's called a split test. If you have 5,000 pieces, send out 1300 pieces with this piece, 1300 worth of this piece and 13 hundreds with third piece, with a, tell a different telephone number in each, and then measure your results.
[00:19:50] That's called the split test and that's where you start to maximize your dollars on your investment. Let's go into now, when it comes down to the marketing, you got your, your lists, you got your direct mail piece that you put out, you got your headline, you got your copy. You got the piece you got to put out, you have your tracking telephone number, whether it's CallRail or smartphone, both of those are on.
[00:20:12] Billy secrets.com. If you're not, if you're a newbie investor and you're not, you have a full-time job and you're not able to pick up the phone during the day. One of the things I highly recommend is that you have an answering service pick up that phone as if it's you and they take down a full application.
[00:20:32] They can just ask a couple of questions to pre-qualify and then text that right over to you, or email that app right over to you that who do we use? If you go to building secrets.com, you'll see it right on there. There's a telephone number right down here on the bottom and it is called PATLive. And there's a telephone number on you somewhere.
[00:20:50] There's no website. If you call this number right here, (866) 306-3547. That's the answering service we call you. Call them. They'll set you up. It's relatively inexpensive. Relatively speaking, what is it? Probably like 40 or $50 to sign up. And I think it's like a dollar a minute, but that should not scare you.
[00:21:10] Because if you're not there to pick up the phone and these people call and they don't leave a message on your cell phone and they hang up and you're not using one of these tracking services, you don't know who the hell it is. You try to get back and touch it. It might take forever if they call and you're native of able to pick up and PATLive picks it up for you.
[00:21:27] You're getting a lead. Scripted out. They're going to take the information. I think even when you call PATLive, they even give you my script. I mean, they give you everything. I'm trying to make your life freaking easy. So you can just turn key, start doing deals. And after you put all this crap together, here's what's going to happen.
[00:21:44] You're going to be in a situation where you're driving in business, you driving in leads. You may not know exactly what to do. Well, I have a partner with Billy program. It doesn't cost you shit to get involved partner with Billy, learn partner invest. Billy is right here on Billyssecrets.com. Just go on there and fill it out.
[00:22:01] Tell them that you have a deal, a lead and myself, or one of my teammates will actually help you get that deal done. And we'll split the profits. We'll come up with the profit split. We'll make it happen. So listen, I hope. That you are. Here's what I assume, just going to end it, but I wanted to go in, so one of the other tools that we utilize, I interviewed Robert and it was I think number 17 year, right?
[00:22:23] Robert Syfert in UREI number 17. So if you go to Billyssecrets.com and go to UREI, number 17, Robins siphon. So Robert and I are in one of the masterminds together, and he has a piece of software that we've been utilizing for a while. And it's a killer piece of software. It's called list stacking. And so here's what happens with his list in software.
[00:22:44] If you have small little list, these little niche lists, you have a fire niche list and you have an REO, not an REO a vacant house one, and you have a, a foreclosure one, and just add em all of divorce, tax lien, all these different niche lists, what you can do. Is, you could upload all these lists into this, the list stack of software.
[00:23:06] And from there, his list acting sore for a one will take away all the duplicate leads. You're not mailing to the same list multiple times, but more importantly, what it does is it tells you of these names. How many of these names are on the same list? Two, three, four, five times. Now, why is that important?
[00:23:24] Why is that important to know? Because do you think if somebody is on the tax lien list, If somebody is on the non-owner occupied list, if somebody's on the landlord tenant list, if somebody is on the high equity list, which is a good thing, they have high equity and they're on the state list. That's five, usually if there's three or more they're killer, but let's just say this one, like they have five.
[00:23:47] And then you have a total list inside there, and you have 30 names that have those five on there. They're on there, they have five indicators or three indicators, situations tag from all these different niche lists. What do you think you should do? I think you should do with ever the hell it takes to get in touch with those people spend and invest as much money as you need to.
[00:24:11] To get in touch with those people and do whatever needs to happen because, you know, if you have a list of 20, 30, 40, 50 people that are on three lists or more, that means they have three different situations or more that they're dealing with. You know, they have a high, there are this certain situation where they have a high level of probability.
[00:24:32] They are going to sell and sell for cash. And this is a inexpensive way to do what we do with data analytics, with a data scientist at a high level, this is a very inexpensive, cheaper way to do it. Is you just take all these different lists in that are micro niche lists, put them into his list, stacking software, and it will tell you how many names on the same list.
[00:24:57] And then you literally do whatever it takes. You go and door knock, or you get somebody else's door. Knock. You tell the market, you send them postcards, you text them, you email them, you stalk them on Facebook. You get them on LinkedIn. Like you do what? 99.99, nine, 9% of everybody else will not do. And what that's going to do for you is it's going to get you a lead.
[00:25:20] That's going to turn into an application and an appointment, which is going to turn into a contract. I'm guaranteeing you this. And when it happens, I want you to hit me, find me on Facebook, unstoppable REI formula, LinkedIn, find me on, IG go to YouTube. Like I want to know the shit that I'm teaching you is actually working.
[00:25:38] And, uh, because it works cause I do it. I've done it. My team does it. Like we do this in a whole lot more. I'm just scratching the surface with you guys to give you some insights of what you need to do to build out, to start to grow or to scale your real estate investment business. All right. So then a half hour, I want to keep the sweet.
[00:25:56] Short and sweet give you what I came to give, which is the knowledge, the bonds. I want to drop it down. I hope you guys are getting value out of this podcast. I'd love to hear from you. Follow me on Facebook, not my personal account, a maxed out good on my business account. Facebook unstoppable REI, Billy Alvaro, unsolvable, BA, and just find me a line, man.
[00:26:17] Hit me. Follow me. Give me two, thumbs up five, thumbs up. If you love this podcast, go and just give me a rating and give me a review. I would greatly appreciate it. It pushes me up in the algorithm. It gets my name out there a little bit more. And the one thing I am trying to do above all is to serve people and to get them to realize that nothing changes unless you change, nothing happens unless you make something happen.
[00:26:41] Don't get stuck in the same road. Of trying to learn, learn, learn. You have to eventually start to implement. You're going to fall. You're going to get hit. You're going to get knocked down and you got to pick yourself back up and realize this whole game of life. It's all about just perpetual motion moving forward, but it's all about winning, learning, failing, growing, getting up and making something happen to catch it in the next one, guys.