How can real estate pros and businesses get better results from their direct mail marketing campaigns?

Direct mail continues to be one of the core real estate marketing strategies for investors, agents, lenders, and others. Direct mail can be very affordable and has the potential to deliver great results and ROI. Of course it can also be a big let down too. Not every campaign is a hit, and every month more and more competitors seem to be targeting the same mailboxes you are. So how can you get better results from your mail marketing?

One: Optimize Your Mailing Lists

Your results are only going to be as good as your mailing lists. If you’ve been in the business for a while it may be time to clean up those lists. Get rid of the bad addresses and update your databases. Many may need to put more focus on building new lists. You may have a large database but if you are just hammering the same prospects again and again you are going to find fewer and fewer on those lists that are viable prospects. Buy, rent, or build new lists by requesting addresses when you are marketing online. Honing in on better qualified prospects with quality lists can help increase conversion rates and ROI. However, if you have been going too tight it may be worth expanding your criteria, or branching out into new areas.

Two: Send Better Mail Pieces

If you aren’t getting the results you want from your mail campaigns maybe it is a question of improving your mail pieces. That could mean being bolder and more creative in your packaging design. It may be investing in better quality mail. Or it could be hiring a professional copywriter to spruce up your message.

Three: Be Consistent

Not every prospect is going to need your services or want them at the moment they receive that first piece. Some hope that prospects will file those mailers and pick them up later when they are motivated. Not everyone does that, and it also means playing the odds of being picked amongst all the other mail if they do. However, some will just expect to receive more from you and may even be looking forward to a fresh piece with your contact information. Just keep mailing.

Four: Know Your Competition

Chances are that there are at least a handful if not dozens of other competitors mailing at the same time you are. It’s hard to beat them or stand out unless you know what you are up against. Consider collecting those pieces and how you can get on their lists to see when they change it up.

Five: Optimize Your Lead Handling

Generating the leads is only half of the battle. Managing and closing them is equally important. Optimize your lead handling so that you spend time with, and give great service to the best leads and get best ROI. That may mean getting assistance in answering the phone or screening calls, using the web to channel leads, and automating follow up.

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.

The more property wholesalers help their end buyers be successful, the more they will be successful themselves.

Wholesalers who are serious about succeeding will proactively look for ways to help their end buyer customers. The more profitable and efficient they are, the more homes you can sell them, the more loyalty and trust you will build, and the more you’ll enjoy what you do.

So how do you help your rehabbers and landlords who are buying your properties?

Pile on the Referrals

As a true wholesaler you may not be interested in retail buyers, or getting involved in renting or rehabbing at all. Yet, chances are you’ll run into plenty of these leads every week. Pass them forward.

This can include renters, Realtors, contractors, retail home buyers, and buy and hold investors looking for rentals, as well as lenders offering long term financing and rehab cash.

Provide Better Intel, Earlier

What slows most rehabbers down the most? Evaluating properties and getting the work complete. So give them a better head start. When you can get them access to the property in advance. When you can’t provide more detailed information, repair estimates, repair needs, etc. If you let them know what deals you may have coming up, even before you are ready to close on the B to C transaction they can be sure to have their financing and crews lined up too.

Share Marketing Tips

What is the biggest sticking point for more end buyers? It’s getting that property resold or rented so they can bring cash in and buy more inventory from you. Help them with that. It is only to your benefit. According to RealtyTrac flip times are at a new record high of over 6 months! That’s crazy. Start a real estate blog and share marketing tips to help them move their deals faster. Share tips you find via social media and email too. They’ll appreciate it, and you might generate more end buyer leads in the process.

Be Consistent

Stay consistent with your inventory conveyor belt, the quality and accuracy of your deals, the match for your end buyers, and the frequency. If they can rely on you to have the good deals when they want them then they will keep coming back.

 

Authored by BestTransactionFunding.com - the leading source of transactional funding for real estate wholesalers in the US. 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.

There may be many factors involved in your success in real estate, yet one of the most critical is also one of the most overlooked - vendor relationships.

As great as any real estate investor or CEO is it takes a team to get each deal done. Even without any in-house staff or assistants that means appraisers, inspectors, title companies, lenders, media contacts, and more. Yet, these relationships are often taken for granted. If you want to achieve your maximum potential and last you need access to the best vendors. Not only do you need access, but you need the best vendors to be eager to work hard to do great work on your deals, and fast.

There are two main parts to achieving and maintaining great vendors…

The first is financial. How fast and reliable do you pay? There is often a temptation for real estate investors and companies to drag out invoices as long as possible. Many bite off more than they can chew, and try to use this lag time as a form of credit line.

The best practice here is to put yourself in the vendor’s shoes. How long after doing some work or closing a deal do you expect to get paid? What if you did the work to fix and sell a property but the end buyer or title company didn’t send you a check for 3 months? How would you feel? How motivated would you be to do business with them again?

Of course money only goes so far. If you’ve ever had a job you hated you have already experienced that. At some point the money just isn’t enough to keep you there.

The main part of this is how easy you are to work with. Toyota is famous for its approach to working with vendors. Toyota may push them hard, but they do it with a mindset of helping their vendors to be better and reach their potential, not just to squeeze as much out of them as possible.

If you are a difficult client the revenues you offer may not be enough. Sometimes this is just about being better at delivering clear requests and specifications to empower vendors to do their best for you the first time around. It’s also about treating them, and their staff well.

The best in this area are proactive about building relationships and making a positive impression with each staff member at a vendor who they deal with on a regular basis. Have you ever sent a thank you card to a title processor or loan processor? How about event tickets for a Realtor or mortgage broker to take their family to do something special? Do you talk well about them to others?

Your effort in these areas will form your reputation in the real estate industry. And you better believe that word spreads fast. Are you the investor or firm that vendors are climbing over each other to work with? Or are you running out of vendors to choose from? This dynamic will absolutely determine how long you last in real estate, and how high you go.

So what have you done to excel in these areas? Or what have others done in this respect that wowed you?

 

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding and hard money loans for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.

New TRID mortgage and closing rules threaten the biggest shake up in the industry so far. How will they affect real estate wholesalers?

A new set of rules went into effect on October 3^rd, 2015. The TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rules a.k.a ‘TRID’ are the most notable changes to the industry since at least Dodd-Frank. The head of the Mortgage Bankers Association warns that these new commandments of mortgage lending and real estate closings will impact everyone from loan officers to Realtors to individual home buyers and sellers. Some companies have reportedly spent millions on restructuring to be prepared. Others still may have little clue what they mean for their transactions.

There is sure to be some closing mayhem ahead. Whether these new rules and forms will really make a positive difference will have to be seen. Much of that depends on whether the rules are followed. After all, the previous issues that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is reportedly attempting to fix with these changes, were in reality a lack of following the rules and forms that were already in place. Unfortunately it could be the end consumer who is hurt worst as normally happens with regulatory changes like this.

TRID rules which are meant to simplify the mortgage and closing process with 2 new documents have 2,000 pages of guidelines. So no one should be surprised if there is a lot of confusion over the next few months.

The four main things you need to know are:

1. The amount of paperwork lenders can collect upfront is being limited
2. The old Good Faith Estimate is being replaced with the ‘Lending Estimate’
3. The old HUD 1 Settlement Statement is being replaced with the ‘Closing Disclosure’
4. There is now a 3 day waiting period between receiving the final Closing Disclosure and actual completion of the transaction

Real estate wholesalers can be better prepared to navigate TRID challenges by; building extra time to close into real estate contracts, requiring copies of buyers’ official loan commitments faster, making sure all parties for both transactions have their Closing Disclosures 3 days in advance, and by working with title companies that are on top of new TRID rule implementation.

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding and hard money loans for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.

Savvy real estate wholesalers are building up big wealth in their digital assets. So how much is your wholesaling website worth?

Wholesaling websites can help not only fuel investors with lots of real estate leads and extra income, but can accumulate substantial wealth in and of themselves. In fact, according to a new report from website broker Digital Exits online businesses have been steadily selling for more than their offline competition.

If you are running a real estate wholesaling website anyway, why not pay attention to building extra value in it which can help attract investors and turn it into an extremely valuable asset which could be sold off in the future, at least if life emergencies take you away from the property industry? Or to make it easy for heirs to cash out?

According to the study which covered two years of online business sales data and 250 transactions the average sales price of an online business was over $514,000. Many have obviously sold for millions, with giants like Google even snapping up technology related startups for billions in cash.

Of course some real estate websites aren’t worth anything much at all. Some simply litter cyberspace with junk. So what makes a website valuable and how can you increase the value of yours?

Fortunately for real estate investors valuing an online business is much like real estate. You can either use the comparable sales method, or perhaps better; the income approach.

Digital Exit’s founder Jock Purtle reveals that not mobile apps or lead generation sites, but e-commerce and advertising models sold for the highest multiples of earnings. Those selling in the 2 million to 5 million range actually sold for the highest multiples, but Jock predicts a surge in under $200,000 website demand as investors get hungrier in 2014.

Other factors which can affect value include ease of operations, overhead, track record, multiple income streams, list size, and uniqueness. This can help make a simply wholesaling website with multiple revenue streams, a tight outsourced team, which is attracting opt-ins and has relationships with lenders like Best Transaction Funding for liquidity and low or no debt very attractive to online business buyers, especially if they are able to develop good branding.