Direct mail advertising has been a cost-effective tool for many industries for decades, but for real estate it is absolutely vital. Today’s realtors can’t afford to overlook the digital marketing avenues open to them, but direct mail continues to be such a strong lead generator that it can’t be ignored either, and the most effective realtors use all the tools available to them in balance. If you’ve never used real estate direct mail advertisements before, here are some quick tips to get you started.
1. Know Your Campaign’s Purpose
Every marketing campaign you roll out should have a specific goal. That allows you to tailor your strategic choices and resource investments to a goal you can measure, to see if you are effectively reaching more customers as either a buyer’s agent or a seller’s agent. Even if you do both, it’s a good idea to separate the two activities when deciding on campaign goals, for the sake of better control over your assessment of the campaign’s return. This is important because you should be designing your materials with the goal in mind. The copy and graphics needed to send out prospecting fliers for an investment buyer are very different from the approaches you’d use if you wanted to attract buyers looking for their first home.
2. Develop Accurate Assessments
Once you have a goal, you need to be able to measure whether you’ve reached it. If it’s something simple like more referrals in, you can measure that with a simple assessment. More complex goals like increasing conversions to a mailing list will require more sophisticated tools, but most service providers can help you figure out how to assess your impact on their platforms.
3. Learn From Past Campaigns
Recording the exact outcomes of each approach you use can help you decide when a campaign is worth re-running in the future. Variety is always good, but after a few cycles a successful drive can be done again, where unsuccessful attempts tell you what not to repeat. Both of those should inform your next campaign every time you sit down to plot one out.