Our “Sell My House Fast In Connecticut” motivated seller website was not optimized yet so we had to rely on direct mail marketing! Btw, if you want to follow our progress on our business endeavours feel free to visit our “We Buy Houses Fast In Connecticut” blog where we document our business diary. What properties we are buying, what we are doing with them (wholesaling them or fix and flipping them), and basically just writing down anything and everything of importance concerning growing our business.Investing is a numbers game, is what they say. The more you devote to marketing the more deals you make.  But what they do not say, is that little fine print you have to dig up for yourself.

Indeed marketing is an investment, and yes the more you market the more deals you make, IF you have the right list to market to, and the right marketing piece. This entry will be a 3-piece installment that I will cover this week.I will show you the pieces that we used, and will go over how successful they are.As we did our own research when we started, we found out that writing yellow letters was one of the more successful strategies.

OMG Do not do Yellow Letters. Boy we learned our mistake listening to the “Gurus”!!

I should clarify. Before making such outrageous statements we should define “successful”.

We have noticed that to most when you try to quantify success when it comes to marketing pieces, one looks at a response rate.
If you sent out 100 mailers and you got all 100 people to contact you, according to that definition, it is a highly successful marketing campaign.

But consider this. Write a yellow letter. Make sure you put your contact information in that letter. Then tie it on a brick and throw that brick through the windows of people’s houses you want to target. I am sure all of the people you have targeted will call you back. Heck most will even track you down to have a little visit!

I assume you can see where I am going with this. A return response from a mailer does not make it a successful mailer.

What Is A Successful Marketing Campaign?

Not even the amount of leads you converge into a deal from said mailer should be an indication of a successful mailer.

Don’t agree?

Wondering why not?

Glad you asked. Let’s expand on the previous example. You throw a brick through a window and someone calls you up yelling at you. You are such a wonderful talker and managed to turn the situation around and manage to seduce the angry brick recipient into selling their house to you.

Was it the mailer? No. It simply was your talking skills. The mailer actually caused you to start from a low ground. You first had to pacify them, and then start to convert them into a lead.

So now that we have a clear understanding what is involved when you quantify the success of a marketing campaign we will leave it up to you to figure out what comprises success when it comes to marketing. So let’s now move on to marketing with yellow letters.

Before I get into it, here is a disclaimer. I am about to share with you a marketing strategy that works, but we strongly advise you not to use it. At the end of this article, I will explain why, so that it will be the last thing you read and hopefully a lasting impression.

I will first share with you our very high rate of response (note I didn’t say “successful”) marketing piece; (remember I have already discussed why yellow letters suck monkey ass)

The Famed Yellow Letter.

1. Get a yellow letter

This is just a yellow, lined piece of paper from Walmart. You can buy a pack of 3 bundles for 5 dollars I believe.

​2. Write your message.

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All this is very standard and everyone does it that way. The trick is not in the letter itself. It is about getting people to open the envelope. So you need to do whatever it takes to have the person you are directing the mailer to, to open the envelope.

3. Get The Envelope Opened

So next is the important part. How do we ensure the envelope gets opened?
This is our secret weapon that has brought us deals!
Get an invitation envelope, get some personal stamps (nothing with an American flag on it as that looks to official). You want it to look like a friendly letter.
Make the envelope personable.

This is what we did:
When you are done writing the letter, do not fold it. Just bend it in half and then bend it over in quarter. Remember do not fold it flat, do not fold it period!

Bend (not fold) it in half like so:

Then place it in the colorful invitation envelope, and seal it. ​This is what we call “Lumpy Mail”. Chances are the mailman (should be “mail person right”? )  will flatten the envelope, but we just tell him/her that it is a wax sealed letter if you please could try not to flatten it.

Often they will be careful with it.. but not always. Now the envelope itself stands out.

“What the heck is inside? So curious to see what I received oh jolly good joy“

4. Put On Your Finishing Touches

The final touches are what is most important. A hand written address a little sticker to seal the envelope and a little hand written note with warm wishes. So you go through your mail and you notice a colorful invitation envelope that seems to have volume. Did someone sent me something? Curiosity sets in. Would you be able to resist opening the letter? Not likely.

This is what the final package looks like:

Here is why we have stopped this and no longer use this piece.
Several reasons. We didn’t like how the letter represented us and our business.
You claim to buy someone’s house in cash. You promise to be legit, and credible. How will you fork over money to buy a house in cash when you can’t even afford a printer, a nice letterhead, decent white paper and a professional looking letter?

If your marketing piece is sloppy, you are telling your potential sellers you are sloppy. I wouldn’t put trust in someone that walks up to me dirty in slippers unbuttoned t-shirt claiming he will buy my house in cash.But there is a more important reason we don’t use this method, even if it brought us deals.If we are claiming to be an honest transparent and straightforward company, how can we allow “tricking” people into opening our letters? Yes this IS dishonest. You tricked them into opening your letter by making the letter look like it was an invitation from a close personal friend. It is dishonest.

This is why we simply do not do this type of marketing.

This article is merely written to take you along on our journey of learning. Learning from someone’s mistakes is very valuable.
So now you have learned from our mistake!

We are doing this to network, to teach and to learn. If you find this article helpful, please comment and let us know. If you found this to be bad or wrong, also let us know. We are not here to merely teach, we want to learn as well. Furthermore we welcome guest posts, so let us know if you like to contribute an article. We will post a link to your site with your article as well.

For more information you can find more of us on our Seller website