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Has anyone had any luck sending mailers?  We sent out mailers every month to a specific neighborhood for almost a year with very little reponse.  If you have had better luck, could you give some suggestions on what seemed to work?

We have had great luck with mailers and door hangars.

Most of 2006 and 2007 we had done a few mailers, a bunch of door hangars, and we started our own neighborhood paper - all with great sucess.

Door hangars and private newspapers deliverd to the homeowners door are the best bang for the buck - the biggest cost is finding a local company to deliver them for you - usually they will charge you a dime a piece.

Mailers on the other hand has had the greatest response - but at the highest cost.

We are switcing to mailing out our own newspaper which is providing us the highest rate of return (just got 4 new listings this week from our 1st mailing). You can see our newspaper on our web site http://www.hqhomes.com

I think the content of your mailers or any other type of advertising is the most important factor to consider.

We have just started our own blog and we are getting 50 uniques a day - I don’t know if that is good or not but it sounds good - check it out @ http://www.hqhomesblog.com and leave me a message.

Thanks,

Tony
http://www.hqhomes.com

I have a few farming ideas over at my blog at Real Solutions Blog.  Farming pays off if you are consistent.  Most agents give up after the first year.

I guess we gave up on the mailers too quickly.  We also did try a round of door hangers offering a free CMA for the owner.  We received a few calls from those, but two of the people wanted us to tell them what we thought their home would sell for over the phone.  We told them we couldn’t estimate a possible listing price without seeing the home and they passed.

It sounds like you had much better luck with the hangers.  What type of advertising did you have on the hangers?

I think that mailers could probably not have that much response but it will be retained in the minds of the people. There are so many times I have read a mailer and because I am not currently looking for a house or not interested at the moment in the product, I don’t respond. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t retain the memory for future reference.

I have not had any luck with mailers.  Direct mail actually brings back the lowest return.  In a perfect campaign and target group mailers can only bring you back up to 1% on new clients.  Their must be a better way of marketing.

It clearly depends on the quality of the advertising. If the potential customer finds your advertising boring, she will ignore it.

I think blogging or on-line advertising is a better alternative. If you have a blog about real estate, surely most people that would go there are real estate investors or atleast interested in this business. It gives a better chance.