Having Direct Mail Nightmares?

**RealEstateNut** · 04-09-2010, 05:12 PM

Hi, I am Jeff Carter, co founder of this amazing web site. This web application was born out of a need to simplify our direct mail process in our real estate investment company. As our business grew the burden of getting mail out consistantly every week became an ever increasing challange. We started more than a decade ago mailing 500 piece letter campaings to our out of state home owners list. This was a black & white letter in a black & white envelope. While the responce rate was good we wanted more. We determined that sending mail to the same list 3 to 5 time was the key to making the phone ring. But now we had a bigger problem.......How do you keep track of all those different mailangs? Our solution was colored envelopes, green for letter 1, blue for letter 2, yellow for letter 3, red for letter 4 and purple for letter 5. While this took the confusion out of which letter went in what envelope, it created another problem. Finding the time to stuff, address and stamp all these envelopes. This process resulted in hundreds of thousands in revenue per year, but took its toll on friends & family.

Now at Build5.com, once your mail pieces are personalized the process that took 40 hours a week can be reduced to less that 15 minutes a week.

Stay tuned for more exciting news and marketing ideas and get ready to launch your next direct mail campaign at buildfive.com

**maui** · 04-10-2010, 01:29 AM

Aloha Jeff and welcome to the forum. A piece of advice, if you care to hear it; when coming to a new venue (whatever it may be) try to introduce yourself first and get a sense of what the community is about before promoting your services/products. There may be many agents here who would be very interested in your products, but when you start your thread as 'co founder of this amazing web site', that may turn a lot of people off as spam.

Now a question about your service, you said that you color-code the envelopes to distinguish the different mailing campaigns. But how do you know to which particular mailing a client is responding when he/she is calling? When they call, do you ask what color envelope they last received?

**RealEstateNut** · 04-10-2010, 09:08 AM

I am so sorry for not following the rules here. Please forgive me. I am ne at this forum and blog stuff. Now to answer your question.

I use a service from the ROI Guy or . They give me an 800# for each mailing sequence. (if I have a 5 piece letter campaign then I use 5 different tracking phone numbers.) They are then forwarded to the phone of my choice. These phone calls are also sent to my email as a written and audio file. So we know exactly how many, and who calls from each ad campaign. This service also retrieves blocked numbers and hang ups.

Hope I answered your question,

Jeff

**vijendrasnv** · 05-10-2010, 12:26 PM

Hello Can you tell me what the term "Mail Nightmares" is? I am not aware of this term as i hv heard it for the first time .Is it related to real estate?

**rehablist12** · 05-10-2010, 10:55 PM

Can you have brief introduction regarding nightmares mail? What is it all about? When we usually encounter it? Is it something we have to be afraid of? How it happened? Thanks!

**khorst** · 06-06-2010, 02:55 PM

We used to do a bunch of different mail campaigns for the mortgage side of our business and we did it all manual. It was a lot of work but it did pay off.

**ppmarketer** · 06-08-2010, 03:49 PM

I have a feeling that the "direct mail nightmare" has to do with the amount of time involved in setting up a direct mail/postcard campaign. Task include writing the letter or postcard, designing and laying it out, finding the right mailing list, sourcing a printer, labeling, and then delivering to the post office. Not to mention the time it takes to track and measure responses, and then everything else that's involved when dealing with prospects. Then the time it takes to do it all again.

My suggestion is you can outsource most of the work above to freelancers online. I use Odesk (pay by the hour freelance marketplace), elance, or guru. You can also purchase ready made templates and customize it.

Hope that helps!