Mailing To Foreclosures- Whats YOUR System?
Well I've taken the plunge and I started subscribing to my county foreclosure list. They send me a nice excel spreadsheet with several hundred listings.
Some listings have sale dates/times listed, others don't.
I'd like to mail out about 50 letters a week and follow up with 2 postcards to those same people. How do you guys set it up to keep track of this and automate this as best as possible?
Right now I'm just copying and pasting the rows that appeal to me to a new spreadsheet and naming it with a date. I do this until I have the 50 or so I want to target. I'd write out letters, send them out, and follow up with postcards for the next two weeks.
Then, when the next week listing comes out I'll do it again, so I'd have a staggered effect.
Anyone have any tips on making this process a little more efficient? Please chime in on your "setup"
Thanks~
Check www.www.CountyRecords Research
.com. They have a software program on there called CRRPRO. This will track your list for you.
In terms of sending letters and postcards, everyone is doing this. Your letters and postcards will be upon a stack of about 10-20 others depending on your area. Try and be creative by doing something everyone is not doing!
Oversize postcards is a start.
Best Riches,
Jeffrey Adam
[addsig]
I agree with Jeffrey everyone is using letters and postcards. On the ones you are most interested in go and knock on doors,and try to talk to the homeowner. You will get a much better response rate.
Really nobody can tell you what will give you a better response rate in your area. You've got to try several different methods and see what works best for yourself. If something isn't working just change it up a little bit and see if it helps. Knocking on doors is so much more time consuming than letters and I've found that you've got to pick a time when you think people will be home - otherwise you'll be going and nobody's there. Just try some things out and see what works for you.
Ryan J. Schnabel
Hi fnord,
This is interesting to know that one can get a subsciption of the foreclosure listing from the county.
How do they send these list to you and when?
I've actually been using the newspaper.
I use to subscribe to one of the local organizations that compiles the list for you here in GA...However, by the time the list comes out you only have maybe a couple of weeks to work with.
Thanks for your feedback.
JB
I recomend a book called BEING DIRECT, its an autobiography by one of the early direct mail marketers, has lots of stories about how to develop a direct mail marketing plan.
be different. don't tell how you can save them money or credit or anything like that. they have already been told this may 200 times. tell them how you can save their home, Bridge and Foreclosure Bailout loans. Then after that, tell them how much money they can save by not using the MLS.
the object is to have them sell the house to you w/o a realtor then you flip the house by yourself.
[ Edited by dfms on Date 04/14/2004 ]
What are the bridge and foreclosure bailout loans? And, why would you want to bail them out. Don't you want to buy the house, in flipping? You can probably tell I am a newbie.
I would create three columns in the Excel spreadsheet "Mailing Number", "Last Mailed Date", "Next Mailed Date". If LMN is blank, you have not sent them a card, 1 means one mailing, etc. Last Mailed date and Next Mailed Date should be pretty self explanitory.
Sort the spreadsheet by Next Mailed Date. If NMD is blank it is the first mailing so edit the owner's name appropriately. Then Copy off the rows where NMD is blank or greated than todays date - into a new workbook. Save that workbook. Go into Word and create a new document then TOOLS->MAIL MERGE and make it a mail merge document. Choose the Excel workbook as your data source. You letters will be generated automatically. (Laser printers are wonderful).
Once the letters are done, go back to your original worksheet and update the LMD and NMD appropriately. If it is you last mailing, change NMD to 99/99/9999.
Does the county foreclosure list contain items that were included in the previous list that they sent. Meaning, can Mrs J Smith at 123 Easy Street but on the list for January and February? If so then you need to eliminate duplicates after you copy the rows from the new list into your master worksheet.
I have Excel macros that delete duplicate rows and that take each word and makes the first character an upper case and all other characters a lower case, but that is enough for now.
Brenda
Is there a parcel id or some other unique identifier in each row?
Ms Financial savvy
Bail out can mean two things, one that you are thinking of most likely is to get the owner current, he stays in home, you get whatever you get as a finders fee for the loan. Not much there.
The other bail out is to get the homeowner out of foreclosure by purchasing the property from them and preventing more bad things happening like credit problems, foreclosure, eviction. You give the homeowner what they need (get out of foreclosure and move) and you get the house at a bargain that you can then flip and make money.
Here is the deal. You won't land any deals if you don't make the homeowners a deal that works for them. Make everybody a winner and you will make money.