Do you have a real estate business and want to directly target potential customers in a geographical location? If you haven’t already considered or started a direct mail advertising campaign, there are many reasons why you should!
What is a Direct Mail Advertising Campaign?
A direct mail advertising campaign is when you target the letterboxes of potential new clients with print based marketing. Most estate agents use leaflets or letters on headed paper to advertise their business, and often see successful results.
What are the benefits of direct mail advertising in real estate?
Do you think direct mail marketing is dead? You could be wrong….
There are many reasons why Direct Mail advertising works so well, particularly in the real estate business. Here are some of them:
Excellent Conversion Rate and ROI
Did you know that surprisingly, the conversion rate for direct mail advertising campaigns is rather high? According to famous online marketing expert Neil Patel, the response rate for direct marketing is 5.3% for mail sent to houses. Compare this to the average click through rate of email marketing which is around 2% or 3% and you can see that you are getting roughly double the percentage of conversions.
Allows you to Target by Geographical Location
One of the most important aspects of real estate marketing is being able to target by geographical location, and direct mail marketing to houses allows you to do just that. For example, if you have a San Francisco real estate agency, you might send a letter to all houses in the Bay Area, or even hone on a fee target streets. You are mailing directly to their houses, so you know that they have a house to sell! Direct mail marketing allows you to target you customer base with precision.
Builds Relationships and Rapport
Many people that you target may not be looking to sell their house or move anytime soon. However, by sending out a targeted letter to their exact address, they have you on their radar. You are building relationships and report with potential customers by keeping in touch with them and updating them on your services. Direct Mail advertising means that you will be at the forefront of their minds when the DO decide to sell.
Raises Brand Awareness
When a leaflet drops through the door, it is a fact that it may end up being left in a pile of papers or even worse…in the trash! We all know that. Not everyone will respond to your print based marketing.
However, they have SEEN your marketing efforts and may have even recognized or clocked your logo. This is raising brand awareness for your business. Did you know that a potential new customer needs to be exposed to your brand at least 7 times before will buy your product or engage in your service? This is the marketing rule of 7. Complete a direct marketing campaign and you are one step closer to closing that all important sale.
You can combine a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign with a Digital Strategy
Remember not to keep your digital and print based campaigns isolated from each other. They should compliment each other and work together as one big marketing strategy. Print based marketing is a really great way to get your social media following up.
For example, if you include your Facebook name, Instagram account or Twitter handle on your print based marketing, they may not want to use your services right now, but they might want to keep in touch for when they do. You can also offer incentives to encourage people to follow you on Facebook. Facebook Fan special offers or 10% off for Instagram followers work well.
You can use tools to make your Direct Mail Campaign Easier
Many real estate marketing professionals use tools to make their direct marketing campaigns easier. One of the most popular direct mail marketing tools is USPS. They have a direct mail tool that can send mail to different customers in different areas and you can run campaigns by entering the ZIP code that you want to target.
Set up to fiver ZIP codes for your chosen location and the every door direct mail tool will tell you how many residents there are, how big the houses are and the average household income! Genius! It even calculates how much your campaign will cost you in postage!
You can make it Trackable!
‘The problem with Direct Marketing campaigns is that they are not trackable!’ I hear you say.
WRONG!
You might be surprised to hear that you can track results of your direct mail advertising campaign, you just have to be a bit clever about it. For example, have a dedicated phone number that is for people who have been contacted by direct mail only and a system to track those calls and their conversion rates. Or maybe send them to a form on a dedicated website landing page that is trackable. Now you can really measure the success of your direct mail campaign.
Mail gets Undivided Attention!
One of the key reasons why direct mail works so well in real estate marketing is because mail that comes through your letterbox gets undivided attention. In life, we learn how to filter out ads. Whether that’s making a coffee in the TV ads break or scrolling past ads on Google to get to the organic Google results, most of us have acquired ways to filter them out. With mail that comes to your door, that’s not so easy. Your mail is something that you don’t want to miss, for fear of it being something important such as a legal or financial matter. This is why Direct Mail works so well, especially when it is delivered in an envelope!
I hope that we have convinced you of the importance of running a direct mail marketing campaign for your real estate business. Direct Mail advertising can be a mammoth task, so you can also draft in one of the best real estate marketing companies to help you. Here at Supercharged, we run direct marketing campaigns on a daily basis, and so if you would like our help, give us a call or contact us here.
