Postcard Real Estate Marketing

Are You Farming the Right Area?: When you select an area for farming, there are several considerations.

What's the competition like in that subdivision or area? If it's too heavily farmed already, you might be wasting your efforts and money.

Is the area large enough, or are you farming multiple areas? You can't expect to generate large amounts of business from an area unless the base is large.

Are the homes or properties in the area of the type, size and price range that you would like to work and can make a living at?

Do Projections to Determine the Area's Potential for Commissions: Before you commit to regular mailing of postcards to perhaps thousands of homes, be sure to calculate the potential return for your investment and efforts.

Many sales professionals have successfully used the funnel approach for sales projections. However you do it, try to come to a realistic estimate of return for time and money invested.

Decide on Do-It-Yourself or a Mailing Service Approach: In this respect, you're going to find a lot of opinions out there. With the new printers available now, you can probably produce a very professional-looking postcard, customized exactly as you want it for less than you might pay a service.

The consideration however is one of your time and how it might be better spent than designing, printing, consolidating and mailing postcards to the USPS specifications to get a discounted postage rate. If you already have office staff, this might be feasible. If not, how might you be better spending your time in generating business?

If a Mailing Service is the Choice - Make the Right Choice: There are many reputable postcard mailing services out there that specialize in working with real estate agents and brokers. We have some links to companies on this page, but don't stop there.

Try to find a service that doesn't require a long or minimum contract. Also, it is probably better if they provide an online method for you to maintain the list on their servers. You can still keep a copy of the list for other purposes, but it's like a backup and efficient for it to be kept by the provider of the service also.

Get a Good Clean Mailing List and Maintain It: There are a multitude of ways to get a mailing list for an area you choose to farm. You can of course pay for one, but be sure you understand the terms of use, which may require payment for every mailing. The list provider will have a disguised address in the list to keep track of your mailings.

If you use a tax base, it could be out of date, but at least it is usually free and you can use it over and over without further payment. Just clean it up as quickly as possible. You do this by using some form of postage that will get bad address cards returned to you so that you can remove those addresses.

Budget for the Long Term and Mail Regularly: The real estate postcard farming method is not for quick results. Your mailings must be regular, a minimum of once every six months, preferably quarterly, and you need to do it for at least a year before you're likely to see results.

Budget for the long haul and don't falter. Once you've chosen this marketing method, stick to it and you should see results that will grow over time.