How a Handwritten Letter Can Add Value to your Real Estate Direct Marketing Strategy

Direct mail is a tough game to play for real estate agents. I’m starting to get to the point of incorporating “un-targeted” direct mail in with bus benches and newspaper ads.

But most of the “big” agents have a mailing strategy, so we assume that it still works a little bit.

The problem that I have with it is that it’s much harder to track the success rates of our campaigns because we don’t actually know how many people are reading our pieces unless they complete a call to action that we have tied to it. As a millennial who has access to data points on EVERYTHING that I do, I don’t like spending a chunk of money blindly.

Do you “spray and pray” by sending your marketing through Every Door Direct? It’s cheaper, but not targeted so you’ll end up sending to a ton of people that have no interest in what you’re sending. Or do you spend a little bit more to send to your targeted farm of homeowners who have owned for 3+ years, have positive equity, etc?

Here is where I see a way to add value in direct mail. If you can find a way to mail a hand written letter, or version thereof, you will likely stand out over the rest of the cheesy competition. It’ll give you an in into the world or snail mail marketing without blending in to the spam.

I’ve had success by typing a letter to my farm, hand signing it, adding a high quality 8.5 x 3.5 marketing piece, and tri-folding it into an envelope with a hand-written address on the front. If that piece were to come into my mailbox, I’m MUCH more likely to actually open it and absorb the information than if it was just another marketing piece in my box (which usually get thrown away with the Pennysaver).

If you have the time to go hand written all the way through, more power too you. I think new agents should be all over this approach as it’s cheap and more personal. Once you start to scale up, you can come down to just the hand written envelopes and signatures.

Try it out and let me know how it works. Or are you already incorporating hand writing into your direct mail farm?