Dear Brian,
I love your articles in the Mortgage Leader but I am a bit confused. Everyone continues to tell me that I need to be generating deals from social media and other online methods. But you continue to advocate mailing to people and I am wondering why since it seems to be more expensive and less effective when I have tried it?
Alan G. Pennsylvania

[caption id="attachment_11630" align="alignright" width="185"] Brian Sacks[/caption]

Dear Alan,
Thanks so much for a great question.

I advocate direct mail simply because it works. Look at your own mailbox and I am sure you would agree that you get less physical mail then you did 10 or even 3 or 5 years ago.

But instead of being negative it’s actually a positive since your mailing has more of a chance of being opened and not lost in a big pile.

Let me break down the 3 biggest mistakes that most of us make when doing a physical mailing. Hopefully you will be able to identify why your campaigns aren’t working and be able to correct them.

1. Mailing to the wrong people.
You must have a very targeted list and make sure that what you are offering is congruent with list you are mailing to. For example, if you are mailing to a 55 and over neighborhood with an offer for first time buyer grant programs your mailing will fail because of this mismatch.

2. You only mail once and then determine it was a success or failure.                                 I am famous for asking “Who gets married on the first date?”
   If you have a budget of 1000 most people will mail one piece to 1000 people at a cost of one dollar a piece.However, it’s much more effective to instead narrow the list down to 330 people and mail 3 pieces to those same 330 people each 10 days apart.

3. Wrong Call To Action.
This is usually the biggest error. Most mailings are asking the recipient to call you. But the problem is that they don’t yet know and even worse, they certainly don’t yet trust you.
Instead, what I do is send them to a website to download a free report. That makes them comfortable that you are legitimate and will provide them with valuable information.