What is your direct mail strategy?
Here are more specific questions
In any mail campaign it’s about consistency and you have to determine what that means for you. I’ve done mail campaigns where I sent a letter or postcard once every 3-4 months. That seemed to be too often. I’ve done them once a year and that’s too infrequent. I think somewhere between 4 months or 6 months is about right. Others might have a different opinion on this.
I’ve used every type of mail piece you can think of and all work. Some types will appeal to one seller but not another and vice versa. You have to continually change and track your results.
CRM’s are good, but Excel is free and good enough for me. Follow up about 30 days after the first contact then maybe quarterly. You want to be in their mind but not a pest. I usually ask, “Is it okay to contact you again in a few months to see where you’re at?” Best of luck.
I think for the best general answer to this question is "the harder you work, the luckier you get… Run different scenarios, measure the results and see what works.
Good luck
True, but sadly these days more and more people believe hard work and luck are no longer related. With half the country on the government assistance if we’re not careful our nations work ethic is in serious trouble.
Sorry, getting off of my soapbox now.
Thank you for detailed response.
There are some parks where I am not able to find the owners’ names and addresses. Is it worth to mail the park with Att: Mobile Home Park Owner?
Andriy,
A percentage of the mail will get to the park owner and a percentage won’t. The smaller the park, the better chance it gets to the owner. Smaller parks are usually owned by hands on park owners who live in or near the park. The big parks are often owned by out of state people who will never get your mail.
Best wishes
I would say that your level of effort to find the owner’s names and addresses depends on your strategy. If you’re looking at mailing all park owners across the 10 states closest to you then it’s probably not worth the effort to find the 500+ park owners names and addresses. But if these are close proximity local parks and distance is an important factor for you, then it would probably be worth your time to find the 50 names and addresses of those owners.
One thing I have found from owners that do contact me from one of these mailouts is that they will say they are selling, but then if you ask them their price then they say “I don’t know, just make me an offer.” A lot of the time these folks are fishing and not really motivated to sell - eventhough they will say they are until you make an offer. After seeing this play out multiple times my strategy is to now politely decline to make and offer and let them know I am happy to discuss further once they know what they want for it.
When they do have a number that means they have probably thought through what their business is worth and have some motivation to get out of it, and you can use that as a starting point to have the conversation with them how they arrived at that - at which point you can find out if their revenue and expenses match up with their asking price and your level of comfort.
@mobilehomepark Thank for the information. I will mail all parks and see what happen.
@jhutson What are pros and cons of each state? I mean mailing all parks in 10 states and mailing local parks?
Currently, I concentrate only on one state where I know all rules and some market.
The more you mail the more likely you are to get a response. Frank and Dave talk about mailing 10,000+ park owners on a quarterly or yearly basis and then closing on one or two really good parks as part of that. A few of the more successful people active on this forum have spent tens of thousands of dollars maintaining an active list of Parks across the country and then mailing them often for this purpose. Some people also do this with Brokers throughout their State to get pocket listings and have had some success.
Cons are the cost and your time to put together the mailout / maintain the database. But some would say that $5,000 is a small price to pay if you get a park that would otherwise be listed with a realtor for $50,000 more…
I am not aware of any state specific restrictions that would prevent you from mailing outside your state.
Do you mean direct mail the brokers?
I do not believe so either.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience.
While we have a database of actually 44,000 park owners, we don’t send 10,000 at a time, but much smaller groupings of around 500 to 1,000 or so. We average a 1% to 2% response rate (and sometimes as high as 5%), which is pretty standard for all direct mail. If we send out 500, we get 5 to 10 call us. Just wanted to clarify from an earlier post.
I can only speak on #3 since I’ve hand the most experience here. Drive traffic to a specific landing page via a QR code on the flyer or just a domain URL. Obviously you may need to use some click bait like, “Go here for a free guide on selling your mobile home.” or whatever.
But if you can get them to your site and that specific page, you’ve got some silver. Then can see which parks based on geolocation (in GA), converted the highest and concentrate a larger part of your revenue to those area’s next time.
Now if you have a sign up to receive our free guide, or similar, you’ve not only got silver but gold. Why, because now you can retarget them with ad’s wherever they are at for, a week or two after. Works wonders :).
Can you tell me the best way to find the contact info for park owners? Currently I am just looking at each county tax assessor website or contacting the county clerk. Is there a good info gathering website that you recommend or a more streamline process for finding the contact info? Thanks.
