So Where Do I Find The Mailing Lists For My Direct Mail Campaigns?

One of the Questions I am frequently asked by students wanting to implement a direct mail campaign is where to get the lists of sellers to mail to. While there are several resources available, I find they vary greatly in price and in quality of the lists. It is important for you to find a good, reliable source for your lists. When doing direct mail campaigns, their success is going to be based 70% on the list and 30% on the direct mail piece you are using to contact these motivated sellers.

There are a couple of resources for lists that I find to be especially reasonable in price and the quality of the lists is excellent for your use. One of those resources is very easy to find and simple to use use. Just go to your property appraiser, auditor, or assessors’ office and ask them to put the lists together for you. You will need to target specific types of sellers you want to do deals with. If your county is online preparing this list is usually pretty simple for them to do. I will suggest to you that you go down to their office and ask them for their help in person to customize these lists for you. If you just call them, you may get “blown off” by someone who doesn’t want to do the extra work, or you may get someone on the phone who doesn’t understand what it is that you need. I know all of this from personal experience with counties I have worked with. In addition, if you live in a particularly large county, they have plat maps you can look at to subdivide your lists by specific areas you want to mail to. This is just another way for you to hone in on the area and type of seller you want to work with. 

Another good source of lists for your direct mail is mailing list services which you can locate either by going to your local yellow pages and looking under “mailing list services”, or you can simply research them on your computer.

You can call these folks to find out what types of lists they provide and what the cost will be for them. This would be the place for example, to find lists of senior home owners or those with specific demographics, income ranges or timeframe in which the homeowner purchased their home. For example, if you find some new homeowners (folks who purchased their homes in the last 12 to 24 months) you may find leads for people who can simply no longer afford their mortgage payments who will simply deed you their property.

Remember that there are a lot of list sources that are virtually free. For example, you can get death and marriage notices out of the newspaper or at your courthouse. You can also get the eviction notices, notices of judgments, and pre-foreclosures at your local courthouse. You can also find everyone who has a VA loan if working with military sellers interests you. Quite often, you will find that someone in the military purchases a home off base and then is transferred shortly after. They now have a home and a mortgage they neither want nor need, and these are also great properties they will simply deed to you since they usually don’t have a lot of equity in them.

If note buying is of interest to you, you can also research people who hold private mortgages. This would be a private individual holding a mortgage for someone they sold a property to. You can find out how long they have had the note, how much the note is, and what the current interest rate is. You just have to go down to the court house and either compile these lists yourself or have someone else do it for you. If you can have someone else do it for you, this is certainly a better use of your time and money. You always need to be finding ways to automate systems in your business so all you deal with are motivated sellers.

You can always work with Realtors to provide you with expired listings. This is another good way to find leads for your business. You just need to figure out how you will pay your Realtor for doing this. One way you can achieve this is that if you buy the property, you could always re-list it with your Realtor when you sell it, or you can simply pay them a fee through their office if you buy a deal from the leads they provide for you.

There are other sources of lists you can find online such as melissadata.com, infousa.com and others. I also use another resource in my business that provides daily lists for me of all the “for sale by owner” properties in our area. They even check their leads against the no call list for you. In addition, you have the ability to look at old “for sale by owner” listings as well. What this means for you is a seller who is likely to be more motivated to sell his property.

Another way to find the “for sale by owner” ads is to go through the classified ads in your local newspaper, shopper guide and Craigslist and simply call them. What I would also do is to call on the “for rent by owner” ads as well. Many times you will find landlords who just really don’t want to rent anymore or someone who has inherited a home they don’t know what else to do with. Better still, automate your system and let someone else do this work for you. This is just another possible source of leads for you to find some motivated sellers.

I also work with another company for lead lists .Their program is designed to do a variety of things including having the ability to provide and customize mailing lists. What this program does is to give you the ability to customize lists to help you find the owners of properties that are vacant or rented, in divorce or partnership splits, properties received in an inheritance, properties in foreclosure, out of state owners, VA loans, and more. You can custom create your mailing lists in your own office or home at your leisure using fields that are provided within the program. Some of the other fields available for your use are square footage, subdivision, county, number of bedroom and baths, vacant land, homestead exemption and more.

Some of the other attributes of this program are that it gets comprehensive information on any property including mailing address, phone number, purchase price, taxes, assessments, legal data, and mortgage information, all of which can help you determine what kind of offer you will make on a property. It can also help you to locate the owners of properties.

Also available with some of the real estate investing programs that we use are the ability to get Document Images, Automated Valuation Models, Flood Maps, Neighborhood Demographic Profiles and Comparables.

Basically, these programs provide you with a one-stop shop for all the items you need to create mailing lists, finding sellers who need to sell, and the information you need to create a win-win solution for yourself and your seller.

For more information on acquiring all the lists you need to locate motivated sellers, go to my website at www.marketingmagiclady.com. I have created special relationships and special pricing for you with some of these companies, so make sure you take advantage of this opportunity. In addition, I have created for you all of the direct mail campaigns you would need in order to market to these lists.

This is just another way to automate your business to get someone doing the work for you so you can deal with quality motivated sellers.