Today I put my November probate mailers into the mailbox for delivery. This mailing is the first of my test run using greeting card envelopes. My goal is to try and get more people to open them up and improve on my 4% response rate so far. With the holidays coming I am in a big push to get as many mailers out right now because in my coaches experience the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years don’t get …
Probate Monday: Lead Manager Update and Mailers
Welcome back from the holiday weekend everyone! Hopefully you all had a chance to relax and hang out with your family and friends at a bbq or something similar. The weather in NJ was awesome the entire weekend, mid 70’s and no humidity at all to speak of. That is my kind of weather! Because it was a holiday weekend I held off on sending out my probate letters until today, in fact I dropped them off in the mailbox …
Probate Monday: Sending Out Mailers Using SI Lead Manager
It’s the beginning of the month, so that means I’ve got some mail to send out. Not only that, but I’ve gotten SI Lead Manager to the point where I can use it pretty well with all my mailings. This being the case I thought it be a perfect chance to create a quick video on how I’d about mail merging my probate lead list with my probate letter of choice and then printing it out. http://www.viddler.com/explore/Scostell/videos/2/
Probate Monday: Persistence
As a software developer for the past 9 years I’ve learned some valuable lessons about myself and what it takes to accomplish what I’ve set out to do. Many times over the years I’ve had to figure out complicated programming tools, languages and specifications in order to achieve the final product. For me a program that I had to struggling to make, curse at because it just wouldn’t work and want to just delete out of pure frustration is the …
Probate Monday: Goals and other thoughts
It’s funny how things sneak up on you and you don’t realize it until you take a step back. What I’m talking about is Summer and all the little, non rei related, things that come up and slow down any resemblance of momentum. The sad part is, during this part of the year, my subconscious mind seems to make all the decision of what I should be doing without consulting the rational part. If you’ve read the book Switch by …
Lead Tracker Video Demo
I’m very excited to get to this point of development for my lead tracker program. At this stage I could use it and save myself some real time by uploading all my probate lead lists into the database and I’m going to do just that in the coming days. I’ve been able to add every feature I’ve wanted to so far with hardly any compromises at all. Of course there still are some bugs which you’ll see in the video, …
Probate Monday: Decent response rate but frustrated
Last week was a long week and unfortunately I didn’t get much real estate related stuff accomplished. Memorial day weekend ended with my wife getting some severe side pain and going to the emergency room. She could not get into a comfortable position. Luckily they took her in quickly and after trying two separate pain killers, they gave her morphine which finally took the edge off her pain. 2 hours later they found she had kidney stones. Needless to say …
Probate Monday: Inching Closer and Closer
New Probate Leads In Hand Last week was a pretty good week. I got my new list of probate leads from my source and was even able to talk with the owner on the phone for about 45 minutes. He gave me some great advice for marketing to probate leads and is an overall good guy. Some of his tips he mentioned to me he said he had never told anyone else before. So in honor of that I’ll keep …
Probate Monday: What I’m using for my postcards
Sorry for posting Probate Monday on Tuesday but I wanted to add a video how too and then realized I didn’t have my recorder setup after reformatting my hard drive this weekend. Now onto the content…. I got a little behind with my February mailings when I was couch ridden and couldn’t get to the post office myself to mail out the probate letters. This meant the postcards are going out at the end of the month instead of mid-month …
Getting Better Responses from Direct Mail
With it being time to send out my probate mailers again I was brain storming to try and come up with alternate types of direct mail pieces. I really started to think about this when Greg Harris over at 1st Round Knockout R.E.I. Blog created a post about split testing letters, postcards and a third kind of mailer (he didn’t say on his blog, but I know what it is). Then today Nick Johnson wrote a post about using those …
Probate Monday: New Month, New List
The coming of the new month brings a fresh probate lead list from my supplier. So far I can not complain one bit about the leads that I’ve been getting and the supplier has been right on time each and every month. For those that have forgotten, I spend about $100 a month for the list. On average, each list has come with 80 names so doing a little math that works out to about $1.25 per. I can’t really …
Probate Monday #9: Follow Up Post Card
It’s been a couple weeks since we sent out the letters to our Probate List and hopefully you have received some calls. I have gotten 2 calls so far and I know Ingrid has gotten 2 as well, while Jason I’m not sure has gotten a call just yet but I’m sure one is about to ring him any minute now. If you’ve been reading along with my probate posts, you’ll know that I’ve really built up some momentum the …