Real Estate Direct Mail: The Definitive Guide Based on 9,657 Campaigns

Real estate postcards, business cards, flyers, or any other format of direct mail are all creative forms of real estate marketing. Advertising real estate can be challenging at times in such an expansive market, but it can be extremely beneficial for real estate agents and property investors.

If you’re looking for real estate marketing companies, look no further. Over 2 decades of marketing for realtors have allowed us to gather data to form marketing ideas to create real estate postcards that work.

There are several real estate marketing tools you’ll need to include in your marketing campaign to create some traction.

After running postcard campaigns for 9,657 realtors nationwide, we found several stand-out real estate campaign elements that contributed to successful campaign results. This (in our humble opinion) makes us one of the best direct mail companies for real estate. Save yourself expensive trial and error – these real estate marketing tips are all pulled from real campaign data.

There are three main areas of your campaign that need to be addressed:

•   Mailing List: Who will receive the real estate prospecting postcards?
•   Design Elements: What design elements of the realtor marketing postcards will invoke action from the recipient?
•   Offers: What special discounts or offers will help push them in the right direction?

1. Your Realtor Mailing List: Which 7 mailing list demographics should realtors target for exponential response rates?

The best real estate mailers always have a strong mailing list. This is one of the most prominent features of direct mail for realtors. Whether you’re looking to buy or sell properties from a small farm area to a entire city, direct mail can get it done.

TARGETING SELLERS:

When targeting sellers, the best-proven demographics are:

1. Homeowners or Absentee owners: Depending on the type of seller you’d like to target, you can select only primary residence homeowners or absentee owners.
2. Single-Family Dwelling Units (or you can include multi-family if you want to target condo owners) by geographical area.
3. Age: Targeting people by age can help you narrow in on who in the area may be the most likely to sell. The National Association of Realtors survey report found those aged 37 to 51 years were the largest chunk of home sellers, making this the most likely age grouping to sell their home. Those past 51 look to trade up for a more expensive home – adjust your mailing list depending on what kinds of homes you’re looking for!

These are then narrowed further by:

4. Length of residency: How long the person has been in the home is often a factor in how likely they are to be ready to sell. Usually, if someone has been in the home for just a couple of years, they are unlikely to want to sell. As of the most recent American Community Survey, the medium duration of homeownership 13 years.
   Please note: the average length of residency is different everywhere in the U.S., ranging anywhere from 8 to 16 years. Do the necessary due diligence and see what your communities’ average is to reach the most qualified sellers!!

You can also narrow your list further to target the type of homes you are looking to list with additional selects like:

5. Home Market Value: Is there a specific home value that you do best with or have the most experience with? You can narrow your list to target only those homeowners.

6. Number of beds/baths: Your list can also be narrowed by number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

7. Amount of equity: Targeting those will higher equity in their current homes allows you to find those who may be looking to upgrade to more expensive homes.

And then finally, you will narrow down geographically to the area you are looking to get listings or buyers in. This can be targeted several ways:

8. A specific neighborhood, zip code, street, town etc.

TARGETING BUYERS:

Targeting buyers is a little trickier than targeting sellers, but it still can be done successfully to target all of the most qualified buyers. Here are the best-performing demographics to target:

1. Renters: Targeting renters is beneficial for obvious reasons. You can target certain areas or complexes with higher rents to reach people who may be looking to purchase homes.

2. Income: A great demographic to target in order to qualify prospects to see if they can afford your property.

3. Home Value: This demographic when used in tandem with targeting renters can be extremely efficient at reaching qualified prospects. Our data concludes that people renting in houses are much more likely to buy than those living in apartments. This is likely due to either their usually higher cost, or the house-living experience has made them want a home of their own.

You can also narrow your list down based on their behaviors:

4. Credit Score: While you can’t target precise scores, you can target a certain range. A prospect’s previous buying behavior is a great indicator to see if

5. Age & Family Structure: People follow certain patterns in their lives and you can try and target them based on what life stage they’re in. For example, parents aged 20-40 living in a rental may want to upsize soon and settle down in a house. Conversely, if someone is 60+ and lives in a two-story home, they may want to downsize to a ranch-style home to avoid the stairs.

6. Neighboring Homes: When you list a property, one of the most popular mailings is a “Just Listed” mail piece to the neighborhood. Neighbors may have friends or family who want to move in nearby, and they may also see your mailpiece and decide to list with you in the future!

At the end of the day, targeting buyers requires some research and an intimate understanding of what your target audience looks like and what they’re looking for in a home.

Do your due diligence and you’ll lock in a buyer for your home in no time!

2. The Postcard Design: The 10 MUST-Include Design Elements For Real Estate Direct Mail To Convert

Once you know your real estate postcard mailers are reaching the most qualified buyers and sellers, the next piece of the puzzle is to design a real estate postcard or mail piece that instantly communicates the factors most important to the recipients – and one that establishes credibility.

Why should they buy or sell a house with you? Are you trustworthy? Do you have a good history of business? How long have you been a realtor? Do you offer any kind of guarantees?

There’s a limited amount of space on a postcard, so you can’t include all of the nitty-gritty details. You need to select only the most prominent ones that set you apart from other realtors.

Based on our long history of marketing realtors with postcards, here are some of the best performing pieces of information to give prospects to ensure they pick you over your competitors. We’ve included some our previous clients’ real estate postcard marketing templates as examples.

1. Examples of recently listed or sold properties with their prices and addresses: this acts as a catalog, such as this realtor’s postcard:
   
2. Images of homes from your website or indicative of the areas you’re listing or selling in, having the value of the list’s income levels: these allow prospects to have a visual of the kind of homes and areas you work with along with the proper data for them to make a decision
3. Your professionally taken photo on the card: this gives your direct mail piece a more personal feel, and personality sells, like this New Hampshire realtor:
   

Even if they don’t immediately decide to sell or buy, including your image is an effective branding technique. They see your name and face with every marketing interaction. So over several mailings, they’ll remember you specifically when they think about a locally experienced realtor.

4. Years of Experience (5+ years usually): if you have longevity as a realtor, this shows prospects that you know the area better than others and can get or give the best prices
5. How many homes you have sold in a certain amount of years, listing real estate transactions, over a certain dollar amount in sales: outside of years in real estate, these statistics are another great way to show prospects that you have the proper experience needed.
6. Promoting you’re the experienced local area expert, details about yourself pertinent to the local area that few locals would know: This is yet another avenue to show that you’re an experienced realtor and know the area well. Do certain neighborhoods tend to flood or have power outages? Where are the best spots for local cuisine? Where is there the least crime in the area? Any details like this you know of are great to include. Like in this ranch realtor that lets the prospect know that they’re the local expert:
7. Specialty area and types of homes or real estate listed or sold: This will help if you usually deal with a more niche area of real estate – like this realtor that specializes in oceanfront real estate.

8. Promoting professional marketing plans, e.g., MLS advertising, Virtual Tours, Professional Photography, etc: These kinds of unique additions to traditional real estate services will help set you apart – like this realtor that provides a bulleted list of their unique services provided:

10. Getting the highest price for your home: this is something every home-seller wants and knowing you won’t cut any corners for a quick commission is comforting.
11. Great reviews (5 Star Only): Have a glowing testimonial from a satisfied client? Social proof is one of the best marketing tactics to gain a prospect’s trust, like this property investor’s postcard:

When someone has an interest in using your realty to sell their home but they aren’t completely sure yet, what’s the straw that will break the camel’s back?

3. Your Offer: The top 9 real estate direct mail offers that elicit the highest response from buyers and sellers

Like the icing on a cake, an effective realtor postcard marketing campaign is never truly finished without one. The best real estate mailers always include them. For any recipient on the edge of using your services, this is the final attempt to push them over the edge of doing business with you!

Here are the most effective real estate offers to reel in prospects:

1. Free professional staging
2. Free home inspection
3. Guarantee – “I will sell your home in X days, or I will sell it for free.” or “We will sell your home for a guaranteed %”
4. Promote a low commission rate – “Why pay 6% (the average in their area)? We’ll sell your home fast for a 2.35% Commission”, or “Why pay 3%? I’ll sell your home for a 0.95% listing broker commission.”
5. FREE Comparative Market Analysis or better paired with another offer.
6. FREE moving services
7. FREE cleaning services before & after
8. Crediting $1000 of the broker commission towards closing costs
9. If a buyer isn’t under contract in 60 days or less, I’ll give you $500

Here are some real estate postcard marketing offer ideas that have previously reeled in prospects:

Desert Dream Realty is offering several additional services not usually included in many real estate mailers.

Thomas from Century 21 took a different approach and is offering to tell the recipient what their house is really worth based on a free market analysis:

And, voilà! While marketing isn’t a science and results are never guaranteed, our 2 decades of data surrounding realtor direct mail marketing campaigns tells us that these elements are crucial in bringing you the results you want.

Here are some of our recent campaigns that have brought results for our realtors!

If you’re curious about what your postcard could look like, request some realtor marketing mail piece samples here.

If you’re ready to begin a results-producing direct mail campaign for your realty business now, call one of my marketing consultants at 877-436-8078 today for a FREE, no-obligation consultation! Or you can always email me directly at Joy.Gendusa@PostcardMania.com.

Best,

Joy