Why Every Real Estate Agent Should Use Direct Mail in Their Marketing

Despite the realities of our digital age, direct mail is still one of the most effective marketing tools for many industries, including real estate. 

The average direct mail campaign run by a real estate professional has an ROI of 15% to 17%, which is likely because the majority of American adults surveyed (67%) feel that direct mail is still more personal than email. Fortunately, there are many ways to run a campaign that can offer all this ROI without too much work.

Let’s explore the benefits of direct mail marketing and look at you how you can make your first campaign a success.  

Psst! PropStream launched a new and improved direct mail experience Learn more here.

Why Direct Mail Offers Such High ROI For Agents and Brokers

When most people think of direct mail, they think of the cute scenes sent by travelers to friends and family. The truth is, these small cards are a much more powerful marketing tool than most people realize. Here’s why:

They Help Build Brand Awareness

Even though a piece of direct mail can be small, it offers plenty of opportunities for you to coordinate your photos, graphics, and text to help make your brand crystal clear.

Sending direct mail also allows you to get your face into multiple prospects’ homes at once, which is a great way to start building brand awareness. The more times people see your face, the easier it will be for them to remember you. This increases the likelihood that they reach out when they need a real estate agent or broker.

They Make You Look More Professional

Real estate licenses are attainable for many people. Licensing requirements vary by state, but it's something most people can do in a few months without too much expense. 

Some people choose to enter the real estate field to help friends and families with their transactions, while others choose to make it their full-time career. This means that often, there's a fair amount of entry-level competition. To stand out from the pack, you’ll need to invest in marketing and tools that set you above the rest. 

A well-designed piece of direct mail with a professional headshot, thoughtful text, and appealing graphics can help you stand out. It also shows that you’re interested in expanding your clientele.

Direct Mail Marketing Is Highly Targetable

One of the best ways to see success in your direct mail marketing campaign is to identify leads and build segmented lists that allow you to send targeted postcards or letters to different homeowners depending on their needs or situation. You can do this with a tool like PropStream, which uses comprehensive, multi-sourced data to offer a database of accurate and up-to-date leads that you can use to build your lists. This allows you to identify homeowners with a higher motivation to sell with our data, which includes divorce, liens, foreclosures, and length of ownership. 

Even with the amount of work that goes into a direct mail marketing campaign, the resulting ROI is fantastic. Once you’ve designed the basic layout of a postcard or letter, you can repeatedly reproduce it with new photos and text with little effort. Plus, direct mail is often quick to read and can easily be stuck on a fridge or passed along to friends and family.  

How To Launch a Successful Direct Mail Marketing Campaign

There are a few ways to develop a successful direct mail marketing campaign. The key is to stick with it and mail regularly until you start to see results. 

Here are some more tips to help you get started:

1. Select an area with at least 6% turnover that isn’t being heavily targeted by another agent. This helps to improve your ROI by ensuring that more recipients are actually interested in buying or selling.
2. Pick a few professional templates. You’ll need a few different types of cards to keep people interested and ensure you’re not casting too wide a net every time. Some popular templates from PropStream include postcards with information on new listings, recently sold listings, or even home maintenance tips.  
3. Keep branding consistent. Even if you have a few different templates, it should be clear that each card comes from the same person. You can do this by sticking to the same typeface, graphics, and headshot in each piece of direct mail.  
4. Use PropStream to identify leads, build marketing lists, and track your campaigns. With PropStream, it's easy to design a postcard or letter right within the platform and send it out directly from there. You won't have to deal with printing, addressing, or stamping anything yourself. 

From there, it’s easy to track your campaigns so you can see how they’re performing and adjust accordingly. Want to try it for yourself? Sign up for our 7-day free trial today.