If you’re thinking about investing in real estate, it’s important to have a marketing plan. After all, you’ll need to reach a large audience of potential sellers, buyers, and renters. We think you should keep it simple and use the ever-trusty real estate postcard.
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When you’re searching for direct mail, a quick Google search bears ample solutions. An overwhelming amount of options. And it’s exhausting trying to sift through each option to get the best deal.
Thankfully, there are lots of places you can buy marketing products online for an affordable price. We’ve broken down our favorite sources to launch your postcard campaign.
Types of Real Estate Postcards
There are many kinds of postcards real estate investors can send to entice sellers to list their homes or attract buyers or renters. We’ve listed all the types of postcards and how they can help your business, below:
- Just Sold: Tell your prospects about a property you just sold. This will give them confidence that you can do the same for their home.
- Commercial Real Estate: Instead of targeting individual homeowners, these postcards attract corporations who are selling their business or looking to move offices.
- Open House: Get the word out about an upcoming open house. Include photos of the property, relevant pricing, the date and time, and your contact information. Make prospective buyers feel exclusively invited.
- Just Listed: Announce a new listing. Include photos of the house, asking price, specifications, and of course—your contact information!
- Real Estate Renters: These postcards entice current renters to become first time homeowners. They list how renters can benefit from buying a home, how they can qualify, and how much they can save on monthly expenses. This would be ideal to mail to apartment complexes or addresses of known renters.
- Thinking of Selling Your Home?: These postcards can go to any homeowners to see if they are prospective sellers. The postcard will convince them to sell your home, so make sure there is a call to action or an offer, like a “free comparative market analysis.”
- Expired Listing: Mail these to addresses whose listings have expired. Since this means another realtor couldn’t sell the home, these sellers may be ready to explore a new option—like having you sell their home!
- New Agent Announcements: If you’re new to real estate or moved to a new area, take the time to introduce yourself. These cards will have your photo, contact information, and facts that set you apart. Include any specialties like foreclosures or waterfront homes.
- We Buy Houses: This is especially important if you are a real estate investor looking to quickly flip locations. These advertisements will offer fast cash for owners looking to sell their home.
- Recipes: This may not seem like the most obvious, but recipe postcards can be a smart way to reach your audience. They may not be thinking about buying right now, but perhaps are looking for a creative dinner or dessert to cook up. The recipe postcard may stay on the fridge for years. Then, when they’re ready to buy or sell, your information is easily accessible. It’s a great way for realtors to stay in the front of a prospect’s mind.
- Holidays: These can be a simple “Happy New Year!” or greeting to say hello. Your card might end up on display right next to grandma’s.
- Local Resources: Real estate professionals should be experts in their communities. Send a card that details local resources. This can be anything from, “the best places to see fall leaves” or “where to get your car fixed.” Make sure your real estate business is an expert that people in your area can trust.
Where to Buy Your Cards
There are many different services offering direct mail services for all industries. While each service has their own strengths and weaknesses, we’ve listed our favorites and highlighted what we like about each, along with pricing.
Realeflow
If you don’t want to hassle with design, Realeflow offers beautiful letters written by autopen. This technology is essentially a robot arm that holds and actual pen and mimics the writing style of a person.
Their powerful platform helps investors get leads and easily send out these direct mail pieces. At the time of publication, pricing is $.35/mailer, which includes printing and shipping.
PostcardMania
PostcardMania has one of the largest assortments of realty-specific postcards out there. Unlike other online printers, PostcardMania is a full direct mail marketing firm, so they can give advice on industry-specific strategies. They are able to do this by comparing the success of other direct mail campaigns.
The printing is high quality, and the company will send free samples so you know exactly what the finished product will look like. Real estate agents or investors can work with PostcardMania designers and then order online.
Design, printing, and mailing is all handled in-house. Pricing for a 4.25″ x 6″ standard postcard is $369 for 5,000 (that’s about 7 cents per card). In order to get this pricing, you must buy 5,000 or more.
I’ve used PostcardMania and had a good experience. Their pricing is fair and lists are easy to buy. My main complaint was their communication – it was not very good and they seemed to be stretched too thin.
While it could be an isolated experience, I do believe they could improve upon their attention to detail. Just make sure you check the invoice to ensure their proposal matches your intentions.
ProspectsPLUS
A direct response marketing firm, ProspectsPLUS is specifically geared toward real estate professionals. Their web-to-print direct mailings include postcards, door hangers, tri-fold brochures, just listed announcements, and more.
First, select from more than 680 real estate postcard templates. Then, choose where your marketing will go. You don’t need a list of addresses – simply map by radius.
Last, track cards to ensure they have been delivered to the correct addresses. Pricing depends on several factors. You can order 5,000 standard postcards shipped to you for $.17 per card.
Don’t want to mail cards yourself? Then save time and hassle by letting ProspectsPLUS do the mailing. You can mail a standard post card of 5.5″ x 4.25″ directly to your customers via first-class USPS for around 60 cents per card. Plus, you can order as many or as few as you prefer.
VistaPrint
VistaPrint is a custom marketing and printing company, best known for business cards. Today, the company offers many more marketing tools, including postcard design. There are seemingly endless realtor marketing designs and sizes to choose from.
You can easily customize a template with your personal photos, information, and logo. You can also upload a design from scratch or utilize a VistaPrint design specialist.
Pricing starts at $7.49 for 50 cards, which is about 7 cents per card. Con: There is only an option to have them mailed to you, so you’ll have to send them to your prospects yourself.
Additionally, pricing is expensive relative to these other services. Their goal is simplicity, not competitive pricing. So don’t expect a great value if you’re buying a ton of postcards. Also, remember a few cents per piece adds up when you’re sending thousands of cards.
Expresscopy.com
Expresscopy.com can help with a lot of the leg work. Along with marketing ideas, they can help create a targeted list of addresses. Then, Expresscopy’s mailing services can send them for you.
The company has specialized in postcard marketing for more than 10 years, so they know how to make things easy. Either start with a design template or upload your own work to create an order.
ExpressCopy has lots of agency-approved and individual templates to start with. ExpressCopy’s pricing starts around $.20, but the real savings comes with larger orders and its postcard mailing services.
PrinterBees
Real Estate marketing postcards from PrinterBees come with a graphic designer to help create your marketing postcards. Choose your real estate farming design then add free customization.
PrinterBees has some pretty unique marketing ideas, like “YOLO: You Only List Once when you list with me!” and “The Real Estate Market is Poppin!” Pricing varies on how may you order, but 5,000 4″ x 6″ postcards printed on both sides are only 5 cents each.
You can buy as few as 250 postcards. Then, you can mail them yourself or request a quote to have Printer Bees mail them for you. Clients can receive 3 rounds of postcard proofs free of charge.
REtipster
Our friends at REtipster have some gorgeous postcard templates available in the online store. Seth, the site’s founder, is a seasoned real estate investor and he’s selling what worked for him.
While $147 may initially sound steep, remember that you’re buying tested templates from a real estate investor with a proven track record. Take these templates and combine them with our partners at Build A Sign, and watch the leads roll in.
Maximize Your Direct Mail Campaign
Include previous clients. Don’t forget to mail to your past clients. The National Association of Realtors reports 89 percent of buyers would use their agent a repeat time.
- Have something to offer – Encourage customers to reach out with a free offer, like a complimentary market evaluation.
- Target specific groups – Renters and other first-time home buyers may be confused about the process. Reach out and tell them how you guide them through the process.
- Include a call to action – What are you hoping to achieve by reaching this group of people? Your card should have a call to action that gets them to make the next step. Some examples are “Join us at an open house” or “Call for a free quote today!”
- Be personal – A photo of you is a great way to make your card more personal.
- Create a simple but effective design – Your design shouldn’t be overly busy or have any goofy fonts (looking at you, Comic Sans). Pick colors that pop, and ensure that any text is clear and legible. If your card includes photos, be sure to upload high-resolution JPGs to make sure they are not blurry or out of focus.
- Follow up – If someone referred a new client to you or visited your open house, follow up with a thank you card. Even if that wasn’t the home for them, they will appreciate the token and remember for the future.
Things to Consider
Real estate postcards can be a great way for investors to bolster their marketing. However, before you choose a vendor, you need to have some basic direction on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Choose the right mailer
First, choose the kind of card you want to mail. This will help determine how many you’ll need to send. Are you targeting renters in a crowded apartment complex? Or, are you sending expired listings cards to specific properties that were once up for sale?
Buy in bulk
You may not need more than 100 of these, so cheaper options and self-mailing might be the way to go. But, if you’re farming for buyers or inviting a wide audience to your open house, you might want to send a large quantity.
In this case, choose a service that offers a more affordable bulk price and has mailing services. That way, they will do the leg work of finding addresses and mailing the cards for you.
Track your responses
Finally, keep track of your responses. Ask clients how they found you so you’ll have an idea about the success of your direct mail campaign. Figure out what worked and what didn’t to better specialize your postcard campaign moving forward.
Should You Mail Real Estate Postcards?
If you are new to the business or simply want to boost leads, then you should absolutely consider sending real estate postcards. Not only are templates easy to find, but our vendors help you gather lists and mail the cards.
Bottom line – it’s easier than ever to boost your leads through direct mail marketing, so skipping it means you’re potentially leaving money on the table. Don’t make this mistake, and order your cards now!
