7 Mailing Lists Most Real Estate Investors Ignore!

Here’s how most real estate investors run a direct mail campaign. 

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They buy data from somewhere like Propstream or List Source — maybe high-equity & tax delinquent home-owners — and they send mail to that list. Then they throw that list away and start again.

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The problem? 

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Finding deals is a data game. Most real estate investors don’t think about it that way, but winning at real estate investing is really about understanding your data, managing it well, and marketing to it properly.

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(That’s why we created REISift — just ask our users how big a different it’s made in their businesses)

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Let me explain…

How Most Investors Are Doing Direct Mail Wrong…

Let’s continue with my earlier example. Imagine you pull a list of high equity + tax delinquent data from Propstream. You send mail to them once and then throw the data away — but continue working the inbound leads…

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Here’s a minimum of potential deals you’re missing out on with that process…

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• Any owner whose address was wrong/outdated. 
• Any owner who — for whatever reason — is not ready to sell right now. 
• Any owner who doesn’t check their mail.

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Not to mention owners who prefer to be contacted by phone or need multiple follow-ups before seriously considering an offer. 

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The temptation, of course, is to think, “Well, 80/20 rule… I just want to do the lowest hanging fruit that gets the most results…”

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The problem is that that’s what every new real estate investor and wholesaler is doing. 

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If you want to stand out, build a sustainable business, and beat the competition, then you need to do better. You need to look at your data as the most important asset in your business. And you need to build mailing lists that actually make sense. 

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So without further adieu, here are 7 mailing lists that most real estate investors ignore (to their own peril). 

7 Best Mailing Lists Most Real Estate Investors Ignore!

The first thing you need to understand is that high equity is high equity — that is, all data you pull for your mailing lists should be high equity. You’re not mailing a list because it’s absentee or because it’s tax delinquent. Those lists are worthless if they’re not high equity. 

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Why?

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This is critical — the ONLY way someone will sell you their house for a lowball cash offer… is if they have a lot of equity and it makes sense for them. So all the mailing lists you pull should be high-equity. 

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Our favorite place for pulling data is ListSource. 

The other thing I’ll mention is that you shouldn’t buy data that is based on vexation (tax delinquent or probate, etc.)... you should only buy data that is high-equity… and then use software (like REISift) to filter that data and market to it effectively. And you only need to pull high equity data about every year or maybe once every six months. The reason being that it’s very slowly that people pay off their mortgages and enter into your criteria for high equity. 

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Generally speaking, we like to set “high equity” as 30% or 40% equity — but you can modulate that based on your budget and your business goals. Once you’ve pulled your high-equity data, here are some mailing lists you can target that most real estate investors ignore!

1. Direct County Data

Most real estate investors pull their direct mail data from places like ListSource or Propstream.

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Why?

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Because it’s what all the “gurus” teach. 

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But the truth is that the best or most accurate way to get data is— and will probably always be — directly from your county’s website. 

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It might not be quite as easy… but it will provide you with the most updated data available, which means if you jump through the hoops of pulling data directly from your county website, you’ll very likely be able to get in contact with owner that other investors are ignoring simply because their data is a little outdated. 

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Just do a Google search for “[your county] public records” and you should find somewhere to browse public records. 

You can also do a search for “[your county] tax collector” and you should be able to pull tax delinquent records as well. 

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Every county is different, but it’s worth looking to see how easy or hard your county makes it to get real estate data.

2. Exhausted Records

At REISift, we pride ourselves on giving real estate investors the ability to truly manage and filter their data in meaningful ways — that allow them to create ultra-targeted marketing campaigns. 

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Our “exhausted records” filter is one such example.

When you apply this filter to your data, it will pull all owner records where none of the phone numbers you have for the owner are reaching the intended recipient — this can happen if all the numbers are dead, wrong, DNC, or none of the calls are reaching the homeowner.

Why’s that important? 

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Because since phone calls aren’t working, you can try and reach those homeowners through direct mail instead.

3. Stacked

Instead of just mailing people who are either tax delinquent or on a code violations list, you can target people who are on BOTH those lists and are likely even more motivated to sell (this is called list stacking).

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When you purchase data you are probably pulling from different sources (ex. Propstream, Listsource, county data, etc) and the data will have different motivations and different intent. 

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When you are creating your lists in REISift, you’ll want to name and organize the lists based on qualifying data or by vexation. Some examples of qualifying data are high equity, or free and clear. Vexation is the pain point, for example, code violations, tax delinquent, or pre-foreclosures.

As long as you are properly organizing and managing your data, list stacking will give you insight on how motivated the owner is to sell. An owner with a property located on a code violations and a tax delinquent list will probably be more willing to sell versus a property located on only a high equity list.

When you upload data, we will automatically stack the record if it appears on a new list you are uploading. 

With our list stacking filter, you can choose how narrow you want to go…

4. Rejected Offers

Just because someone rejected your first offer… doesn’t mean they won’t sell to you sometime in the next year. Timing is everything. And you never know how someone’s situation is going to change over the next 6 - 12 months. 

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Most deals require the investor to follow-up consistently over a long period of time. Those who continue to follow-up often get the deal. 

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Inside of REISift, you can easily filter by “Offer Status - Rejected” to find all of the owner who’ve rejected your previous offers (this requires you to be tracking the offers you make, of course)... 

If you want to narrow this further, you can filter by the number of offers you made as well as the date of the last offer. 

5. Updated Vexation Data

Data is a living, breathing thing. 

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You don’t just pull lists once and then you’re good to go — people’s situations are constantly adapting and changing… and if you’re going to reach the right homeowners at the right time, it’s critical to keep your data updated. 

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In the case of direct mail, that means pulling new vexation data and cross-checking it with your current data to see who’s ready for some more targeted marketing campaigns. 

6. Property Location

A lot of real estate investors use a shotgun approach to sending direct mail — but maybe you want to be more specific and send direct mail to homeowners only in specific locations.

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You have a lot of options inside of REISift. 

7. Direct Mail Follow-Up Automation

It’s often a good idea to send mail to people as a normal part of your follow-up process. Too few investors create mailing lists based on past outreach attempts. 

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You can create automated workflows in REISift that ensure you’re sending direct mail to the right people at the right time. 

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For example, maybe I want to send direct mail consistently to people when one of my team-members tags them with “follow-up”. My workflow might look something like this…

You get the idea. This tool is very powerful and can be a huge asset when you’re sending direct mail.

Final Thoughts

As you’ve probably figured out by now, the way to succeed at real estate investing is not to do what all of the beginners are doing… but to take it a few steps further so you can find the deals that 80% of people are completely ignoring.

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The good news is that a lot of real estate investors and wholesalers are lazy. They do the bare minimum to try and find deals. So when you use the lists above for your direct mail campaigns, you’re going to quickly uncover a lot of leads you simply weren’t accessing before. 

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Click the link below to try REISift for free and start sending more targeted direct mail campaigns!