You did not get the response rate you wanted in your real estate postcard marketing campaign. What should you do?

You know this could happen. But deep inside you were expecting good leads will come out of your first batch of real estate direct mail. Now you want the answer to why it did not work. You start to form your own theories. The headline was not magnetic. The call to action was weak. Or you think you should have added more persuasive testimonials.

Your job - and without a doubt one of the hardest and most frustrating for any direct marketer is to discover what aspects hindered this effort. Before you tear up your original copy and start from scratch, telling me that this is just impossible, consider using this very simple approach to correcting your copy.

First I would like to state that I am a “collector” of junk mails. Some collect coins, some stamps, some Mickey Mouse items. I believe junk mail is worth its weight in gold in my business.

How did this idea of direct junk mail farm come about? My name was listed multiple times in mailing lists. Most probably whenever I signed-up for something, I wrote my name and address a bit differently. Or I used shortened versions of my name when I am in a hurry.

This enabled me to receive multiple copies of a real estate direct mail. And I noticed that they weren’t exact copies after all. There were slight differences in each one. Moreover, I noticed a unique code on each. Hence, I realized this was how they tested their real estate postcard marketing campaigns.

You would think that testing real estate marketing materials would require sending entirely different materials and see which one people liked better. This is not what happens at all. Instead, you will only change one item such as a headline, or one photo. Then send them out again.

Test your theories one by one on why your real estate direct mail was not effective. Keep on testing and changing only a single item to identify what specifically works for your target market.

You may change the headline, the testimonials, it’s not of importance what you change, use your instincts and change only one element at a time, then mail. Then you can compare the outcome of two different ones. Has this performed better or worse? If still you are dissatisfied, in next mailing select one more item to change.

You need to be patient during this investigative process of real estate direct marketing. But your persistence will pay off not only for the current real estate postcard marketing campaign but for your future real estate marketing campaigns as well. So keep on testing!

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