40 - Direct Marketing Hacks: How Real Estate Agents Can Win Big with Postcards & Letters

Are you tired of wasting money on broad marketing campaigns that don’t bring in quality leads? Bob Salvas from the Rhode Island Builders Association shares how direct marketing strategies like postcards and letters can transform your real estate business. Discover the power of targeted marketing—reaching the right audience, maximizing your budget, and closing more deals. Learn how personalized direct mail can create stronger connections with buyers and sellers. If you're a real estate agent looking for a highly effective marketing strategy, this episode is a must-listen!

🔹 Why direct mail still works in a digital world

🔹 How to target the right audience and save money

🔹 Best practices for postcard and letter marketing

🔹 Strategies to increase response rates

Don't miss these insider tips on how real estate agents can dominate with direct marketing!

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Chapters

• 1:58 Just 2 Minutes Questions
• 4:06 The Interview

Transcript

0:17

Welcome everybody. I'm Camille Sargee, the host of Just Two Minutes. And today I have Bob. Hey, hi. You want to tell us about yourself? Sure. My name is Bob Salvas. I'm a business advisor, and I do a lot of work with the Rhode Island Builders Association. Uh, help the, uh, contractors of the state get a little bit better educated. Explain a lot to them about marketing. My main background is in marketing. So, I help them in a lot of different areas, and, uh, as you know, Construction, contracting, arena, it's really exploding right now. So, I've been pretty busy with that project. It started out as a project, it's funny. It started out as a project, uh, I was doing for the Builders Association back in 2019. And it was supposed to be a six month project, and here we are six years later, and I'm still working on it. Doing it. That's a sweet gig. Yeah. It's nice. There's a lot of good people that work in this industry and it's, uh, it's fun to, uh, to meet them and, uh, some hardworking folks. Yeah. No doubt. So, uh, Bob, you're here today for just two minutes, episode, by the way, it's, uh, This is episode 40. Wow, already? Yeah, 40 weeks. Congratulations. Yup, it's not 50, so But still! I'm gonna do the crazy celebration, yeah. 40's a big number. And then when 50 comes, I'll be like, Uh, son, I celebrate to like, 100, 100th episode. Okay. So, I'm gonna start my timer here, and then just ask you random questions, and I've heard about these random questions. All right. And go. All right. So summertime, you're hanging out with friends at a barbecue. What's your favorite game? Ooh, outdoor game. Um, you know, I, I, Obviously I like to play chess and I, I will play chess outdoors and indoors. So that, that's my, that's my number one go to, but outside I've, I've done things like, you know, horseshoes and that kind of thing. Yeah. Typical picnic slash barbecue stuff. Okay. Um, so you're at the barbecue still. What's your drink of choice? Usually at a barbecue, I would be a drinker. You know, it's a, it's a great summertime thing and I love craft beers. Uh, I love the craft beer community in Rhode Island. It's, it's very vibrant and there's a lot of good beer out there. Have you ever had a 40? Uh, a 40? I don't think so. It's a, uh, 40 ounce. You get it from a Oh, no, I don't, I don't, I don't think I've, I've had, you should try that. I've had some larger bottles, but yeah, paper bag. Like I've had it a few times. That's the secret way, depending on where your barbecue is. Um, so in the jungle, right. Ostriches hanging out. Who, who's the ostriches, uh, best friend. Who's the ostrich's best friend? Hmm. Probably, uh, Probably the snake. I say the snake because the ostrich puts his head in the sand and he sees most of the snakes. He's only down at that level. I love it. I'm Brandon Mansell. That's beautiful. What's your favorite season? Oh, definitely fall. Fall. I love the fall. It's, it's football. It's Thanksgiving. It's, the weather gets a little crisp. The leaves change in New England. Just beautiful. I guess that means that. Awesome. That was it. Yeah. So Yeah, that's, uh, what do you think? You like that? Yeah, that was, that was, you know, different. So you're here today because, you know, you're, you've been in marketing for a long time. And, uh, what I wanted to focus on today is your experience and your, your help with, uh, mail. Like, mail marketing. Right, direct mail. So letters, direct mail, postcards, um. First of all, I just want to say, I've seen your lectures or your, uh, presentations. Yeah. And I will never forget the one that you did about the Pony Express. Oh, yeah. Amazing. Amazing. I'll never forget that. That was really, really good. Just, you know, to, to highlight that for those who weren't there, um, I, I, the presentation was obviously much longer than this, but I went into the history of the Pony Express, how it started and why they needed it and all those things. And all this is, is historical records that anybody can look up. But the thing I was most fascinated with was how they selected the, the people that would be the riders of the Pony Express. Because you got to remember back in those times, this is around the time of the civil war, mid 1800s, whatever. Uh, back in those times, people who rode horses were the cowboys, right? And think Yellowstone, right? Rip, somebody like that. Right. Uh, but they said, no, they wanted the horses to go as fast as humanly possible. So they literally recruited these young teenagers who were thin. Who could ride fast and not weigh the horse down and if you think about it, that was the first iteration, if you will, of the modern day jockey. Mm-hmm . Right? Somebody who's very lightweight, that can, that was a really good, uh, horse rider. And they would take the mail through on that from where the railroad ended, you know, halfway across the country and take it all the way to California. And they were mostly worried about the Native Americans at the time, the uncomfortable relationship, let's call it that. And none of them ever got caught because they're, they had the best horses. And the purpose of me telling that story and how it relates to marketing is that it's who you select to target that becomes oftentimes a determination, a determinant of whether or not you're successful. So, for example, you are in, uh, real estate, well, if you're talking to people who will never buy a house, you know, if they're at the low, low income levels and they're, they're going week to week and, you know, barely making rent and they're not really, they're not really primed for buying a house, you're not going to have much, much success in that marketing, right? Your, your success rate is going to be very, very low. As opposed to somebody who is of means. Maybe they own a house already. Maybe they've been in it for seven years or so. Um, or maybe they've had a change in their family. A marriage, a divorce, had a cut, had a child. You know, something like that, where they may be looking up. upsize, downsize, whatever, those triggers, those people are a sweet target market for you and your success rate is going to be much higher. So that really was kind of the purpose of that long story about the Pony Express and it really makes a difference. Who, in that case, who you hire, and in this case, who you market to. Who is your target market? Who is your sweet spot? And that's really important in the real estate industry. Yeah, the things, I mean, what I took away, or what I still remember, is how a lot of lives were lost. But, those bodies that are on the horse, the horse was programmed to go that way. They just ended up there with a dead body. Yeah, the few people who did die, there was only a handful, but the few people who did die in service of the Pony Express, none of them were actually captured by the Native Americans. They had arrows in their back, but the horse just kept going. These horses were so good and so trained that they couldn't be caught, and they always knew where to go. So, pretty amazing story. It's a fascinating time in our history, in this country. And it didn't last long. Because eventually, they, you know, the railways, or railroad made it all the way through. And, you know, the telegraph actually came before the railroad, I believe. So they could get messages through, you know, the lines. That used to be considered modern technology, can you imagine? Ha ha ha! Decoding the, uh, the, oh man. Morse code. Yeah. Yep. Takes me back to my military days. So as far as a client, so you're talking about like targeting your audience, right? Yeah, target market is a really important part, especially when it comes to direct mail. As you know, direct mail is a form of marketing that costs money. So, I've had a lot of conversations with realtors and they're like, Oh, the costs are ridiculous. Yeah, postage has gone up, it's expensive. But, the reality is, is that you're going to be more successful with direct mail marketing than you are with most other forms of marketing. Because, uh, it's look at it this way, it's, it's cutting through like the digital clutter. Everybody's very excited, including me, about Digital marketing, you know, this great stuff out there. I do my email newsletter, you know, they've got a website All those things have been tastic people do SEO But the hard part is that with everyone doing it the more people that jump in the more competitive it gets and now you're really having to spend more like when SEO and the The whole search engine stuff and digital marketing when it all that started the The price was lower because there was less competition in it. Now it's like everybody's in it. So it's very difficult to succeed. You can succeed, certainly. But it's very difficult to succeed. So what I recommend for a lot of folks is don't give up the digital world, but augment it by going outside the digital world into a hard copy place. So now, the volume of mail that we get on a daily basis, a consumer, is shrunk. As you might imagine. You know, when I was growing up, you know, we had all of our bills came by mail. All of the, you know, everything in the world came by mail. Now, there's less in the mailbox. But what that means to the person who's trying to get someone's attention is that there's less competition in the mailbox. In the digital world, there's more competition. And in the mailbox, there's less. So, that's, that's, uh, One reason to do it so you target marketing And we'll save you that money because everybody complains it's expensive, but only go to your sweet spot go to the go to your Most likely clients get a very narrow list and go to that So that's number one number two when you're trying to get their attention from that in that target market then uh having less competition within the mailbox is going to actually help you and then the third Part of that that makes it very beneficial So, you have target market, you have less competition, so you, you're going to, you're going to, by the way, it's a great statistic, about 80 something percent of hard copy mail is read. And just the opposite on the email, about 20 percent of emails are read. Oh, interesting. So, it flips, right? Yeah. And people say, oh, 20 percent, I read a lot more than 20 percent of my emails. No, no, no. I'm talking about all the emails. Because a lot of them you don't see. Because it's stopped by your spam filters or you know, it goes off in the ether somewhere Um, but 80 percent of your email emails are not even being read only about 20 percent of them are and 80 percent of your hard copy is being read. So it's just the opposite Of of the email so that means you're getting your message through to the person All right, so getting the message through less competition in the mailbox. All that is about getting attention And number two is target market making sure you're going to the right place person because you want to increase your chances of success, and also you want to keep some of the cost down. You know, you're not going to mail everybody in Socket. It's going to cost you a fortune. But if you find those select people in Socket that you think are really, maybe a certain neighborhood, uh, that are really primed for what you bring to the table as a realtor, then go to them. And go to them more than once. And then the third part that I was leading up to was, so we have target market, we have less competition and getting noticed. And then the third part is with somebody, some people don't talk about that much. When we started moving, migrating into the digital world, there was something that was lost and that what was lost there was this sense of touch. So as human beings, we have one of the most refined senses of touch of all the entire animal kingdom. And What happened was, after, uh, I forget what year it was exactly, but there's a study, some, you can look it up if you like, it's called Millwood Brown. M I L L W A R D, Millwood and the color brown. And the Millwood Brown study was the first of many studies that did this. But what they did was, they took a whole bunch of people, and they gave them, they, they hooked them to these, uh, brain MRI kind of scanning machines, and they gave them, uh, a digital, uh, So they're looking at a screen, pictures, words, blah, blah, blah, right? Okay. Then they, and they recorded what, what their brain was doing when they saw that. They gave those, later on they gave those same people a hard copy. The exact same thing, exact same. No, nothing changed. The words were the same. The images were the same, but it was hard copy that they held in their hand and different parts of the brain fired. And the parts of the brain that fired was because of that sense of touch. And those parts included the one, the I'm not, you know, I can't tell you. Yeah, the left and the right side, but, uh, the, the, the parts that affect memory and emotion. So if you have something tangible in your hands, it impacts you more on the emotional and, and memory level. then that same message does in a digital format. Wow. That's important when you're selling somebody something, because people, we all know. Yeah, emotion. People, people buy an emotion. Yeah. Right? They figure out the reason later. Right? But they, they buy an emotion. So if you can tap into the, emotions and memory are key to marketing and sales, because people buy an emotion, and also, people buy when they're ready to buy, so you want to make sure that they remember you. So both those things are very critical components. And the science now has shown that direct mail works. I mean, why is direct mail even still in existence? You would, some people ask that question. They think, oh, that, that's, that's old school. That's like the yellow pages that went away. It didn't go away. And some of the, and very quietly, some of the biggest companies in, in the world still use direct mail very successfully. They're not going to go and broadcast that. Right. They're being very, they're making a lot of money selling whatever, you know, they sell. Whether it's cars or homes or whatever. But, real estate is a really good, it's a really good place for direct mail. Because, unlike, like, in the business to business world, you know, because you've been involved in both worlds, but in the business to business world, I mean, we network, we network. We go to events. Uh, we were on LinkedIn. We're talking to each other all the time. You know, it's not as hard to find people and a more public facing, right? If you're in resident, if, if you're selling homes, not commercial, right? If you're selling homes, then you need to get to the consumers. And some of these consumers. They put up like a moat around there, you know, communications, right? They don't, they don't want to talk to anybody. Yeah, so getting through to some of them. It's a lot harder to get through To a consumer than it is to get through to a business person. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so and then a good example of that. I still do a little bit of this work I don't do as much I used to do a lot of it, but I was a list broker. So I'm able to access Certain pieces of data to get targeted mailing lists So not that long ago friend of mine, and I've done business for this friend many times He reaches out to me And he says, I need a list. Here's the demographics. It might have been for, it might have been for a nursing, I don't know, it doesn't matter what it was. Yeah. But he says, I need, these are the demographics, this is the list I need. I said, okay, I can, I can do that. And he said, I need emails. I said, you sure? He said, yeah, I'm sure. Now this guy had bought mailings from me a million times, right? Interesting. Okay. But he wanted emails this time. Uh huh. All right. And I said, okay, you know, and I, I, anybody else, I would have had the conversation with him about why email marketing doesn't work, especially cold email list doesn't work. But this guy knew what my preaching was. So I said, okay, you're the boss. I go and I get into the email list. Three weeks later, I hear from him, Hey, how'd that work out? Not thinking it was going to work out that well. And he goes, not so well. He said, oh, what happened? He goes, you know, in all the past, I've gotten lists from you, and all of them, were 90 percent or above in their deliverability, right? So that the information was accurate. He said, we've got, we got bounces of 50 percent of the email list. And I said, well, if you read, if you were paying attention, you know that I guarantee my mailing list for 90 percent accuracy. I said, I cannot. For mail, not email. Right, for hard copy mail. I cannot guarantee the accuracy on email. Think about this. How easy is it? For you to change, you could go in the other room, two minutes later you could come back here and say I have a new email address. Right? Couldn't you? That's how easy it is to change. And people get sick of spam, they change their email all the time. Maybe they've got five, six different emails because they got this one that they want, they're getting the free downloads of the white pages or whatever. You know, they're getting all this stuff and that's the one that they put out there publicly, this is the one for their friends, this is the one for their other things. I mean, I myself use three every single day. Three different emails. So finding the right email for the right person who can then switch it on a moment's notice makes that very hard to keep up with from a, a data collection standpoint. Whereas you're in this address, nice address. Yeah. You could leave and go to another address, but that's going to be an act of Congress, right? It's gonna have moving company, gonna buy a place, rent a place, whatever, and it's gonna be a big ordeal for you to do that. But then you'd update it. You'd get the updated. But then we'd also have time to update it because generally speaking, most people, unless they're dodging their bill collectors, most people are going to report that to the post office so that their mail is forwarded. That information is available to the public. So we would know that you moved. Yeah. So there's a major difference in terms of the accuracy of the data. Now, added to the fact that, like, 50 percent of this guy's email list didn't even get delivered. Yeah. Right? Well, the other 50 percent Who knows if they read it, right? Who knows if they read it. And also, What if, what really might be the success rate of an email from somebody I've never even talked to or even known about? Probably not that good. And, on top of that, there's these can spam laws that can get people into trouble if they email to people that they didn't have prior permission to email. So you've got all that stuff working against you. With email, you've got the can spam laws, you could get in trouble, you've got people tend not to trust, um, cold emails if they don't have a relationship with you already, uh, and deliverability because people can change their emails on a moment's notice. So that's kind of why Email marketing, unless you know the people, unless you have a relationship, email marketing really doesn't work for a cold audience, especially a consumer audience. Yeah. There's so many filters too, like, um, I have this system where, um, not only, I mean, you're, you're already spam, uh, blocking spam, but I'm using the system just so I can focus on, you know, important emails and everything else like invitations, notifications, newsletters, everything just goes in a different folder. That I don't even see anymore. It's all like, focused stuff, so I'm sure, you know. Because you're so busy, you want to get the stuff that's important. Yeah. Right? And, and, uh, so I don't even know how many of those, you know. 50 percent actually got to see those. Right. The email. Exactly. So if I'm selling a house, and I do a radius of like one mile around that house, and I get a big, giant postcard with a picture of the house right in front of it, maybe show the street, kind of like, um, And send it to the one mile radius. Is that a good, uh, yeah, there's, there's a lot of research that says that radius mark marketing is, is a good idea. Uh, it works well in retail, it works well in construction, generally works pretty well in, uh, in, you know, real, realty as well. Think about this people that are living within a mile of each other. They may or may not have seen the for sale sign, you know, they may be curious. Uh, they may have a friend that they want to move to their neighborhood. You know, there's a lot of different things that can play into that. Uh, so yeah, I, I think that's a fair strategy. Um, I think that sometimes, just doing it blindly is, is okay. What I mean by blindly is, um, postal service has a product, uh, you may be familiar with is every door direct mail, uh, EDDM. So every door direct mail basically allows you to send a hundred percent Of your postcards to every resident in a carrier. So carrier is just one mailman's route, but usually it's pretty condensed. I didn't even know that. So usually pretty condensed neighborhood. So it's usually like that. It's not always exactly that mile around the house, but I mean, it's pretty close and it's cheaper than regular. Oh yeah. Postcard. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's a lot cheaper, like maybe half something like that. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty Now downside to that is you've got to go to every household. Right? Which not all of them may be target market, right? So, there's, because you go in every household, It's, it's what we classify as like a, a current resident kind of mailing. So there's no names on the actual mail piece. Oh, okay. There can't be, to get this service. It's just, in fact, there's no addresses on it. You give the post office the information, you say carrier route 27, zip code 02895. You provide them the postcards. Yep, yep. Here's, how many do I need? You need, I, you need, you know, 125. Here you go. Can you do this online, or? Oh, you have to. In fact, yeah. Well, you have to. Order it online, uh, and they'll give you the numbers that you need in order to do it. And then you have, then you have to bring it to, you know, physically bring it to the post office. Okay. So, but it doesn't have the personalization because it doesn't have anyone's name on it. It doesn't have anything on it. You know, so, um, there's no personalization and it has to go to everybody in that carrier room. Now that's good news, bad news because, The good news there is probably half the price of what you're going to pay for something that's targeted. But it all depends, because if it's, if it's a neighborhood where there's, it's going to go to a lot of people that just wouldn't be a good client, then even though it costs fifty, you know, It's half the price. You're still wasting money. You know, as opposed to spending more money to get a targeted listing. It's always, it's a discussion you have with a marketing professional, and I've had a thousand of them. Because it's always like, okay, is the savings worth what we're losing? Um, if, like, for example, I love the personal touch. I pay a lot of attention to personal touch. A realtor friend of mine, just last week. Sent me a greeting card in the mail. Uh, and the front of the greeting card was a great picture of the Eagles and the Chiefs. Right? And the, the, the Super Bowl trophy on there, right? And inside was a simple message. Hey, enjoy the Super Bowl. Right? That, and I don't, this guy lives closer to Boston than in Rhode Island, but that kind of keep in touch strategy is a very strong strategy because he's taking this time to send me something, wishing me well, saying, hey, like he knows I'm a football fan, right? So enjoy the Super, hope you enjoy the Super Bowl, you know, hope to see you soon kind of thing. And it's like, that's real personal. That's real personal. As opposed to. I get the generic, uh, postcard about the house that's for sale. I may or may not have some interest in it, but it certainly doesn't strike me as personal. So, it all depends on what you're going for. If you, if your game is, uh, a numbers game, say, listen, I don't really know anybody in this part of Woonsocket, but I'd like to try this. Let me, let me do this. Every door, direct mail. I'll save some money, but I'll, I'll get my name out to all those, all those people. It's going to work a lot better Better if that section of of the town is a little bit more upscale that has a lot of single family homes That kind of thing as opposed to too many apartment buildings, then it's going to be more effective that's just my gut answer on that and Postcard I mean, you know the technique with the radius around this house that's selling Isn't that great? Having the big giant picture of the house that you've probably driven by so many times and now it gets your attention. Because if I get a, an envelope, my name, but no return address, it goes right in the trash. Like to me, that's obviously like soliciting. Right. So, uh, but with the postcard, before I throw it in the trash, I look at it and I'm like, Oh, so how I know where this house is, especially with the address, you know, um, no, I think it's a great idea. And, um, one of the things, a couple of things about that. Number one is postcards. Earlier I said, um, direct mail in general, encompassing everything has about 80 plus percent. read rate, right? So 80 something percent of the direct mail that's sent, all kinds of direct mail that are sent in the United States is actually read. But within that big group, you have subsets, right? Yeah. Postcards are almost a hundred percent on their read rate because there's nothing to open. There's no decision to make right right. It's there right in front of you. You're looking at it, right? You look at it. What's this about? All right, it takes you two seconds. What's this about? So yeah, oh, oh Something you recognize then you recognize it. Yeah that draws you in right? Oh, what's this? Oh, I know that house Oh, it's for sale Yeah. Right? So that, that can get attention. Also, you mentioned a larger size. Yeah. And that's really good. Because that gets attention. Um, we used to have this thing in direct, in direct mail. By the way, I did, I ran a direct mail company for, um, like 10 years. So, started one in 2003. Um, but we used to have this test and the test is, you have one of those postcards? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This just came in to every single agent here. So this is, this is a typical postcard, standard size postcard. And letters are maybe sometimes a little bit shorter than this, depending on what kind of letter it is. But if you have your pile of mail, that you get at home and you do this, this thing down, and then all of a sudden there's one thing that's like this. Yeah. And you're like, what's the first thing you're going to look at? Yeah. Oh, what's this? Right. So, uh, yeah. Again, it will jump out at people. There's nothing to open, there's no decision to make. Decision is whether or not you're gonna keep it. That's the decision you're making. What is this about? Let me look. And then you make a decision. Now, there's some people that go, I don't care. They're gonna throw it away. And others are gonna go, oh my god, I gotta show this to my husband. You know, so, um, maybe we can take a look. Maybe we know somebody. Or maybe we wanna buy it. We have always loved that house. You know, something like that. Weird things happen like that. So with that, in that scenario, you get that postcard, you see it, like, oh, throw it in the trash. Um, isn't it more effective to also send a second one? Oh, God, yeah. Um, I get asked this question all the time. I mean, where do you stop? Where do you stop? Well, you don't. Alright, so, my favorite story is The one about, uh, Joe Girard. So Joe Girard, um, was a car salesman back in the 1960s. And he sold, he's in the Guinness Book of World Records, he sold more automobiles than any other person on the planet. Right? In the time period that he was a car salesman. And how he did it, was every single month, he would send out a greeting card, and it was kind of like my friend sent that greeting card to me, with the Super Bowl thing, and it was like, Happy St. Patrick's Day, this month it would be Happy Valentine's Day, or, you know, whatever, whatever the season was, you would get, everybody he knew, everybody he knew, got this greeting card from Joe Girard. And he never got salesy in it. You know, sometimes people say, Oh, they send you a nice card, but then they go, Hey, and if you're looking for a home, Realtors are really bad at doing that, by the way. Uh, Because they always kind of ruin, like, the, the positive vibe. Oh, look at this. This is so nice. Now, my friend, you know, he sent me the soup bowl card, and then on the back was his contact information. Yeah. But it didn't say inside. Hey, do you know anybody that wants to buy a house? You know, he didn't, he kind of ruined the whole vibe of the whole thing, right? That's not what it's about. It's more about reaching out with this positive touch. So, Joe Girard used to do that. By the time he retired, he was sending something like, I don't know, 15, 000 greeting cards a month. But he just kept sending them. And then, whenever you were getting ready to buy a car, like, who are you going to buy a car from? The guy's been, every single month, he sends me something. Right? He's just keeping in touch with me over a long period of time. And in, in a big ticket sales world, like automobiles and homes, you can afford to do that. You know, if you, if you think about it, you don't need that many sales to come from that to pay for that. Right? So, I, I, and I always used to tell people, this was a common refrain of mine. Amongst, especially among small business people, when I first started in direct mail consulting, they'd say, Oh, I tried that, it didn't work. How many times did you try that? Well, once. Well, it's gonna work better the more times you try it. If your budget can afford a 10, 000 piece mailing, don't do it. Do 1, 000. And then the thousands of the same at do interest thousand people ten times. Yeah, because that's going to get you More bang for your buck, you know, there's this great statistic. I'm sure you've seen this kind of stuff. It's an all over the internet, but they talk about Follow up, especially it's in relation to that like just the points of touch. How many points of touch does it take? for a sale and the average salesperson The average marketer will touch someone one to three times. But most of the sales, 90 percent in fact of the sales, happen on the 8th to the 12th touch. So that consistency of message, and it's also been shown that the more frequently you can reach out to somebody, the better. So, two times is better than one time. Three times is better than two times. And so on. Right? So on down the line, you get to the point where if you regularly keeping in touch with them like Joe Girard did then Eventually you you're just going to get their business because you're going to become you're gonna get that top of mind Position with them like who else am I gonna call right? And the other question I get on occasion is Well, how often? And the, the key answer to that is once a month. Okay. If it's a long term, like obviously you could have shorter term stuff. Oh, this, you know, something's hot. Boom, it's sold. Yeah, right, right, yeah, that's a different issue. But if you were just, if you were just like, let's just say, you know, one of the things about realtors is you can't be the best realtor in the United States. It's hard to even be the best realtor in the entire state of Rhode Island. We're the smallest state in the union. Uh huh. It's even harder, or just as hard, to be the best realtor in Woonsocket, right? You could maybe do that, but it's easier to be the best realtor in a small part of Woonsocket. So you find a spot, maybe you've sold a couple houses there, and you start, well, in realtor terms they call it farming, right? You start reaching out. You start getting involved in that area, if they have a little league team or whatever. You start reaching out with positive messages to those people, over and over and over again. And pretty soon, you're the realtor in that section of town. Yeah. And, and it, and it does work because, uh, repetition creates trust. And, and that's, that's been documented, uh, great, great author, Seth Godin. He's so, he was so good, his book, Permission Marketing, which was way ahead of his time, and he said that repetition builds trust, and he said, and you have to, you have to be in front of people so that they pick you when they decide. So his famous quote is, people buy when they're ready to buy, not when you're ready to sell. Mm, yep. And, and that's the key. Yeah, I think like for a realtor, like we are in our clients lives a lot because we take him from, from the beginning, like I want to buy a house to congratulations. You have your, here's your key. Um, but I think there's a missing part where, and I, I have this all the time. I'm like, I wonder how they're doing. I'm, you know, I'm thinking about them, but it's kind of awkward. Like, okay. Just call them up and be like, Hey, how's your house? You're doing great. Okay. But, you know, keeping in touch with a letter versus a postcard or I think, you know, a letter is probably better. Yeah, well, it's less intrusive, for sure. Yeah. Right? Because a phone call, I might be, you know, my kid's screaming, he's got the flu, you know, Ah, I'm trying to make supper. You know, a phone call can be very interruptive, right? Uh, as opposed to, you send me a nice message, and I've seen realtors do this too, uh, every anniversary of the home. Yeah. Right? I think that's a wonderful thing. It's like, hey, I hope you're, I hope you're enjoying your home as much today as you did when you bought it three years ago. With me. Yeah. But, that's implied, right? But, what a nice positive message, right? It's like, it's like, oh. Makes you think back of the memory, like, wow. Wow. That was a stressful moment. You know what else? Yeah, but you know what else though? It reminds them Who they bought the house from. When my wife and I bought our, our home. We were in this home for 25 years. Yeah. Raised our families in, right down the street in Cumberland. We bought the home in 1993, right? Wonderful woman sold us the home. Everything went smooth. Got a nice fruit basket or something at the closing. Yeah. Uh, nice. Everything fine, right? Never heard from her again. Now, we had a nice home. We had a lot of people over. A lot of people would ask us, Hey, who was your realtor that sold you this home? I don't remember. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. Because, I'm not even sure if she's still a realtor anymore. Right? So that, There was a mis, like, Granted, I stay, I'm not the perfect, Right? Client where I live in a house seven years and buy another one, right? Yeah. Yeah, I was in for 25 years That was the game plan to raise our kids We my wife was pregnant with our firstborn at the time that we bought the house, right? Yeah, I'm gonna bring him up in Cumberland. We you know, we scouted the whole place. This was the perfect neighborhood, you know the whole thing Everything was perfect. And she knew that the realtor knew that What she didn't know, what she didn't really appreciate, is how many people I know. Yeah. I know a lot of people. Granted, I'm not going to buy another house anytime soon. But what about all my friends? What about all my business associates? I know a ton of people. And, you missed that opportunity for a referral, Because I will never give you a name as a referral if I think, even minutely, that you're not doing this anymore. Because I've never seen your name anywhere. So having your name in front of people is really important. So if you're a realtor, what, you're trying to get to the, to people that you never met before to get a listing. What would you do, as far as direct marketing, to To reach out to them. Well, I mean, one of the things that there's a couple of things that we have tried over the years, uh, one of the things that doesn't work well, that a lot of realtors think works well, is this concept of going to non homeowners. So we can get a list, like just say in this neighborhood, you say, Bob, I've got a house for sale. What I want to do is I want to go in this neighborhood to everybody who's renting. First problem with that is they're probably renting for a reason. Every once in a while there's a person who's renting and saving their money to buy a house. But that's not every person that you're mailing to. In fact, it's a very small percentage. So, a lot of those people are week to week. They're not in the market for buying a house. Also, what you're going to find is that data is very transient. So, renters It's the list is not as solid and they don't update their stuff because a lot of times it's dodging their rental collectives Right, so then it's not the great the greatest market I if I was a realtor myself, I would tend to avoid that strategy and Go more to people who actually have a home And it seems counterintuitive But the reality is is that People tend to hang out with people who are like them. So, if I'm a single family homeowner with two young kids, I probably have a lot of friends who are in the same exact position. And, when you're looking for somebody to buy a home, a lot of times it's the person who is already in a home that's looking for a new home. You know, maybe they had, you know, or maybe they're getting a divorce. Or whatever the case may be, there's, there could be some change or they know somebody who's looking for a home. So, these are the people that are going to be the, uh, The most solid members of the community. And that's the other thing, because even if, but again, using this as an example, you go out to the homeowners, the single family homeowners, right? And you, and you, you start, Yeah, we got this house for sale. Okay, maybe you get some bites, maybe you don't, right? But you keep going to those people. And pretty soon they know your name. And pretty soon either them or one of their friends is ready to go. And so you've already got that top of mind awareness already installed. And I think a lot of realtors, while you can certainly have success in the short game, you know, here's the house, send it to the neighborhood that can work, right? But they missed the long game part of it. And the long game part of it is just that keeping in touch with people because the people who have the means. To buy, you know, that people that know you like after you close, right? Yeah, it's it is important and keeping in touch with the people that you've sold to that's even more important like that lady I just told you about who sold me my house like never heard from her again. It's like what a shame, you know she missed a great opportunity because If she had kept in touch with me, I certainly I had a good experience. Why wouldn't I refer? You know us realtors were really good at the process, right? You know from the beginning to the end But it's called the end. But it shouldn't be the end. It should be the beginning. It's the beginning of a relationship. There's a famous quote, uh, Oh, who was it? I can't remember who it was. He says, uh, When they, when they pay you the money, it's, it's not the, it's, it's, it may be, it's the end of the transaction, but it's also the beginning of the relationship. You know, because that is the person who is the end. perfectly positioned to refer you. Yeah. And to potentially buy from you again. So this person buys a house. They have a couple more kids. They need the upgrade. They had a great experience with you the first time you kept in touch with them. Who are they going to call? You. Right. Right. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So I think realtors miss that. And I think you're absolutely right. It's like, they see it as the end. And they should see it as the beginning of the relationship. Yeah. So you said you would target it. Mm hmm. And then what would you send? Like a postcard? A letter? It, it depends. If, if I had, uh I'm looking for listings. Yeah. I want to try to get more, more listings. Yeah. I, and certainly, certainly you, you can. It, there's, there's a good rule that if you Send a, a pitch, right? That you, that you also send, you know, some other things in between that, you know? So, in my case, I am, uh, targeting homeowners, right? So, now, Maybe I can't fit everything on that direct mail piece. Well, that's where the handy QR code comes in. All right So now I could say to these people. Hey, you're a homeowner in uh, this part of uh, Woonsocket, Rhode Island Just want to give you some tips On keeping your home, you know safe uh safe from Criminals safe from weather safe, you know Making sure you keep retain the value of your home things about preparing for winter And All these things, even if they're not selling, can benefit that person, that homeowner, and they say, Oh, he's right, you know, and if I don't do this, and, uh, you know, it's going to deteriorate my house, and, and then I'm going to, uh, you know, not get as much when I sell it. Or, you know, Uh, and you can also offer, you know, Hey, and if you need, you know, your house needs new fresh, fresh coat of paint, blah, blah, blah. I, as a realtor, I have a lot of resources. I'm happy to connect you to somebody reliable, somebody you can trust, right? Wow. That goes a long way. Now you, now what you're doing, Camille, is you're bringing value to the person. It's not just, Hey, I'm looking for listings that can be part of the conversation, but it's also got to be. What are you doing for me? Stephen Covey has this great thing in the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. He says, you can't make deposits, you can't make withdrawals from an emotional bank account until you make deposits, right? So you gotta be a giving person before you ask for something. Right? So, now if, so if I'm a realtor and I have this section of Winsocket, I send them out something like, Hey, you know, winter's coming, blah, blah, blah, here's some great tips. Okay. Take care of your home. Send them something else, you know. Yeah. Send them something else. Oh, by the way, um, I am looking for listings if you happen to Yeah. That's the way you do it. You build something positive first, so everybody does the same thing. Everybody's out of the gate. Hey, you got a listing? Hey, buy my stuff. Everybody does the same thing. Yeah. But when you don't do the same thing, you stick out in the crowd. So I had this, this woman that I had met through networking, and she, she called me up. It was, uh, first of the, right after the first of the year, right? And she said, you know, I, I had you on my list of people that I met last year that I just want to say I'm really happy that you're in my network and wondering if there's anything I can do for you. Ha ha! Can you imagine? Everybody that calls me, Hey, can you do me a favor? You know me. Yeah, we're trying to sell you something. Right, right. They need something from you. And this, this fall, I was like, I almost fell off my chair. It's like, this is a person now. Now. This person. Yeah. Ask me for something. Go ahead. I will move heaven and earth for this person. Just because it, she left me with that positive vibe. Like I really enjoyed meeting you last year and really appreciate the work that you do in the community and helping, helping the contractors. And, uh, I just, I just wanted to say thank you for everything that you're doing and also ask you if there's any way I can help you to, to be more successful. God, that's amazing. You know, so I think we miss that a lot in business. You know, we forget some of the basic human things of let me help this person. And that giving really does come back to you tenfold. Yeah. Wow. So letters and to people that you've had, the people that you know that you've closed business with, that's a good. That, you know, you'd send, um, custom cards that are handwritten. Those are better. Oh, those, yeah. They're much more personal. Yeah. And they're much more personal. Yeah. Thank you. You can't say thank you enough to people. You know, and people love the fact that you do that, that you appreciate them. Everybody wants to be appreciated. And so when you do those kind of things, it's great. Also, um, Another cool kind of mail, we didn't really talk about it, obviously there's letters, there's the big postcards, and those are great. The greeting card's great. But in the marketing world, they sometimes call it lumpy mail. And that's when you send like a, like a padded envelope, or, or a box or something, right? And, and now it's like Christmas for these people. I mean, you don't know, what, what is this, right? And talk about getting some attention. You guys sent it to me, sent me one. Yeah. Right, right, right, for the marketing camp, right, right. Yeah, so you're like, what is this? And didn't it get your attention? You know, it's like, oh, how cool, you know? And it was only like popcorn, right? So, but it was like, it really, it really gets noticed and appreciated. Like, they took the time to send me. This is awesome, right? And so stuff like that really does work. And again, it's that, like we did for the marketing camp. It's like, hey, you're coming to the marketing camp. We're so happy you're coming. And, you know, this, uh, enjoy some popcorn, right? It's like microwave popcorn and say, we'll get your business poppin Yeah. You know, at the marketing camp, right? It was like cute, right? And so stuff like that, uh, you know, I, I think cute is still okay. Yeah. And, and, and people say, what a nice thing. Right? And, and that's a really good example of that, you know, that giving mentality. Like, just give them a little something. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be, you have to give them a gold bar, you know what I mean? It's like, just give them something. Make, make them feel appreciated. Make them, or keep in touch with those people. And yeah, you can, you can certainly pitch them your, your, your thing of what you need. But, you know, do that in between. Not in every single communication. So I wrote down, like from, from talking, I wrote down the best strategy. Ready? One mile radius. Uh, call and tell them you're gonna send them some information, useful information about the house, neighborhood, whatever. Right. You send them the postcard. Uh, you send them a letter. You phone, you call them on the phone. Mm hmm. You hit them up on social media. Yeah. And then I call him again, what do you think of that? Is that too crazy? No, it's not crazy at all! Listen, there's this thing in marketing, and I know we spent most of this time today, I've enjoyed this by the way, most of this time today talking about direct mail, which obviously I've been involved with for a very long time. But, what we didn't talk about is how direct mail is very powerful, but it augments other things. So, in marketing they call it multi channel, right? And whenever you have more than one channel that you're doing marketing in, it makes each channel more powerful. Because, you know, um, you gotta, Add in the Valley Breeze and somebody, or an article in the Valley Breeze and somebody sees it. And then they get a postcard from you. Then they get a phone call from you. All this stuff, all this stuff just, they thought, Wow, this guy's really very active in the community. There's a lot going on with this guy. And it just reinforces every little thing. If you just do one thing, It's, it's not as effective as doing multiple things. So yeah, I would certainly encourage that kind of, that kind of thing, you know, just because subconsciously they're expecting the next step. You told them like, I'm going to send you something. Yeah. They don't get it. They're like hurt feelings, like in a weird way. Right. Yeah. Right. They said they're going to send me something. I don't care about it, but I didn't get it. And then next day you get it. And you're like, Oh, okay, and then you get another letter and like, all right, they call you up and then on social media Like what is going on? Right and you know, it's funny you say that, you know, they expect something um It you know more and more people are doing this. It's it's like um Whetting the appetite Right, so i've already seen a lot of stuff on social media About super bowl commercials and stuff, right? So they're they give like these little Comments Teasers of different, different things that are going to be in like a Super Bowl commercial. And, and what, what they're doing is they're getting you looking for it. So yeah, so I'm going to send you something you're looking for. And it's going to be that much more impactful when you actually get it. It's just the way it works. Wow. It's cool stuff. Well, thank you so much for coming in. This is like awesome information. I think we got, we got a, You know, a lot of cool stuff. I have a game plan now. Yeah. Before I didn't. A lot of stuff to think about, right? Yeah. Direct mail is not dead, my friend. Ha ha ha. So how do people find you, get in touch with you, see you? Obviously, I do, most of my work right now is through the Builders Association. Certainly, uh, People are welcome to call me there. We do have realtors like yourself, uh, and, uh, people who flip homes. A lot of them are, uh, involved with the Builders Association. So, uh, the number there is 401 438 7400. Uh, my personal email, which you can find me, I have a, my personal website is just bobsalvas. com and my email is bob at bobsalvas. com. So, I'm happy to hear from anyone, answer any question people have. I love to help people, you know that. And, uh, And I've, I've really enjoyed being, uh, being on the show. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you very much. Alright, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. My agents got a squad, we all in the zone. In house help, so they ain't doing it alone. They focus on clients, negotiating win, while the back ends hand them, man, that's how we spin. I hand them business, watch them all climb.