Joe:   What I have right here inside of this folder has made me millions of dollars. Want to know what it is? I'm telling you, it's about as old as time itself. Well, not really, but it's been around for a long, long time. And this right here is the secret to making a lot of money in real estate investing. You know what it is? Direct mail. It is letters. It is plain old, boring direct mail. And in this video, I'm going to be talking about some of the direct mail that I use in my business and how you can get the same exact mail, my direct mail swipe file in your business as well for free. All right. So stay tuned. All right. So I've been doing direct mail for a long, long time. When I started to get involved in real estate, it was 2006 when I started buying courses and stuff. I often say I was a professional student for three years, and I remember my first well, I'd been buying a lot of courses, right? And I've been buying houses all wrong. And I was when I'd buy a course I like, I was a course junky. Some of you can relate, right? I'd buy this course, this one, this one. And I was always trying to, like, combine the best of all the different courses that I had, right? I had courses on short sales and rehabbing and being a landlord and how to wholesale and how to fix and flip. And I had all these different coursesubject to creative finance, but I was always struggling to make money because I couldn't just pick one thing and do it consistent. And so finally I was hemorrhaging a lot of cash. My back was against the wall and I decided I had to learn one strategy. I had to stick with it and do what the person said to do and not change anything. And I've told this story many, many times, but the guy's course, his name is Chris Chico, still good friend of mine to this day. He does a lot of really cool stuff with Facebook and Tik Tok ads for real estate leads. Go check out his YouTube channel. But he had a course at the time called Absentee Owner Profits. And I remember where I was. I was in the garage of one of the houses that I lived in at the time and behind on my mortgage I was trying to do real estate investing was really, really struggling. And I said, All right, I'm going to buy one more course. I'm going to do it. This guy says to do and I'm not going to change anything. I wanted to learn wholesaling. I was trying to do like, there's quick, quick nickel strategies and slow down strategies, and I was trying to do all the slow dime strategies and it just wasn't working for me. And I knew I had to learn how to make a quick nickel. I had to learn how to do wholesale. Remember at the time thing wholesaling is for rookies, it's for beginners. I want to be more of the experienced, mature investor and I don't want to do those things that only beginners do. So I decided. But this time though, I'm going to do it differently. I'm going to buy a course and I'm going to do what the guy says to do it from beginning to end. And you know what it was? Send these cheap, ugly postcards. Okay. And his was actually not even this fancy at the time. It was just a simple text postcard like this. And I thought, well, for sure this would not work because, like, it's just text. There's no glossy photo. Shouldn't you have like a picture of a house on it? Shouldn't you have maybe a picture of me with my family or something on it? So you know what I said, All right. I'm just going to do what he says. I bought the course. I got the list that he said to get. I didn't like the list. I thought everybody was mailing to it. I used his postcard that when that postcard doesn't work, everybody's using that postcard or it doesn't just looks unprofessional, but I'm going to do it anyway, right?

Joe:   And so I started sending out his postcard to his list in the competitive areas where there is demand, I thought, everybody's doing deals there. I can't do deals there. I started focusing on those areas because there was a high demand, started doing deals. I mean, I actually started doing deals. And for the first time I remember this was in 2008. I was so excited that I was actually like, you know, when you watch a webinar, you go hear a speaker's talk and he shows pictures of people holding checks. I was that guy, actually, I was that guy that could hold a check. Now, my first deal, I did about $12,000 profit on it and it was a wire. I wish I would have gotten this check because I could have had a picture of me holding that check. But I was that guy. Finally. I was that guy that could be was he was doing deals making money from somebody course. So I owe a lot of a big debt of gratitude to Chris Chico. Shout out to Chris and his Absentee Owner Profits. I think he calls it virtual wholesaling now. But anyway, it was this postcard simple morning. I mean, like, here's the deal, here's the deal. Direct mail has always worked and it always will work. And this is now are still, still now our number one lead generation activity, postcards and letters. And I'm gonna share some of these with you right now and if you want this these this direct mail that I'm using for free, just go do simple land kit.com,  simple land kit.com. I got a bunch of free resources in there. And one of the things I give you is my direct mail swipe file. I've got about 10 or 12 different pictures of different mail that we sent.

Joe:   I want to walk through this here with real quick with you right now. This postcard, it has the person's name on it. It says, Flip this card over to sell your land for cash. Don't list your vacant lot. Sell it. And then it says, Hey, last Friday I was doing some research and public records and I noticed that you own a 2.9 acre property in County near City State. I'm very interested in purchasing this property from you. I can offer you immediate cash and can close the transaction very quickly. In addition, I'm willing to pay all your closing costs. I'm the owner of a small real estate investing company. We're looking to buy some more properties in the area for investment purposes. We worked with a number of people in your area who were very happy to sell their property in exchange for cash rather than dealing with the trouble and the hassles of trying to sell their unwanted property. If you would like to get cash, please texture call my 24 hour recorded voicemail. And that was another thing. I didn't like the fact that in my postcards this Chris Chico said, To do this, I'm sending them to a voicemail. Right? Well, here's the thing. People, they don't want to call and talk to somebody, right? They would think you're going to get more calls if it says call my 24 hour recorded voicemail, so forget it, Joe. Yea, I finally just did what the guy's the guru said to do and I started working. And so I've been doing this ever since. It says, Call my 24 hour recorded voicemail and it says No one will answer and you call that number, have this reference number ready. So there's a reference number up above. And the cool thing about the reference number, especially with vacant land, a lot of vacant land doesn't have an address. So you can't just ask seller, leave the address on the voicemail and you can't tell them to leave the APN number because it's too long, it's complicated, or the GPS coordinates or whatever. So this reference number now allows it to quickly pull up the property. When you call that number, please have the reference number ready. When you leave a message, I'll send you a written cash offer within a couple of days of receiving your voicemail. You can text me or call me any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I look forward to receiving your call. Sincerely, name company. And again, text or call this phone number 24 hour voicemail. That phone number, by the way, is a freedom soft number. So every campaign that I send out has its own unique phone number. So when they call this number, it goes into the campaign. I know it was for, you know, this certain county when they text or leave a voicemail for the reference number, I know exactly what lead it is. And this is how I did tons of deals with my teenagers. They would just listen to the voicemails, get the texts inside of Freedom Soft, call up the reference number, pull up the property, figure out what it's worth. We've send an offer like 35% of that, and we would only talk to the sellers after they got our offer.

Joe:   So I've done tons and tons of deals with this, so of my students, very simple. Now, you're not going to get a huge you're not going to get a huge response rate with this kind of a postcard. But the quality of the leads are going to be awesome. Now create postcard, simple, boring text. This postcard here is, believe it or not, I don't get as many calls on this, but it still works. So sometimes I'll mix it up. You know? Sometimes I'll send this postcard one month, a couple months later, I'll send this. Sometimes, though, this looks almost. This looks like more spam, don't you think? Just looks like my read it. But it's going to be like cash is circled and that says with dollar signs, it kind of sounds spam. I don't get as many calls on this, but it does work. So I send this first. Maybe I'll send something like this, gets some calls on it, but it just says it's all benefit, benefit, benefit too. By the way, none of this is like, Hey, this is how awesome I am, this is how many deals I've done. You know, unlike realtors who think like their photo, their direct mail has to have some fancy picture of a house with it just sold in the picture of them and then their name and some kind of play on words with their names. Now, this is not about you and this is about them. We'll pay cash. We can close fast. We buy vacant lots in any condition we buy in any area. We pay 100% of the closing costs. Call or text for free cash offer today. Very simple. We are a local real estate investment company. We need to buy one more vacant lot this month. So if you want a fast fair offer for your 2.4 acre vacant lot in city, flip this card over text or call 24 hour recorded voicemail. Very, very simple. And these postcards cost 50 $0.60. If you're sending bulk second class mail, it might be $0.45. You're sending first class, which is what I recommend. You know, depending on if especially if doing this all in Freedom Soft, which I would strongly recommend doing it in freedom Soft my custom signature edition. By the way, all of my templates are in there. It's going to cost you about 60, $0.65 to send this postcard. Okay. Works great. Now, we also send other things. Now you notice this here. It's an envelope. It's a window envelope. But I use yellow paper. I don't know about you, but when I get a thing, something like this, it tells me, man, I forgot to pay a bill. This is a past due notice or something like that, so I'm going to check it out. This is a letter that we send is very simple. And again, it looks unprofessional. Just plain boring. Big fat font. Dear owner's name. Now, this was a letter I sent for house. I saw your house on Zillow. I'm a I'm an investor looking for more properties in the area. You wouldn't be interested in selling, would you? Give me a call? That's it. Now, on this particular property, we were sending them to rental, so we find rental properties on Zillow. We send them this plain boring letter and it works. We get calls from these things. All right.

Joe:   Let me show you another one that works really, really well. Now, if you look at this envelope, what do you see? It looks like there's a check in the envelope. And so there's also let me show you this is another one that we sent. It looks more like a check, but it basically says letter reference ID at the top. Hey, we're ready to turn this real live check one. Sorry. We're ready to turn this into a real live check for your 2.6 acre vacant lot near City, county, State. Dear Seller name. My name is so-and-so with company. I am writing to you because public records show you, as the owner of a 2.6 acre vacant lot near city, county, state, very interested in purchasing this property from you or any others that you might have. And this is something I always put in my mail. Hey, if you don't want to sell this one, but you have another property you want to sell, let me know if you're interested in selling your property. I can offer you a fast trouble free sale as well as a fair price and immediate cash. If you decide to sell to us. I'll cover hundred percent of your closing costs. You would like to receive a 24 hour. I'm sorry. If you'd like to receive a cash offer or a check like this one in exchange for your property. Please call or text our 24 hour recorded voicemail at phone number. Freedom Cell phone number with the letter reference ID. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Call me. And their signature again, the number that that phone number 24, our recorded voicemail. Now, do people get mad when they get this kind of stuff? Of course they all I mean, no matter what you send them, whether it's a plain, boring white postcard like this or a letter, what the check look like it's gone through. They're going to get mad. In fact, I say this all the time. Me nuts made somebody upset by 12:00. You're not sending enough marketing out, right? So but we know. We know when we talk to somebody, by the way, they leave a voicemail or they text, if they're really upset, we say, you know what? You're I would be upset if I were you, too. Right. It's annoying getting junk mail. I'm sorry about that. But let me ask you some questions about your property. Do you mind? Do you have a minute or two? I just turn it around. All right. I agree with them. Sorry. But yeah, let's talk about this property. Tell me what's your situation? Here's the deal. This stuff works. And I think that's the reason why I love direct mail so much better than cold calling is they're calling me when I'm sending a letter out. They're calling me from the letter. Right. And I'm calling them back. So the positioning is completely different. It's more like, hey, listen, I'm returning your phone call about your property. You mind if I ask you some questions?

Joe:   So here is an example of that check letter. Again, it says, Hey, my name is Matt with company writing to you because I see you as the owner of this property. Hey, if you're considering selling your property, I can offer you a fast trouble free sale as well as a fair price in immediate cash. If you decide to sell with us, we'll cover 100% of your closing costs text or call our 24 hour recorded voicemail. Right. And the phone number there goes to voicemail. It goes inside of our freedom soft system. So we can see we track the results. And that's another important thing. When you're doing direct mail, you've got to know your KPIs. We know our numbers down to a science, to a T, where we know, all right, if we want to do a deal, we need to send this number of postcards, make this number of letters, make this number of offers, talk to this many sellers cetera, etc..So we know, like these letters typically get 1 to 2% response rate in a competitive market. These postcards, they'll get about the same. But, you know, we may not get a ton of calls from things like this, but the quality of the leads that we get are really, really high. And there's another postcard I don't have in here with me. But if you go to simple and sitcom, you'll see it there. It's basically a pretty generic postcard and says, Hey, I need it's urgent that I need to I need to talk to you about your property. Call me right now. Listen to our 24 hour recorded voice and doesn't say even anything about why we're sending them the letter, but it just says, Call us right now. We need to talk. And then the voicemail explains what it is that we do. So let me see what else I got here. I got one more that I wanted to show you. Let me open it up here. Okay. I saved the best for last. This. I've done 100 deals with this letter. It's just a plain letter. Plain boring, plain Jane letter. No offense. Anybody who's named Jane, but it's just, again, it's a letter that I send in a window envelope. Letter reference ID. This looks professional. It doesn't look like it's a spam junk mail piece, does it? Right. There's no doodles on it. There's no glossy pictures of a house or a realtor. It just says company name, seller's name regarding your four acre lot, their seller. I'm writing to you because I think you own a two acre property in County state. I might be interested in buying this property from you or any others that you might have. If you're interested in selling, we can close fast for a fair price. We'll cover hundred percent of the closing costs. Again, Benefit, Benefit, Benefit. We're a company that buys land for long term investment purposes. We're looking to buy more land in your area. Many people we've worked with are happy that they got cash instead of keeping land that they didn't use. If you'd like to receive a fair cash offer for your property, please call or text our 24 hour recorded voicemail. Again, 24 hour recorded voicemail. They know nobody's going to answer. I get a lot more calls than that. Call or text with that reference number at the top of your letter and we will send you an offer right away.

Joe:   And by the way, I say this here. P.S. If you don't want to sell your vacant lot now, please keep this letter for future reference. You wouldn't believe how many people actually do that. There's a story I like to tell of a friend of mine. He put that on the bottom of his letter. Hey, if you don't want to sell your property now, keep this letter for future reference in case circumstances change. And so what happened was he got a call a couple of years later from a family that said, Hey, you sent a letter to our mom's. You just ceased. And are you still interested in her house? And he's like, Well, I think so, yeah. Tell me a little bit about what happened. I'm sorry about your loss, whatever. And they said, Well, our mom kept a folder called House she kept in her filing cabinet. She kept your letter from 2 or 3 years ago, and we were just going through all of her paperwork. And your letter says, Hey, if you want to sell your house, call me. I'd like to buy it. And so we want to know if you want to still buy the house. We said, Well, tell me more about it. So he met with them, got it under contract. It was a property that needed a ton of work. It had a ton of deferred maintenance. There was a bunch of stuff in the property. So he had to go and buy it, clean it all up, repair it and fix it, sell it. And he made a ton of money on that deal, all because he sent the seller a letter and said, Hey, if you don't want to sell it now, just keep this for future reference. The lady kept it. So this is why I love direct mail. I send direct mail. A lot of direct mail because it's something that, you know, your competition's just not doing it and your competition is just not doing it. And most people that are doing direct mail, they're not consistent with it. So the way that direct mail works is you've got to be consistently doing it, put it on a schedule, map out your schedule for the next six months. You need to be committed to sending out direct mail every single week, and you've got to get somebody else to do it for you. And in spite of you, this is why I love doing it. Our freedom Soft. I can schedule out all my direct mail. I can get my list through Freedom Soft. I can schedule out my direct mail. I can skip trace. I can cold call, I can do texting. I can just market to them.

Joe:   So the other reason I love direct mail, besides the fact that competition's not doing it anymore, they're not consistently doing it anymore. But it's a great way. It's the best way to send out offers. So when I talk to sellers, I'm never on the phone longer than 3 to 5 minutes. And so I tell them, Hey, listen, I love to send you an offer. Let me put together some numbers so I'll get back to you. Then I schedule another time to talk to them. And I already got a ballpark figure of where they're at. Most of the time, you know, they want. They're here and I'm down here. But I just say, listen, I'll send you an offer. You can look at it. But when I send them the offer, this is really, really important. You want to send it by physical mail in addition to text and email and fax and smoke signals and carrier pigeons and Fedex, whatever you want to do, like you want to send the offers. And then you send these offers every 30 days you continually follow up. So it'd be good, wouldn't it? Helps will be helpful, don't you think? If you had a system where you could just click a button and it sends out the mail consistently, regularly over time. So whether the is freedom soft or, you know, whatever, like this is really, really critical and important that you do because when the seller gets your offer, some people just email their offers. Well, the problem with that is it gets lost in spam. They might look at it their business, say, I'll look at it later, and then it gets buried in their inbox. But with direct mail, at least they're opening it up like True's not going to open up this letter. Like, you have no idea what this is. Looks like a bill. I'm better open it. Right. Well, they might open it over the circular file, but they're going to open it. They're going to read it. And so they may keep it for later, whatever, but they may just put it in their junk drawer. But then a couple of months later, they keep on getting your letters, They keep on getting your postcard. You're like, Now, that guy must really want my property I'm going to look at. Or three months later, they've gotten your third postcard, your third letter, your third offer. Six months later. They must really want my property, right? Or they're talking to a neighbor or they're talking to their wife and they're like, Yeah, you know what? We just need to get rid of this thing. They call some realtors. Realtors, you know, are telling them, Hey, you're not going to be able to sell this as quickly as you thought for the price that you wanted. We're going to need to like or they try to listen. It doesn't sell. After three months, they pull out your letter because nobody else is sending the direct mail. Nobody's sending offers over and over and over and over again to the seller. And they're going to think of you. They're going to call you. They say, You know what? You're the only one who's been following up with me. You must really want my property. I'm ready to sell. Let's talk.

Joe:   That's the power of direct mail. Your competition's not doing it. If you're consistently doing it, you're going to stand out above your competition. So you've got to be committed to this for the long haul. You've got to be willing to do it as long as possible, as consistently as possible. Don't just get a list and mail them once. You've got to mail that list 3 or 4 times. And if you're overwhelmed by that, if you're thinking, now that's going to cost a lot of money, that's what marketing is, man. You spend a lot of money on marketing, but you make a lot of money. I look at our stats. I know our stats really, really well. I know what our average response rate is per direct mail piece. I know how much it cost to get a lead. I know what our revenue per lead is and I can't make any promises or guarantees, but I just know our numbers. For example, in one county in southwest Missouri, we sent 2700 postcards. We got six deals under contract. We've already flipped two of them, three of them, and we've made about 20 plus 22. Those three, we only made three grand on one of them. 225 $45,000 approximately in profits from 2700 postcards that were yellow postcards. I don't kind of like this one but without the into cash banner there. So it's just a machine and we know okay we got to send this number of postcards to get this many responses to make this many offers to make this amount of money. And it's just pretty cool when you can play that game and consistently do deals, but you've got to be committed to it, to consistent marketing. All right. So if you want this direct mail swipe, file this, go to simple land kit.com. I put that right here below this video also in the description, simple land kit.com and get all of my direct mail swipe file for free. All right If you like this video, give me a thumbs up. Let me know what you think. Appreciate you very much. Subscribe to my channel. What's your favorite direct mail piece? What do you like to send out? Have you ever sent direct mail before? And if maybe it didn't work for you or did it work for you? I'd really love to hear from you. And I look at all the comments. I respond to them. I appreciate you guys.