Real Estate Postcard Companies - Keeping 'em Honest
It always shocks me how real estate postcard companies can make such broad generalizations, as they do when they claim that "repetition equals success." Through their marketing materials and websites, these postcard companies will tell real estate agents that repeated mailings are the key to postcard marketing success.
In truth (and I'm speaking from years of experience here), repetition only works when you start with an effective real estate postcard strategy. Or to state it conversely, a weak postcard strategy repeated many times is still a weak strategy.
I wasn't born yesterday, and I realize that these real estate postcard companies need agents to conduct repeat mailings in order to survive as a business. But I don't think that telling half-truths is the way to go about it. So as long as they continue make such inaccurate generalizations about postcard marketing, I will be here to call them on it.
Here's the bottom line. If a real estate agent mails a postcard to a large area -- let's say to a thousand or more people -- but he or she does not get a single response from that mailing, then the mailing should not be repeated. It should be chalked up as a postcard marketing failure, and the agent should step back and reevaluate the postcard marketing strategy to see where it went wrong.
Now let's assume that those 1,000 real estate postcards cost around 60 centers per card. That agent is out $600, but he or she has nothing to show for it? Not even a single response? Come on ... why would you repeat such a mailing?
In the "real world" of direct marketing (where direct marketing firms and creative agencies are actually held accountable), such a dismal failure would normally result in somebody being fired. For example, if a Fortune-100 company paid some marketing firm big bucks to send a direct-response piece to a list of 1,000 prospective customers, but that mailing produced zero results ... the marketing firm would be fired!
So why should real estate agents have lower expectations? The answer is that they should not. They should hold real estate postcard marketing companies to the same standards a Fortune-100 company would set, especially if that postcard company goes on and on about how repetition equals success.
In real estate postcard marketing -- and with direct marketing in general -- repetition does not always equal success. Repetition only equals success when you start with a successful act and then repeat that act. If you start with a failure and repeat it, repetition is only going to equal waste, frustration and disappointment.
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