Direct Mail

Everyone remembers seeing commercials for their favorite cereal brands run between their favorite Saturday morning cartoons. Cheerios, Corn Flakes, Wheaties, Froot Loops! Each advertisement would feature brightly-colored cartoon characters and children enjoying a hearty bowl of their favorite oats. At the end, the camera would zoom out to a carefully composed image full of your favorite breakfast foods -- a big glass of milk, bananas, buttered toast, orange juice, the works! And inevitably, the narrator would say, “All a part of this nutritious breakfast!” Although the kids were only interested in the cereal, the parents knew their kids couldn’t get all of the nutrition they needed from a simple bowl of Captain Crunch. They knew their children needed fruit, milk, and whole wheat toast along with their cereal to get all their necessary vitamins and minerals. Just as cereal is just one -- very delicious, and important -- part of the nutritious breakfast, so is direct mail just o...

Let’s think about this for a second. How many times do you scroll through your Facebook feed or your Instagram feed and purposely scroll quickly past the ads? How many times do you click on a video on Facebook, only to realize it’s suddenly being interrupted by an advertisement -- in the middle of a 30 second video! -- and immediately exit out. You’re thinking, “The video isn’t worth sitting through an ad...next!” If you’re thinking this, imagine how many others are feeling the same way. Our social media feeds, popular websites, search engines...they are flooded with ads, so we have quickly conditioned ourselves to ignore them. Digital marketing is not as effective as it once was. Let’s look at it this another way: Diamonds are one of the most common minerals on the planet.  A large majority of diamonds are owned by a small number of people who control the scarcity in the marketplace. Because fewer people have access to diamonds, their value increases. If suddenly you c...

The first hurdle to jump for many getting into direct mail farming is deciding what to place on real estate post cards. This can pose a challenge for real estate agents that have not utilized direct mail before; it can be overwhelming trying to choose from so many design styles and content options. One common idea for graphics and text on the front of a card that we at Farming Cards like are all your sales in a particular sub division. For example, if you are already dominating a farm in your community, an effective, attractive graphic might be a map of the community and small pins representing each property you’ve listed and sold there. A visual indicator of your success and the success you have brought others.  But what if you’re a newer agent? Even if you’ve already started to find success, you might not have the track record needed to create a compelling image in this way. If this is the case, one idea might be to have a map of the area and pins for...

A common question that we get at Farming Cards is: “How many postcards or mail pieces should I be sending?” It’s an important question to ask if you are trying to break into a new farm and we have some answers.  For new farms, we recommend sending 3 pieces of mail per month for the first 4 months to get your foot in the door and generate name recognition. This could be a combination of Just Listed cards, Just Sold cards, or cards with any market updates. If there are holidays around the times you are sending these cards, you may want to send timely holiday material to your farm area. You can create a quarterly newsletter with market facts and relevant details about your business that you have not included on other cards. There are many creative ways for you to get your foot in the door in this opening marketing period.  At this point, you will have sent 12 pieces of mail demonstrating your strengths and the activity in your market. You want to e...

If you were to ask people what they valued more, either consistency or creativity, you might find that people would answer creativity. In geographic farming, however, consistency matters much more than creativity. Creativity is a bit overrated. It is not necessarily the most elaborate marketing piece that will ultimately grab the eye of the customer; it’s the same message, delivered consistently, over an extended period that will help in your marketing. For example, many agents that we work with spend hours and hours, or maybe even days, trying to design the “perfect marketing piece” only to find that no such thing exists. The real “perfect” marketing piece is the comprehensive strategy and series of materials that are sent consistently over time to the same group of people.   We are not suggesting that efficient, good-looking marketing materials are not important - They are. No one wants to receive an ugly mess of a postcard. We just know that it doe...