Gavin:  Hey, guys, welcome to the REI Network podcast with me. Gavin Timms. Hey, guys, how are you doing? Welcome back to the REI Network podcast with me, Gavin Timms. Today I am excited we are going to be talking about direct mail and why direct mail is definitely not dead and why you need to be sending it right now. OK, I’m going to be bringing him over. Ryan Dixon is going to be joining me today, a good friend of mine. Ryan, how are you doing?

Ryan:  Hey, what’s up, Gavin? How are you?

Gavin:  I’m good, buddy. I’m good. I appreciate you coming on. I thought it was super important to get you on. Obviously, I’ve just done a pretty large mail piece with you. Probably about four weeks ago. We’re on a cycle three months. We’re getting a great response, right? And I hear about direct mail being dead, and I actually think people need to get right back in to it right now before the Texans start, before people get stopped, cold calling or whatever is going to happen with that get on before everyone else gets on. You have to sometimes pivot in this business, beat people to the punch and actually think ahead, stay ahead of the game, you know, and that’s kind of what I was trying to do. You know, our response has been, it’s been good. So I want to dove into you just before we get going, though, guys, we have a couple of things we want to give away. We’re going to be telling you right now, not at the end of the show. We don’t want you to wait because it’s going to be a limited spots for this, so you will watch it. And there’s a few things that we want just to give you here. So Ryan runs all my mail and you have the opportunity to actually schedule a call with him today, OK? And he can analyze your market. We’re going to be talking about how he does that in today’s session, looking at what mail pieces are working, the size that you should send should you be put in, you know, your your name and your company and your website is going to cover all that with you on a personal one to one call, just like he did with me when he set me up. And you’re going to get discounts because you’re watching this episode. So there’s a couple of things we’re going to give you here. You can text Gavin to three one four four five eight six zero four one that is three one four four five eight six zero four one. Text the word Gavin and you can schedule a call or you can go to email [email protected] And use the code Gavin. And if any of that doesn’t work, just say when you get on the phone, you listen to this episode because I want to make sure that you get the special pricing, the discount, the discount that we’re going to be, we’re going to be giving you now. Why am I doing that is because I wanted you as the listeners to get back kind of what’s been working for me. Again, I’m very big on saying, if you’ve been listening to me, what works and what doesn’t the good, the bad in my business. And again, I’m trying to hit and stay ahead of the curve. So we’re going to be talking about that just won’t throw that out. We’re going to be talking about it again at the end. So, Ryan, how are you?

Ryan:  Oh, I’m great, man. I’m fantastic. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. I always enjoy it.

Gavin:  Yeah, no, I appreciate it. So obviously you you’re an investor as well. I want everyone to know that you’re not just with a company here that’s just selling direct mail to people. You’re actually an active investor. You’re actually doing deals, which is huge, right? Because a lot of people, a lot of companies have never bought a house selling a house so than anything. So when you’re actually having these conversations, you’re coming from a place of knowledge in our industry right side. Give us a bit of background on you. Sure. Let’s let’s go from there.

Ryan:  All right. So let’s see. I’ve been doing real estate for about 15 years now, and I and I started, I owned, I owned liquor stores here in the St. Louis market and I hated it. It was awful and it just wasn’t the business for me. And a lot of a lot of real estate people actually kind of started businesses that just are just awful for them. And then they and they always know in the back of their mind, and I just need to end up in real estate. That’s where I need to go. And you know, I had bought coaching before and it just and I started doing deals and I had too many balls in the air, just like a lot of entrepreneurs do. Of course, I was dropping them all around every corner and ultimately I did. A few did a few deals discovered wholesaling said, OK, you know, this is for me and I was a horrible fix and flipper. I still, I don’t do, I don’t do many fix and flips. I do what I’m good at. And so I was using mail to get deals and I was falling on my face over and over again. You’re guessing, right? You’re going, all right. This looks nice. I like this, but you know, it’s crazy as I said this and I like this through the mail, but they don’t like it. What’s going on? So you really you have to do a lot of guessing, you know, a long time ago you were just trying, throwing it out there, seeing how it was going. Response rates were higher then because there was less competition in the market, so you would still get deals. But but when you would fall on something that was amazing, you were like, Wow, you could just you could do really well and do a bunch of deals. And that’s what really got me into it, kind of selling out of my liquor stores. And this was the company that I used for my direct mail here locally. And so I came here and ended up meeting the president of the company. We. Had a relationship, and then here you go here, I’ve been here now. I guess we’re going on about five years and I’ve got thousands of clients across the United States, and I jumped at the opportunity to continue my real estate business, but also make relationships with real estate investors all around the United States. So it was really it was a dream job for me. I never thought that really, that’s what I wanted to do is, you know, get a job and to teach people how to do direct mail. But it was it was a really great concept that the president of the company was like, You know, I want to teach people how to do it really, really well. And I have this theory that if we help people get deals, they’ll stay with us longer. And you can go to all these real estate events and you can meet some of the best people in the industry. And you can rub elbows with the biggest real estate investors in the United States and just show people how to do mail. And at the same time, you can, you know, you can still focus on your real estate business. And so that’s how I that’s how I got here and still doing deals today. And now the difference is that we that now I have so many tools at my disposal. We have five direct marketing coaches here. I’ll I’ll circle back around to that. But that’s what I am a direct marketing coach and we track our results with the technology that we’ve created all across the United States. And so we solve the problem that I used to have, which was the guessing so. So what we do is we look at an area and we go, This is what’s working or this or this. Don’t go over here. Don’t do this right. But but right here, this is the sweet spot. Here’s what’s working. And by the way, here’s the list that are working. By the way, here’s the cadence you should use. Here’s how many pieces it takes to get a deal. If I knew this stuff back in the day, I would have never started it 100 pieces right? And figured out, Oh, that’s way too low. I can’t get a deal like that. I’m just burning my money left and right. So it would have saved me a lot of time and money, and that’s our goal.

Gavin:  No, that’s great. So, so literally, you know, from what you didn’t have to what you have now, which is what you’ve helped me with and some of even my clients that you’re working with, you’re working with a few people in my group as well that are getting great results is that you’re actually analyzing the market, their individual market that they’re in, looking at what actually works, not from your. You’re just you’re just looking out of the ad, but you actually have data that you back up with this like actually other people’s. Not that well, kind of that response rates, but from the from the mass right. You never share anyone else’s details, right? Well, you can also make sure people are aware of that, but you can actually look and go this, you know, the small purchase. Call it again, all the media and what you do. The tri fold letter, which I’ve never seen and one of my clients got crazy results when that first came out. And then you have to learn as well. Not only that, once it’s working, it becomes then not to work, so you have to again change again. So that’s what’s unique about this and about this opportunity of people being able to do again, reach out and have a free call. All right. With a direct mail coach, that’s going to be able to analyze that. But also, hey, what we’re doing right now, the medium post card, right? And we may have to change some response rates drop. We may have to pivot and change, and we’re getting we’re still learning. So we have calls coming in, but we’re in about that no point seven percent range. Right now, and a lot of people in our industry are getting less than half a percent. And so, yeah, so so we’re still pretty early into doing this. But we have committed to three months and we’re doing about eighteen thousand mailers of that we committed to. So we’re giving it a real go and I’m excited. So when people do a call with you, right, kind of what what are the things that you ask in and kind of go in and talking about with them?

Ryan:  Yeah. So in addition to everything we just said, it’s really important that they figure out your strategy, right? Because because when you when you talk to me and you say, OK, well, I’m doing creative finance, I’m doing subject is I’m doing wholesale deals, hotel deals, right? And there’s all these different things in the fact that we have people here that direct marketing coaches and I would be yours. If you’re watching this, I’m your direct marketing coach. But we have four or five others that that are that have knowledge on the industry and the different strategies. And the fact is is that, you know, you pull this differently for subject to that than you do, you know, for for a certain kind of wholesale situations, maybe low income and things like that. So, you know, initially, let me tell you a little bit about me, but let me learn about you and I really need to know what strategy you’re doing where you’re at. Are you in a saturated market? Are you on the outskirts of that saturated market? How many deals are you expecting a quarter, a month or a year and then really setting those expectations? Hey, here’s what I would. This is how many pieces I would expect in that market in order for you to meet your goals. And sometimes they’re like, That’s great. And then sometimes like, Well, that’s too much. How do we how do we grow to that? And and we go, OK, we live our lives one quarter at a time. So let’s get it. Let’s get a plan, right? Let’s take the next three months. Let’s get to that deal or two. Let’s take that money. Use the use the house profit rate to get to a deal a month or a deal every two months. And so I have a lot of clients that are starting out at their first deal. And then I’ve got a lot of clients that are that are in there, their third round of increasing or doubling how many deals they’re getting a month because mail is very, very scalable. You know, as much as much as kind of downplay that mail gets, it’s one of the most scalable marketing channels that you can use if you’re getting a deal. Every 2000 pieces will then send 2000 pieces a week and get four deals a month. It really works that way. We just need the data. We just need the data. So we need it. We need to look geographically. It’s your area. So really, that’s kind of the initial conversation. Let me learn about you. Let’s tell you how many pieces it’s going to take to get a deal. And then we go in and we look at our recommendations, usually a one hour Zoom call after an introductory meeting, and we actually analyze your entire market. So we go in and we go, OK, here’s the pieces. I see work, and here’s the kind of list I would pull. If you want to pull them, that’s fine if you want to. If you want me to pull on, that’s fine. Either way, I’m going to help. I’m going to talk about filters that I that I feel are being used that are successful. Here are some no no’s. Here’s some huge pitfalls don’t fall into those holes, right? So we give you some warnings. And then after we analyze that, we build the whole quarter long campaign and we guide. Here’s what it would be, and you don’t have to pay for it all at once. You can pay by Montego Bay by week. You can figure it out. You know, we make we make it really easy to get in the game using mail. And so then now you feel comfortable. We’ve got a picture. We know what we’re going to send. We have an idea of what to expect on phone calls. We have an idea of how many deals we expect out of the campaign. And then when you’re ready, we pull the trigger, then it doesn’t end there. Then there’s the pivots down the road, right? So some time in, let’s say, the next two campaigns, you know, something stops working or I see something in the market that just goes killer. Well, that’s why you have a direct marketing coach. You get a call from me and I go, Listen, you know what’s happening in your area right now is we’re seeing this, this mouthpiece just do killer. And it was it was off our radar. And now it’s it’s it needs to be used, so we may pivot into that or we may pivot away from something. But you set meetings with me at that same. You already put it out. But [email protected]. That’s where you go to set a meeting with me, and you can take a 15 minute, 30 minute, one hour meeting. I’ve got them all over the board. Some people just want a strategy discussion. Some people want to talk macro about what’s going on in their market. That’s OK, too. I love this stuff. That’s why I’m here. So set a meeting and then we talk about the amount of calls you’ve got coming in, how many deals you’re working on, what’s going right, what’s going wrong. And then we pivot. So literally, I’m walking you through all of your marketing. Well, at least the direct mail side and the left side, and you’ve got you’ve got a partner and your response rate and the whole idea.

Gavin:  That’s great. And everyone that knows me. Obviously, my own, you know, I’ve told you my number one is cold calling, right? And I’ve always been a proactive marketer rather than a reactive marketer. I like to control, you know, my lead flow, but I also understand where we’re at with text messaging right now. Now it still is. There’s ways around people still do, and it’s still working very well. Who is going to be is going to get hard right and I think he’s going to get easier. So green. That’s why I’ve chosen to go. Alright, let’s go all in and then people go out on your teaching this stuff. Because I teach marketing. I teach obviously ads a lot deals from the sales side and actually get deals closed. Well, here’s the thing I bought up and because I needed someone that knew response rate, I could pick a postcard. I can send it out, I can pull a list, I can do all that. But I wanted that knowledge and I wanted that data that you provide. The Free says, Well, no, you don’t want to send that because I was saying like, no point to response rate. This card was saying no point eight. Let’s do that one. So that in an a naught point, five response rate over thousands of mailers is a lot of calls that you’re not getting right, which is huge now. I want to cover something real quick because I know this is what people are thinking, right? So I’m going to hit. It is. Well, hold on. If you’ve got all the clients mailing in the same area as me using the same postcard as me. How does that work?

Ryan:  Oh, it’s yeah, great question. And it’s not the answer you’d think that it is. The fact is, is that you got to think of it more like a rising tide raises all ships. And the thing is that we’re a big area, you know, print company. We’re probably the largest already print house in the nation at this point, but we’re still a small percentage of your investors in the market. Let’s face it, you know, you’ve got a lot of new people coming in there in it just long enough to ruin your response rates, right? And so you have to look at it as you know. Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got a few people in your market doing the right thing, getting deals. So, you know, I’ve got plenty of people that in our first meeting, they’ll go, Yeah, that’s fine, but I want to do something different. I want to do something that we don’t know if it works. I want to do something where we don’t know the response rate. I just want to get out there and guess and I go, Fine, we can do that. I work for you. But it’s my job to set expectations and I’ll tell you that’s going to be an expensive route. And that’s usually not why people talk to me, right? They generally want to get deals right out the gate, right? We want to we want to get them in the first couple of months, maybe three months. That’s why that’s what we want to do, especially if you’re just beginning in the space. And so, so ultimately, if you’re sending something that’s not working, you’re testing it. Now, if four or five people or even 10 people in. Your market are sending the right stuff and they’re all getting deals, there’s enough deals to go around. Usually, I mean, unless you’re in a really, really, really small market, but when we’re talking in places like Atlanta and L.A. and Vegas and places like that, I mean, look, you just want to send what works. You don’t you don’t want to try to go out there and reinvent the wheel. And that’s why people like you and the coaches and us, we all get together and we talk about what’s working because there’s enough to go around, right? It’s that it’s that mentality that you don’t want to have the scarcity and then go in and and go, Hey, you know, I don’t know what’s working. Let’s just start. Let’s just start testing stuff. It’s very expensive and most people don’t survive it. And so the thing is, we have plenty of plenty of test and markets that are even medium sized where we’ll have 10 or 15 people in the same market sending around the same pieces of mail. Keep in mind, when people pull lists, I got different beds, I wanted different bars. I’ve got a different strategy. I want this zip code. Not that zip code. Usually, lists are somewhat different to where you’re not just right on top of your competition, but we have plenty of tests that show that when everyone in the area kind of start not everyone, but let’s say, you know, 10 or 15 really good investors in the area start sending the right thing. When you start doing it, you know it’s funny. You’ll get a phone call and they’ll say, Hey, you’ve e-mailed me a few times and I didn’t get to call you. But but now I’m calling, you’re thinking to yourself, self. Isn’t this the first drop that I get to this area?

Gavin:  It’s happening to us right now.

Ryan:  Yeah, right. I mean, you’re piggybacking on the response of good investors, by the way. Usually, these are the most ethical investors. These are the ones giving us a good name. These are the ones that you want to work with, right? So. So ultimately leaving everybody else in the dust, and that’s really what you want to do and you want to make money. So. So don’t get in and try to reinvent the wheel. We see that over and over and over again.

Gavin:  Yeah, you’re trying to cut that learning curve down which what most people want and also you’re exactly right. I’ll first drop now mails of any mailed niche lists like the full 500 pieces, and I’ve never done it to the list that we pulled before. And and there’s two takeaways here for everybody. No one is yet. When they call, we’ve mailed them four or five times when we haven’t, we’ve never mailed it once. Right. And they they’re adamant that it’s yours. And sometimes that’s take me off the list. Sometimes that’s actually what you said in a positive way going to. This is the first one I’ve received. I think now might be ready to sell. And you just you roll with it right away.

Ryan:  Yeah, and that’s built in repetition. You don’t even have to spend the money for that. Thank you, competition. That’s great. You just you just did my job for me. Yeah.

Gavin:  And I’m sure that getting it back right. You know that they’re getting it back. But that’s, you know, super important to understand the, you know, that knock on effect that you get because they don’t even know, like they won’t even look at the names different right now. Lisa and Debra and Paul, I didn’t even come into play. They just call the name right.

Ryan:  Right. Your mail piece becomes your brand now. Your mail piece really becomes your brand and people have to. Our attention spans are way too short now. You know, when you sit in the same piece and you’ve got repetition, they pick up that piece and they go, Oh, there he is again. Right. And that’s it, right? They don’t they don’t really know too much more. They’re not turning it on the back, saying if they’re if their return address is the same and all of that, that’s not happening. That’s why succession letters don’t work as well anymore, right? Saying mentioning the first letter and then and then going and you got the third draft going, well, you still haven’t answered me from two letters back. I mean, in a succession seven piece strip, you may they may only get one of those pieces or two. They may have thrown the rest away. But you know, life is too fast now. And so you really want that repetition, the same thing in the pieces that work so they can go, Oh, there he is again, right? Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And I’m not going to lie like I used to use direct mail years and years ago when it was like super high response rate. And again, I’m cold call, and that’s my main thing. But I’m dabbling back in direct mail again and it is nice when people are calling you guys, regardless of the the feeling of whether it’s take me off the list or whether it’s a positive again because you’re going to have both of them. But it is nice when the phones ring in and you’re not jet. After years of just pounding the phone leads, which you know again, it’s still my number one thing. But when people are calling us now, it’s like it’s much better. I think you have a lot of people that are wanting to break into the game that have jobs. And if you have a job, if you have a nine to five and you know you especially, you have a job where your bet involves a phone and then you get home and you go, Okay, now all I got to do is call a couple hundred people right to be on track for my goal. Let’s face it, once in a while, you’re just like, not today, just not today. And so mail gives you that, that ability to go, All right. Well, if I’m if I’m going to take, you know, December off on the phone, if I send X amount of pieces of mail, at least I can get X amount of phone calls. And if I get X amount of phone calls, I should get X amount of deals. And so you can you can choose right when to turn that on and turn that off. And if you’re just going through a tough spot and you can’t pick up that phone and you can’t cold call a band. And some people, let’s face it, they just don’t have a good phone presence, if you’re finding out that you just don’t have a good phone presence is a hard thing to fix. It’s a really tough thing to fix. And if you’re not getting that kind of feedback, if you don’t know how to make a friend on the phone and it’s just not in your nature and it’s just not in your in your tone, right? And it’s really hard to fix and you’re struggling with it. We’ll call you get inbound leads, right? Get inbound leads. It costs money, more money than sitting down and spending a labor and picking up the phone. But ultimately, the lead is a little bit more motivated when they’re motivated, right? It could be take me off the list, but they they went through a lot, right? They looked at that mail piece because there’s a need here. I want to know what he has to say. OK, now I’m going to call them. They went through a bunch. Yeah.

Gavin:  And what was amazing, obviously you’ve probably heard of and people lesson of the love languages, right? I believe that everyone has a marketing language, right? Meaning what’s been amazing to this, Ryan, is I cannot tell you the lessons I gave you how many times I’ve called in Texas list over the last four or five years. I just don’t know. It’s ridiculous. And what’s amazing is the leads that we have come in, we have not gotten the database for that. We’ve called called old text. These are different leads because the way that people take on the market in pieces, lots of me, it could come up on my phone as spam on my phone like spam call. I’m at my nature. I will answer the phone, right? You text me, I’m not responding. You send me a mail piece. I’m not calling. Then on the flip side, people will never answer the phone. People will only text you back. And then obviously the third thing they won’t do any and then what? They’ll call on a mailer. And that’s why I think doing multiple things and tracking your numbers. And that’s what’s been like a big eye opener for me is I’m like, I got a load of duplicates doing this and we literally have. And I’m like, Wow, it’s crazy. Yeah.

Ryan:  I mean, these there are mail people out there. That’s it. They’re email people. There’s texting people, they live within silos and, you know, and that’s the way it’ll always be. And so you’re leaving money on the table if you’re not using direct mail. The question is, does it fit in your, you know, does it fit in your plan? And you know, if it does, then figure out, at least figure out the dangerous stuff in your market, figure out the danger stuff. That’s why we’re here. And so you set a meeting and then we kind of go over there and then you got the whole picture and then, you know, yeah, that list that you’ve called called, you can send email. And it’s just like, I thought this list was tapped. It’s not, you know, they they are. There’s mail people out there.

Gavin:  Sure, for sure. Well, that’s awesome. That’s amazing. So here it is, guys. One more time. Remember free strategy session to look at your market and you’re going to get a big discount. You can text. Just text my name Gavin to three one four four five eight six zero four one. Ryan will respond with a calendar invite for you to book the session, or you can go to email him at [email protected]. Use the code Gavin and you can schedule that one of them and get on it right now. And it’s just worth a phone call. If you have 15 minutes of your life that you can dedicate to just see and what’s going on in your market, you don’t even have to commit. This is not like it’s going to cost you anything. This is 100 percent free to at least get some knowledge to say, Hey, this is what we should doing in this market, and I think you’re going to be impressed. So I suggest everyone go over there and do that. Ryan, anything else before we finish up here? Yeah.

Ryan:  You know, jump over to the site. REIprintmail.com and take a look. And even better, you know, we’re one of the only one of the fewest marketing companies in in the real estate industry. I don’t know why this is a thing, but we, you know, we allow reviews on our on our Google page. So if you go to Google and you type in REI Print Mail and you and you go to our reviews, hundreds of reviews, I think we’re up to now. And the fact is is there are stories on there. Everybody loves stories. So you’ll see heavy hitters on there. You’ll see a bunch of really big investors, you’ll see a bunch of really small investors and they’re going to give you stories about how we help them. And so it’s so important if you’re if you’re not sure you just want to learn a little bit more, go over to our reviews and just scroll through and take a read. It’s a fun time.

Gavin:  Yeah, awesome. Well, I appreciate you. OK. Thank you for coming on. I think people are going to get a lot of knowledge and gain from this. And guys, I just want to say as well that if you’re worried like, Well, what do I do with that direct mail? What do I say to them? Or how do I take it down? What systems do I use? Make sure you reach out. If you’re interested in working with me, you can. You can reach out. Email me Support Networks, DM me on social media, and we can definitely talk about that. And before you go, if you’re listening to us on the podcast or you’re watching on YouTube, make sure you give us a like and subscribe. Drop a comment as well if you have any questions on this. And if not, go over now. Head over to get your get your call scheduled. And I believe that you’re going to be thanking me later. Ryan, appreciate your time, I want to say thank. Now bye bye.