A Yellow Letter is a highly regarded marketing choice used by realtors, investors and brokers. They use the yellow letter format because of the high numbers of people that open the envelope and the actual response rate from the letter. Yellow letters are effective in getting a response from homeowners because the addresses on the envelopes are handwritten; there is a first class stamp on the piece; it doesn’t look like junk mail and most important, the letter itself is handwritten, or looks that way. The key to any kind of meaningful success with direct mail is consistent and persistent mailings. You must mail to each target more than once with multiple letters over a period of time and the results will consistently be deals.

The yellow letter is designed to gain attention. It’s smaller than most pieces of mail, not shaped like a bill, and even looks like an invitation! Because the response rate is so large, you can spend the same amount of money as you would in other parts of your marketing, but get many more leads in your business. The return address on the envelope should match the target area of the list. The message inside the envelope should be concise. It needs to be short enough, so the person receiving it will read it before they lose interest. Give enough information to elicit a response, but not so much that hey stop reading it.

Dear X, I’d like to buy your house at 123 Main St. Please call me. Sincerely, Nick 888-555-1212

OR

Dear XXX,

I was driving around the other day with my son, John, and saw your property at

XXX in Tanville. I’m not sure what the situation is with the house, but I want to BUY it – with Cash. If you are thinking of holding on to it, that’s fine, but I will be buying very soon so if you would like to sell, Call Me

The phone number in the letter should be local to the target area. If your mailing list is targeting people who have properties in a specific area, make sure the phone number on the letter is an area code a person who owns property in that area is likely to recognize. A phone number with an area code the recipient doesn’t recognize will increase skepticism, which can impact the response rate.

With each mailing that you send out, you will need to do some tracking and analyzing. Make a chart and answer these questions each time and it will show a pattern and will help you improve your response rate with each new mailing.

How many letters are you sending out? You need to send out at least 20 letters per day, but keep in mind that the more you send out the better your results will be.

How often do you send them? If you’re not consistently sending them out 4-5 days per week, you’ll get less than desirable results. The intervals could be something like this:

- First Mailing

- Second Mailing - 30 days after initial

- Third Mailing - 45 days after second mailing

- Fourth Mailing - 30 days after third mailing

- Fifth Mailing and On - 30 days after fourth mailing

How long have you been consistently mailing your letters? You must send your letters for at least three to six months. Statistics show that the bulk of deals come at the 4th mailing and beyond.

How many phone calls are you receiving? If you’re not receiving any calls, it’s time to look at what you’re writing on the letters and who you are sending them to.

How many people are you actually talking to? Answer the phone and return messages.You’ll see better success if you talk to the sellers on their time, and their time is when they are calling you. Answer the phone.

What are you saying to the people when you pick up the phone? Examine what you’re saying because you have to build a rapport with the people in order for them to trust you.You will need to ask them why they’re selling, what the seller wants from you, and how fast they will sell if you can give them what they want.

Yellow letters get the best results because you are sending them consistently. Keep doing it over and over until you start seeing results. Eventually, you will see phone calls and deals come in and you will be surprised from which batches of mailings they came from. Yellow letter direct mail takes time and patience and finally, success.

Everest Direct Mail and Marketing offers a yellow letters mail program that is customized to fit each clients’ needs and make every penny count. There are no limiting letter templates that bind you to just two or three content options – meaning no two mailers are alike and your letters are exclusive and one of a kind. You have free reign on what you put in your letter, including the type of handwritten font, the color and size of the font, and whatever content and merge fields you’d like to include. This way, you can be sure your yellow letter is unique and will stand out from any other yellow letter mailer. We use real yellow lined and white lined memo paper, with blue lines and red margins, just like the notepad paper you’ll find in the stores. It’s as if you ripped a page right out of a memo pad, wrote a real letter, and sent it personally to the client yourself! The lightweight look and feel is sure to catch potential clients’ attention because of the authenticity of the paper quality. We never cut corners by simply printing lines on regular copy paper or using fake memo paper. These yellow letters can be stuffed into a multitude of different colored envelopes, also boasting legitimate handwritten or chaos font for the return and recipient addresses, optimizing the chance for open rates and a high return on your investment.