How to choose the right real estate mailing service

As you may know, real estate direct mail—and particularly real estate newsletters (such as farming newsletters)—is a proven way to generate leads. In fact, a monthly geo farming newsletter is a must if you want to dominate a geographic farm. The same is true of maximizing referrals from past clients.

However, to be successful with this tactic, you must work with the right real estate mailing service—ideally, a real estate direct mail company that takes the time to understand your goals and works to help achieve them.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at the three general options you have for real estate mailing services.

1. Print and mail shops

A print and mail shop, also known as a lettershop, is a printing company that offers mailing services. The capabilities vary from one company to another, but essentially these shops will print and mail your marketing pieces for you. Often, you’ll need to give them your postcard or newsletter in a ready-to-print format, along with a list of recipient names and addresses.

Although print shops can definitely save you time, this type of real estate mailing service is distinguished by what they do not do for you

They won’t offer you marketing advice. (They might not even specialize in real estate marketing!) They won’t give you tools to manage your database. They won’t write and design your real estate newsletter.

They just print and mail.

2. Real estate newsletter companies

A real estate mailing service that offers ready-to-go newsletters is a step up from a lettershop. In addition to printing and mailing, they also provide the real estate newsletter—in most cases, already written and designed.

Using this type of real estate mailing service, you’re at least getting your newsletter into the hands of your geographic farm residents, prospects, and past clients.

However, as effective as real estate direct mail is, it’s only one component of your real estate marketing. What you want is your real estate newsletters working as part of a comprehensive real estate marketing system, which should also include real estate CRM, email marketing, social media (including blog posts), and more.

Most real estate mailing companies don’t provide that.

3. Real estate marketing companies (who are experts at direct mail)

This is a real estate mailing service that provides you with the complete solution: a real estate marketing system that includes all the components you need, whether your goal is to:

• build your brand in a real estate geographic farm,
• convert more prospects, and
• generate more real estate client referrals.

When you have a done-for-you system with all the components working together — direct mail, email marketing, social media, lead-generating website, and more — you save time and get significantly better results.

So those are your three options in real estate mailing services.

What’s your best choice?

In our decades of experience working with thousands of agents, we’ve learned that those with a complete real estate marketing system — one that includes direct mail newsletters — tend to generate more leads and referrals over time.