What To Include (Or Not Include) In Your Mailer

This is episode number 2190. Jill and I are talking about how to improve your land mailer response. Jill and I talked about this briefly right before the show. What she means by this topic is what to include or not include in your actual mailer, the piece of mail that you’re creating that’s going to go out to eight thousand, nine thousand, or ten thousand people.

I’m getting them. The mail comes through our office, and then the pertinent stuff hits my desk. This is why it’s important. I’m looking at some of these offers that people are sending. I get such a variety of offers. You better believe in all the neutral letters, whether they’re priced well or not. Some of it is about the price, but it’s even more important to me the physical thing I’m holding in my hands and what they put on it. I’m going to talk about that. I look at these and I go, “Who signs this? I don’t even know who you are.” We’ll talk about that.

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into a land-related topic by popular request.

Jordan wrote, “I took my first land call, which was exciting. It made everything feel real and serious. The caller was incredibly kind, even though she was reaching out to let me know she no longer owns the property. She and her late husband sold it back in 2023. I double-checked with the county records and confirmed the sale, but I was curious why she still received a letter from us.

I went back to the source, which was DataTree, and saw that she’s still listed as the owner there. Has anyone else run into this before? I know DataTree typically updates ownership regularly, so I’m wondering if this was a fluke or if some counties are hit or miss with updates. Also, is there any way to notify DataTree that their info is outdated? I appreciate any insight. Thanks.” I’m sure you saw my response.

I did not. Go ahead

Why Outdated Ownership Data Happens

Here’s the thing. We don’t know what county it is. Let me start with this. When documents come in and they’re recorded, and you get a date, a stamp, and all that good stuff on it sent back to you, it’s in their possession. Next, it goes to the treasurer. They approve it all, and it’s great, and then it gets into the database. Some counties are daily. Some counties are weekly. Some counties are monthly. Believe it or not, and I have spoken to these people, some counties are annually.

In the back end, they’ve got it. It’s done and it’s there. They do it every year at the end of the year. It all happens in the last two weeks of December. I don’t know who has to do that job, but I have talked to those counties. At the end of the year, they update all the records for the year that one time. It could be something as simple as that. Also, some of these counties are so remote. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there could be a physical aggregator that has to go out and capture this stuff, too.

You’re right.

They don’t have databases. They still have books, believe it or not. They’re not all a direct feed like LA County, Dallas County, and all the big counties. Those are all direct feeds. They’re all automated. Everything’s locked in. You can e-record a deed and all that. Some counties are still small. We only have one person in the office who helps the sheriff, and they’re the recorder. There are all these different hats that they wear. They’re not automated.

Companies like DataTree and CoreLogic are physical aggregators that have to go out and sit down. I don’t remember if it’s once a quarter or once a month. You probably remember. They physically update the stuff on their end. It could be something like that, too. My whole point was that it’s not worth calling them.

DataTree is 1 of 3 mainstream data aggregators nationwide. RealQuest is one, and they’re out of the business.

They’ve changed their name again, too.

I saw that. Black Knight is one. There are two huge players in the game. They are what’s called data aggregators. There are 3,144 counties with which they have some form of agreement. That’s all they are. DataTree is a data aggregator. They don’t generate this data. What Jill said is correct. Some of them are incredibly sophisticated, like Southern California. All this stuff was created in Irvine. That’s where all these companies are located. Those counties themselves are a direct, real-time feed.

There are all kinds of other ways that they get data to them. I know specifically in South Dakota and Arkansas, it’s a manual input scenario once a year. There’s no real way that I know of to find out which is which. It’s not where you can go onto DataTree and say, “How fresh is this data?” There used to be a way to find out. I’m not sure. I think it was with Black Knight.

One of the two before that we had. They would say when it was last refreshed.

Know this. They make it so pretty. DataTree makes the usability and your interface with that product so nice and simple that you believe it’s all real. The fact is, some of it’s antiquated.

Let me point out one more thing. Remember, this is Jordan’s first phone call. In about ten days, Jordan won’t have time to even think about calling DataTree because he’s going to be too busy working on deals.

Land doesn’t change hands very often. The chances of that happening on this in mailer again are very slim. Houses change hands. 20% of the houses in the entire country change hands every year. That’s a huge number. It spells a huge opportunity for all of us. Land is a much smaller percentage. The chances of you having issues with this are very slim. Our topic is how to improve your land mailer response.

Land rarely changes hands, unlike homes, 20% of which sell each year. That makes every land deal a rare opportunity—and every missed one even rarer. Share on X

Here’s what happens in our house. Jill gets the mail first for our companies and everything. She’s at the front lines. There are a lot of letters, not all the time. We own property all over the country. There are a lot of letters in there because they’re LLCs that we own. We get offers on them. She opens them, puts them in a neat little stack, and gets done with the rest of the mail. Once a week, this happens. Every once in a while, she comes over and says, “Can you freaking believe this? Look at this letter. These aren’t Land Academy members. They’re other people.” We have a good laugh about it. I said, “We should talk about it on the show.”

Three Essential Elements Every Mailer Should Have

Every month, I do the Land Academy Ladies group get-together. I’m preparing the content for the next one. I’m preparing the whole presentation to go in depth for the ladies on this, too, and show them examples. I have three things that you need to do on every one of your mailers before they go out, and be aware of. I see them and I’m like, “What the heck?”

Number one, change your About You part. We do that pretty much every time unless I’m doing a mailer where it’s a 20,000-unit mailer and I’m sending 3,000 at a time. For that batch, whatever that product type is or wherever that location is, I might tweak the letter a little bit. Maybe I’m hitting a bunch of farmers. Maybe I’m hitting a bunch of commercial property. Maybe I’m going for another product type. A lot of you in Land Academy are doing other product types.

I want you to not go to O2O, download the template, and run with it. I want you to make it yours. Even though there are things in there to put your name in there, I want you to make the About You you a little more. How long have you been in business? Have you been doing this for five years? A lot of you Land Academy people have been with us for 5 or 10 years. I want you to put that in there, like, “I am a ten-year land investor.”

That’s a good idea.

It could be little things like that that are going to personalize it. Let them know who you are. Change your page one, explaining you and what you’re doing for every batch and every property type. Number two, please always put in there your website, your email, your phone number, and your name. It cracks me up that people don’t have this stuff.

If it's worth doing, do it right. Share on X

I am getting single-page letters in the mail from people to buy a property that we have, and their name is not even on it, and their email is WeWantYourLand@gmail.com. Who the heck is WeWantYourLand? I have no other way to look them up. I would never do that. I’m going to argue that they’re not getting a good mail response. I feel bad for them because the planet’s going, “Why would I sign this? I don’t even know who you are. Your name’s not on here. Do you have a real company? It’s a Gmail account. This sounds like a scam. You want me to sign something with my phone number and whatever on it to whom? No way.” Make sure you have all that.

I want you to have a real website with a real email. It doesn’t cost that much, everyone. For under $500, you can go and buy a website and get somebody to build it out with a landing page, a little bit of About Us page, and a cute photograph of you. I’m not kidding. That’ll cover you for a year. You can buy a website for $10 and have it hosted on GoDaddy. Have that. You want an email that’s Support or your name, like Bob@BobWantsYourLand.com. It needs to be real. Don’t use non-personal contact information or zero contact information. An email is not a good enough response. It also comes down to pricing. Spend some time on that. Make it count, and go for it.

Common Mistakes That Damage Credibility

Many things or many speed bumps on the way to success are a sign of a personality issue. My dad had a saying when I was young. He said it to me a million times.  I hated it. Now, he was completely right. “If it’s worth doing, do it right.” Think about a painter like Pablo Picasso or, even better, Van Gogh, with intricate strokes that take a year to do a painting. Every element of every business requires a level of attention and detail.

Think about a surgery and a surgeon operating on somebody. That’s the level of attention and detail that you need to put into this. The person who opens that letter is already thinking about selling their land. Everybody in this entire country is thinking about selling stuff that they don’t need. You cannot give them any reason not to pick up the phone. They’re going to check you all out. Things have to tie. Your .com has to tie in with your email address. Your phone number needs to work. Somebody needs to answer the phone. If you’re a Land Academy member, we harp on this stuff.

Here we are, ten years later, and it’s still a big issue. We still get letters that are sloppy. Stuff’s not spelled right. There are two, three, four, or five fonts in there. The stuff’s cockeyed on the letter. The printing is not right. On and on it goes. We don’t laugh about it. Why go 90% of the way? You need to go 100% of the way to make this mailer look incredibly professional with the right typeface and font. It’s got a fit. It needs to be that two-page format that we have together. Take it seriously.

Why go 90% of the way? You need to go 100% of the way to make your mailer look incredibly professional. Share on X

Check your PDFs before they go out. Make sure it’s right. I take a step back and even look at the mailer. I make sure it looks easy. I make sure that my phone number, my email, and my website jump out of this and tell them what to do. I’ve massaged our letters. I have a little, “If this all works for you, sign it.” I added a little sentence, like, “All you need to do is sign it and send it back to me. This is all I need to do to move forward and open escrow.”

The more personal you make it, the higher the percentage that someone’s going to pick up the phone. If you say, “We used to own a lot of property in the southeastern part of the state. Not in your county, but the southeastern part of the state, and we loved it. We didn’t own it long enough. We shouldn’t have sold it. I’m writing to you to see if you want to sell yours. We want to get back into Wyoming or whatever.” People love that stuff.

“We’re a family-run business. This is our thing.”

That’s great.

That’s in our letter. I’m very proud of our latest letter template. I massaged it. It’s good.

Jill happens to be looking at this one for some reason. Usually, I do.

This one’s important.

That’s great. The person who’s going to answer the phone should be reviewing that, not the data ding dong like me.

You are great at everything else, I promise.

Join us in the next episode where Jill and I are going to discuss how to apply the laws of supply and demand to the land business in general. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.