How to Price a Mailer (LA 915)

Transcript:

Steve Butala:                      Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:                            Hey.

Steve Butala:                      Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. You always crack me up with that.

Jill DeWit:                            I tried to do it different.

Steve Butala:                      I'm Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:                            I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California.

Steve Butala:                      Today, Jill and I talk about how to price a mailer.

Jill DeWit:                            This is good stuff.

Steve Butala:                      That's our number one all-time request, frequently question.

Jill DeWit:                            Yep. That's true.

Steve Butala:                      "That's all great, Steve. But how it I do I price it?"

Jill DeWit:                            But we're not going to give it all away, are we?

Steve Butala:                      Yeah. I'm going to tell you exactly how to price a mailer right now.

Jill DeWit:                            I know. We are. That's who we are, and that's what we're going to do, so hold on.

Steve Butala:                      Before we get into the topic, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:                            Jeff asks, "So here's my question. Do you take precautions to remove people from your mailers when they ask, even though it's a bit tedious? Secondly, is there actually any legal grounds when sending in a contract offer directly in the mail? In other words, could this be interpreted as predatory on any level and if there are things you put in place to address this? Thanks in advance."

Steve Butala:                      There's three questions here. One, do we take steps to remove people? When you send a bunch mail out, there are certain people that are not so pleased with us. Certainly our property owners. They don't agree with your valuation, let's say.

Jill DeWit:                            Yeah. If it were twice what they think it's worth, they would be very happy and calling you back, and we wouldn't be talking about it.

Steve Butala:                      A lot of them are nice about it, and they say, "I got your letter. I don't want to sell the property at all, not even for any price. Just please remove me from your list," which is totally reasonable. Yes, we have a rolling by county, by mailer file that we keep. It's as simple as a Microsoft Word document. We have people's names on it.

Jill DeWit:                            Just draw a line through it.

Steve Butala:                      Yeah. Actually it's in Excel all by county.

Jill DeWit:                            Right.

Steve Butala:                      Yeah, when we hit another county again, I always go back and remove them.

Jill DeWit:                            If we ever go back to that area again.

Steve Butala:                      Right.

Jill DeWit:                            Yeah.

Steve Butala:                      Do they have any legal recourse? No. No. There's no way we could sit and teach this that way that we do and have so many members that are so successful. No, we'd be in so much trouble it's silly.

Jill DeWit:                            Well, and it's like number one and number two, is this public information? For me, I see it no different as all the coupons, and the ads, and the promotions, and the things that come in your ... Email's even more ...