The biggest mistake agents make when starting a marketing campaign is to make their address list far too big. The common thinking among agents is mailing list that the more people they mail to, the more business they will receive. While this may be true, few agents know how to mail to a much smaller list and still generate the same amount of business.
Over the years, I have steadily reduced my mailing list size while dramatically increasing my revenue. Here are the tricks I use: With rare mailing list exception, I no longer mail to entire neighborhoods (or "farm"). Instead, I target only expired real estate listings and those that have been withdrawn from the market. Once I identify the expired and withdrawn homes, I identify the homes I want to market to.
If a home is in a slow moving or depressed area, I take them off my list. I only target homes that have a high probability of selling. My knowledge of the market allows me to identify these homes quickly, but some homes I need to do more research on. While this may take 5-10 minutes per home, it will save time and money on the real estate mailings (see below) I scan each of the expired real estate listings for the words "Short Sale."