Justin Colby is the Co-Founder and President of The Science of Flipping, Omni Investment Group and Phoenix Wealth Builders. The Science of Flipping is a free Podcast on itunes, Omni and PWB are both professional real estate investment companies specializing in purchase, rehab, and flipping of distressed property in the Metro Phoenix Area.   In this episode, Justin shares his story of getting started and struggling through 9 months to get his first deal.  He simply didn’t have any money to get started and had to door knock and do things that cost very little.   In starting out this way, Justin was forced to learn the most efficient ways to get deals.  This continued as he began using direct mail to generate motivated seller leads.    He shares with us that he had just sent out 47,000 direct mail pieces.  So he’s grown over the years but knows what it takes to get started with very little money.   An important fact that he shares is that most direct mail response rates are below 1%.  This fact tends to be ignored by most investors just starting out with direct mail to motivated sellers.    They might send out 500 mail pieces and only get 3 calls.  This is very disheartening if you aren’t prepared for it.  This is the reason we figure more than 80 to 90% of investors discontinue or change their list after only mailing one time!   When starting to send direct mail, you want to send as many as you can afford to send at least 6 times.  You’ve got to mail the same mailing list your postcards and/or letters at least 6 times.  The reason is that studies have shown that, for direct mail in general, 80% of sales happen after 6 touches.    Don’t be the guy that mails once and quits.  Also, don’t be the guy that mails 5 times and quits.  They’re almost equivalent.   The guy/gal that mails 6 or 7 times will generate a very disproportionate amount of motivated sellers leads.   Regarding whether to use postcards or letters and first class versus bulk rate or metered, it all boils down to which will be cheaper so that you can mail more pieces.  When on a budget, you should always defer to what will allow you to send more.   In this episode, Justin also shares with us what he says in his postcards and letters.  This is super valuable information.   We also talk about the A/B test he performed that cost him $15,000 and didn’t show any measurable difference.   Listen to the show to find out what the test was so that you can benefit from his big expense and save some money for yourself.