The most common mistake committed by investors for their initial marketing campaign is the failure to recognize the importance of mailing list. If you want your real state investing firm to gain more customers, you must take notice of this.

Veteran real estate marketing professionals know fully well how the quality of the mailing lists, drives the success of their real estate direct marketing campaigns. They pay attention their headlines and offers, but they work doubly hard when it comes to selecting their mailing lists.

A basic direct marketing tenet every real estate investor should know is the 40/20/40 rule.

In this principle, the investor must allocate 40 percent of his time and effort in selecting a good mailing list. He’ll use another 20 percent of his time focusing on the content and design. Lastly, the remaining 40 percent should be used for designing his offer.

But the real tricky part is in finding a good mailing list. The best thing to do according to experts is by using a list broker. But be sure you know what to ask your list provider in order to properly choose the mailing lists.

How do you go about selecting the right mailing list? Experts advise that you hire a mailing list provider. But in working with a broker, you also need to know what questions to ask, to help him process the list further.

Ask all the right questions. Don’t just take his generalization that this list is right for you. It may very well could be, but discover the last time it was updated (a good broker updates a minimum of once every three months) How did they create this list in other words, what sources did they use in pulling these names together. Does the list contain duplicates? And if it does can your broker eliminate them for you? What are the formats you can receive this material in, CDs, internet downloads, emails, labels?

Make sure to give him precise details such as the exact location of the customers you want in the list.

Identify your real purpose. Make sure that you are aware of what you want to accomplish whether to gather leads for future follow-ups or to increase your sales. When you let your list provider know your objectives, the job would be a lot easier on his part.

Now you at least have a slight idea about how much work you’ll need to put into the selection of your next selection of names. And for you to experience success, it may be more time and effort than you originally thought.