$100K+ from pre-probate data and return mail
$100K+ deal from returned mail in 30 days using the "lazy investor" deep prospecting approach.
About
Brian Johnson buys houses in St. Louis with his business partner, a two-person shop built on direct mail. Two years into DataSift, a purchased pre-probate inherited list turned his return mail into a deep prospecting pipeline.
Operating market
St. Louis, Missouri, where county data is labor intensive to pull yourself. Brian buys a pre-probate inherited list instead and rotates five metro zip codes of bulk mail each month.
Favorite features
The Challenge
Brian Johnson had been a DataSift user for over two years before deep prospecting clicked. His St. Louis operation ran on direct mail, inbound appointments, and buying deals from connectors. He and his partner gave up on bulk dialing and texting a couple of years back. Returned mail pieces got marked and forgotten. One record had been sitting dormant in his system since 2020.
The data side was the wall. His lists came off PropStream, and he bought probate data for a while. Pulling fresh county data in St. Louis is labor intensive, and the two-man team had no VAs to grind it out. Earlier CRMs did not help. Podio kept his records in the dark, and other systems piled on auto responders and campaigns he never touched. "I'm not a techie data nerd and a lot of this stuff just goes straight over my head," he says.
What They Built
Turning returned mail into the prospect list
At the start of the year Brian bought a pre-probate inherited data set and began mailing it. Instead of writing off the pieces that bounced, he made returned mail the trigger for deep research. His filter stacks the signals: pre-probate, vacant, high equity, returned mail, all on one record.
Let's just focus on the return mail that we're getting back. There's got to be gold in there.
Finding the heirs the file left blank
The deal record listed no known relatives. Brian pulled the probate case on the state site, found the personal representative named in the letter, and researched the family through Ancestry and county records. The person he contacted was a relative who never appeared on the original mail piece.
Skip tracing the decision maker in one attempt
His partner's agent license came with access to Forewarn, a skip tracing app they compared to IDI data. It produced the right number on the first pull.
Got his number right away, got ahold of him like the first contact and booked an appointment and yeah, the rest is history.
Trading bulk volume for 5 minutes per prospect
Brian now works a small, boiled-down niche bucket instead of dialing thousands of strangers. He budgets 5 to 10 minutes of research per record and works the list in one-hour blocks.
You're doing hundreds and thousands of texts to get a lead. Since we've been doing this the past month, I think like every 10 to 15 calls is a lead.
Before and After
Before DataSift
- Tens of Thousands Spent on Masterminds That Never Fit
- Got Crushed Wholesaling Cleveland Virtually From New York
- Career-biggest payoff under agreement after a year of deep prospecting
- A 1,300-lead vacant property gold mine in two counties
- One shared database with his agent wife for three years
- Guru models demanded VAs and a big company he never wanted
- His investing and her listing business never connected
- Ten years flipping houses with no shared system
- One Call and One Text Found His Last Buyer
- A Deal About Every Three Weeks, Pushing for Two
- Eight Deals Working in the Middle of the Slowdown
- A $7,000 Mail Campaign Went Out at 56 Percent of Value
- Three to Five Active Listings in Every Subdivision He Underwrites
- Colorado Prices Down 9 to 11 Percent by May
- Callers Hunt Correct Numbers, Closers Take Over
- Returned Mail Tagged And Worked As Its Own Bucket
- 6 Deals In One Month From Year-Old Data
- Eight Months In Before Working The Data Right
- Bulk Dials On Call Tools Produced Nothing
- 100K Records Added, Team Spinning Its Wheels
- Mail, three call attempts, then the rehash pool
- 150 records a month, skip traced twice before dialing
- Full authority probates only, five Southern California counties
- 15 to 20 grand across seven months of last year
- Calling agents and MLS, never direct to seller
- No CRM, just a phone, a computer, and email
- $56K Largest Single Assignment
- A VA Pulls County Probate Data Daily
- $5,300 Total Expenses, About $441 A Month
- $210K In Fees From 7 Deals In A Year
- Every Conversation Started Cold
- No Pipeline, No Aged Database, No Team
- Random Calling On Whatever Records He Found
- Started September 2023 With No Probate Experience
- $95K Spread Closed In 21 Days
- All Four Questions Answered On Every Lead
- 120 Qualified Sellers In The Pipeline
- $1M+ Company With SMS As The Core Channel
- Tracking It All In Podio, Then Another CRM
- Doing What Everybody Else Was Doing
- Downloading Every Record Providers Would Give Him
- Churn And Burn Message Blasts
- One Contract For Every 10 Leads
- 100% Of Deals Sourced Inside The System
- $1M+ In Assignment Fees In 2023
- Almost All Deal Flow From Driving For Dollars
- Bouncing Between Tools Looking For One That Stuck
- Leads Tracked In Excel Sheets, Antiquated And Scattered
- First Flip Finished And Live On Market
- Partner Funding Instead Of 18-22% Hard Money
- Probate Cleared In A Week And A Half
- About One Deal Per 15 To 20 Doors
- Door Knocks The Foreclosure List Top To Bottom
- Severely In Debt, Couldn't Keep Up
- A Couple Of Years To Get In Gear
- Worked Hard For Two Weeks, Then Stopped
- 12 Years In Oil And Gas, Then Nothing Left
- $10K Deal From A Q3 Not Interested Lead
- Follow Up Brought The Seller Down $40,000
- Two First To Market Contracts In One Week
- Dedicated Caller Works The First To Market Flow
- Eviction Records Pulled Straight From Two Counties
- Outbound Marketing Completely Phased Out
- Credit Card Debt From Bad Marketing Advice
- Two Years Of Shiny Object Crash And Burn
- Absurd Data Subscription Costs Draining The Business
- $61,644 Net From A Lien List Rehash
- Tracks Wrong Numbers, Cuts Skip Trace Spend
- Emails The Township For Exact Lien Payoffs
- Rehash Filters: Mobile Numbers, No Response, Liens
- Next Day Follow Up Text Gets The Reply
- Lien Lead Silent Since February 2024
- No Follow Up Text After A Silent First Message
- Unknowingly Recycling The Same Data
- Pulling 10,000 Record Lists The Old Way
- 15 Heirs Signed, $37,500 In One Month
- Skip Trace, Upload To Sift, Call Fast
- Small Problem Lists Over Huge Data Sets
- Targets Deeds Of Trust 12 Years Or Older
- Checks County Foreclosure Postings Every Morning
- Bulk Absentee And Owner Marketing Dried Up
- 150 Mile Days Driving Project To Project
- Six Renovations Running At One Time
- Full Time Rehabbing Since 2015
- Sellers Now Calling In From Her Mail
- One Hot Lead Plus Tons Of Correct Numbers
- Mails Only The 54 Absentee Petitioners First
- Google Form Auto Formats Data For Upload
- Pulls Probate Filings Daily Across Three Counties
- Left A Company, Unsure She Could Pull It Off
- Tedious Copy And Paste List Formatting
- Struggled To Pull Data From Her County
- Years In California Trying To Figure It Out
- 135,000 Records Organized Into Buckets
- A Lead Every 10-15 Calls
- Pre-probate Inherited Niche, 60% Sell Within Two Years
- New Process Closed Its First Deal In 30 Days
- Thursday Deep Research, Offer Accepted By Monday
- PropStream Lists And Bought Probate Data
- Return Mail Dead-ended, Records Sat Dormant For Years
After DataSift
- No Deep Understanding Of His Own Data
- Gave Up Bulk Dialing And Texting Years Ago
- Relying On Inbound Leads And Bought Deals
- A Contract Per 12-13 Qualified Leads
- 10,000-record Niche Lists, Filtered Monthly In Sift
- Focused Down To Indiana And Ohio
- Owns The Operation Now, 50-50 Split
- $300K In Spreads In His First 90 Days
- Almost $600K In Contracts Ghosted Or Backed Out
- Five States At Once, Spread Too Thin
- All The Profit Going To Someone Else
- Running An Agency For 14-16 US Investors
- Homegrown Closer Converts Over 20% Of Offers
- Text Blasts First, Smaller Call Lists After
- Whole Philadelphia Metro Recycled Through Rehash Campaigns
- Sequences And Lists Fully Dialed In
- Over 50 Deals A Year Across Two Companies
- New Construction Plans Stalled By Rates And Costs
- Deep Prospecting Alone, Before Any System
- Two Cheap College Duplexes, Bought With A Partner
- Everything Done By 6pm
- $1,500-1,800 A Month Total Marketing Spend
- 150 Dials A Day, First To Market
- 200 Probates A Month From Weekly Courthouse Runs
- $800K A Year Running Solo
- No Online County Data In His Market
- Long Hours Getting The Business Started
- Years Of Flips And Contractor Headaches
- Tuesday At 2 Hunts Generate His Own Deals
- 4 Deals And $330K Equity In 30 Days
- Sales Leader Owns Leads, Casey Tunes Systems
- 325,000 County Records, Scrubbed Nightly By VAs
- Full Operation: Acquisitions Agents, Sales Leader, VA Data Team
- Team Waiting On Leads To Come In
- Doing Well, But Knew He Could Do More
- Watching Every Lead Himself, Day To Day
- Callers Grinding Through Manual Data
- Two-man Team: Casey Plus One Acquisitions Guy
- Cutting edge 1-1 sales and marketing integration
- Improved accuracy when making offers and estimating rehab costs
- Leak proof communication between clients, buyers and contractors
- Thorough marketing and acquisitions from anywhere in the world
- Real estate companies that want documented communications with contractors, clients and buyers
- Wholesalers who want to enter into new markets
- Investors looking to have leak proof marketing and acquisitions
- Anyone looking to wholesale virtually
- A significant boost in confidence to create a great life for you and your family.
- Tips and tools to maintain a steady flow of income, regardless of external circumstances.
- Knowledge of how to succeed in any market condition.
- An understanding of how to achieve long-term success with solid marketing processes.
- A big boost in confidence to make a great life for you and your family.
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- Efficient KPI Tracking
- Enhanced Follow Up Process
- Data Driven Decisions
- Fully Integrated With REISift
- Streamlined Sales & Marketing Flow
- Enhanced lead management
- Unorganized Data
- Expensive/Ineffective Tech Stack
- Basic Marketing Approach
- Poor Data Management
- Unorganized Processes
- Refined Direct Mail Strategy
- Clarity In All Business Operations
- Enhanced Team Management
- Strong Lead Management Flow
- Advanced Data Tracking
- Effective Marketing Flow
- Limited Marketing
- Targeting Constraints
- Poor Lead Management
- Difficult Team Management
- Reactive Marketing
- Ineffective Marketing Flow
- Empowered Data Management
- First to Market Strategy
- Automated Processes
- Strategic Focus
- Improved Lead Prioritization
- Enhanced Data Tracking
- Low Level CRM
- Successful But Hitting a Wall
- Missed Opportunities
- Poor Data Management
- Data Driven Decisions
- Full Data Clarity
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Lacked Marketing Clarity
- Difficult Marketing Flow
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Strong Lead Management Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
What changed
Brian's shop runs on direct mail; he and his business partner quit bulk dialing and texting a couple of years ago. This year they niched down to a purchased pre-probate inherited list, data showing 60% of those owners sell within two years. Their new deep prospecting process starts with the return mail that comes back from it.
The first record he worked had sat in his account since 2020, tagged driving for dollars, dormant after return mail. He pulled the probate case, found the personal representative, and reached the relative on the first attempt Thursday. Friday they ran the appointment and left an offer, Monday the offer was accepted, and the deal closed 30 days after the process started. Deep prospecting now turns up a lead every 10 to 15 calls; bulk texting took hundreds of messages to get one.
So what if you spend five, 10 minutes on each prospect? I mean, if you got your niche boiled down to like, I got a hundred prospects here, one of them is gonna sell me their house. It's worth the extra time to go into it.
The Results
One week into the returned mail process Brian had an accepted offer. Thirty days in, the deal was closed. The property was bought at $141K and sold at $245K net after renovation. That is a $104K spread on a single returned mail piece, the $100K+ win.
The record tells the before and after story on its own. It entered his system as a driving for dollars tag in 2020, bounced as returned mail, and sat dormant for years under the old process. Under the new one: deep research Thursday, contact and appointment on the first attempt, offer left Friday, accepted Monday. Brian says roughly 50 calls across the niche produced that first deal, against the hundreds of texts a bulk campaign needs per lead.
Just keep it simple guys, like follow up with your cold leads.
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