$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
- 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.
- Tips and tools you can use to get a steady flow of money coming in, no matter what's happening out there.
- Learned how to succeed in any market condition.
- Understanding of how to achieve long-term success with solid marketing processes.
- Anyone, regardless of budget, looking for a strong start to avoid common mistakes.
- Business owners who want to have simple processes for their VA's to follow.
- Investors willing to create a steady monthly income to secure the future of their family.
- Those who tried many ways to succeed but still aren't seeing good results.
- 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
After DataSift
- Achieved Data Clarity
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Little Data Clarity
- Relied On Google Sheets
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Data Clarity / Organization
- Wholesales, Flips And Does Retail
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Didn't Understand Data Management
- Strong Real Estate Agent
- Wanted To Break Into Wholesaling But Didn't Know How
- Healthy Scale
- Data Driven Decisions
- Consistent Deals
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Inconsistent
- Little Data Insight
- Unorganized Bulk Marketing
- Strategic Focus on Niches
- Enhanced Lead Flow and Certainty
- Streamlined Marketing Process
- Efficient Use of Data
- Direct Mail & Deep Prospecting
- Broad, Unfocused Strategy
- Inconsistency in Results
- Dependency on Luck
- Marketing Clarity
- 6 Figure Months
- High Deal Volume
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Proper Data Management
- Weak Marketing Flow
- Poor Data Management
- Lack of Focus
- Manual Efforts
- Successful Scale
- Total Data Clarity
- Clear Marketing Approach
- Large Deal Spreads
- Improper Data Management
- Poor Marketing Method
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Clear Data Management
- Clear Data Management
- Successful Scale
- Many ways to close deals
- Large deal spreads
- Poor data management
- Unable to scale properly
- Poor marketing flow
- Smaller Deal Spreads
- Increased Deal Volume
- Platform Utilization
- Realtor Collaboration
- Funding Efforts
- Lots Of Deals
- Data Driven Decisions
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Poor Data Management
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Relied On Bulk Marketing
- Lack of Clarity
- Automated Acquisition
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Data Driven Decisions
- Structured Follow-ups
- Increased Lead Generation
- Achieved Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Manual Acquisition Processes
- Ineffective Marketing Flow
- Minimal Lead Insights
- Poor Follow Up Flow
- Inconsistent Lead Generation
- Lacked Sales And Marketing Clarity
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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