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Welcome to the RV Park Mastery Podcast, where you will learn the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform due diligence on, renegotiate, finance, turn-around and operate RV parks. Your host is the 5th largest owner of RV and mobile home parks in the United States, Frank Rolfe.
When you're out looking for an RV park to buy, there are several different methods. They're all pretty good. Brokers are a great one. Over half of every property we purchased came from a broker. I know that's very effective, and cold calling is also a very effective way to go. We've done a ton of that over the last 30 years. But another avenue, a good one, one that many people should employ, even people who don't like to do cold calling because they don't like the concept of having to go out on a limb and call people, is direct mail. But many RV park buyers miss some of the key elements to a successful direct mail campaign. This is Frank Rolfe with the RV Park Mastery Podcast. I want to give you some tips on how to do direct mail the right way so your phone will ring and you'll have properties to look at buying. Now, the first thing to remember is that direct mail is a volume business. If you look at the scoring of direct mail from success to failure, you'll find it's only 1% response rate to be considered an A plus. I don't know of anything else in life where you can fail 99 out of 100 times and be a winner. But if you do a 500-piece mailing to 500 different RV park owners, at 1% you would hit five phone calls, and five phone calls could well lead to one purchase, and that's all you were after. So trying to hit 1% should be reassuring to you because it's probably going to be hard for you not to get at least 1% response if you go through the motions. But if you go through the motions incorrectly, you probably won't get any responses. So I'm going to try and help you understand what you need to do to send something to an RV park owner with the hopes of them getting back to you.
The first thing you want to know is whatever you send, whether it's going to be a postcard or you want to write a letter and send that out to this group of people, be sure that you send one of those to yourself. Take one of the envelopes and address it to you, because that way you'll know two things. Number one, if it really went out, maybe the postal carrier threw them all in the trash, who knows? And number two, you want to kind of know when they hit so you can count down from that to see whether you were successful or not if your phone rings. And some people like to supplement a direct mail campaign with cold calling, and that way you know when you cold call people, they've already received what you sent. So always make sure you fill one envelope out to yourself. It's also important that you realize that there are two very different styles of direct mail. There's the postcard, which you don't have to open, and there's a letter, that you do have to open. And between the two, we have found over a 30-year horizon the postcard to be superior.
Now, why is the postcard better? Well, the postcard is right there in your face. When you get the mail, you can't help but see it. But a lot of mom and pops have a sixth sense regarding junk mail, and when they see an envelope with something in it and they don't recognize the handwriting, they don't recognize the sender, or if you've got peel-and-stick labels on it, they're more than likely to not even open it. They'll simply throw it in the trash can right there at the P.O. Box or right there at home. So when it comes to direct mail, typically postcards should be your go-to way to do it. Now, if you're going to send someone a postcard, there are some things you need to know about the postcard. Number one is you've got to understand basic color theory. Believe it or not, color has been analyzed by advertisers for a couple hundred years because they didn't want to waste money advertising in a manner which did not work for people.
And there are two things about color you need to know. Number one is that people seek out the opposite color to what they normally see. When you're driving down the highway and you see a field of green trees and green grass, your eye naturally darts to anything red because red is the exact polar opposite of green. And that is why virtually every fast food sign in America, Chick-fil-A, Wendy's, McDonald's, Taco Bell, they all are red. It's not accidental. It isn't like people who manufacture signs always push them to go red. No, they go red because that's correct under color theory. So when you look at the mail that you receive each day, look at those colors and decide what is the opposite of that total spectrum and palette of colors that you see, and many times, again, that number or that color is in fact red.
The other thing you have to know about color is the concept of contrast. Colors, some colors are more legible when applied to other colors. And those are the ones you want to focus on. In fact, under color theory, black on yellow has the number one score as far as easy to read. Black on white comes in on the second level. These colors that some people put on these direct mail pieces today, they score terribly. You'll see some things which are a brown on a tan background. You can't read that. So if you're going to do direct mail, make it simple to read. A lot of these moms-and-pops that own RV parks are older Americans, so with that in hand, make the type large and make it with good contrasting colors. Also, a successful postcard typically is going to have a photo on it. It could have a photo of an RV park, or it could have a photo of you, or your family. And when you're shooting for a 1% response ratio, you can be a little daring. You're not going to really offend anybody, but the more you're out of the norm, the more likely someone is to call you. So if you think, "Well, you know what? I want to put a picture of my whole family having a picnic so they'll realize I'm a family person, I'm a conservative person, " well, then I would say go with it. The more you go out on a limb with the photo, sure, the more you're sticking your neck out, but like the turtles, sometimes you have to stick your neck out to make progress. Also, we understand the whole goal of this direct mail piece is simply to get people to call you. So as a result, make your phone number very large, very dominant, because that's the key item you want them to remember.
A lot of RV park owners, if the postcard looks professional and intriguing to them, they're going to call you, if nothing else but to establish a free value on their property. Who wouldn't? If you got a direct mail piece on the car in your driveway saying, "Hey, I want to buy the car in your driveway. Call me, " you're totally going to call that person because you're curious what they might give you for your car. And if it's more than you thought it was worth, then you probably say, "Okay, I'll take it." But that's all you're trying to do on that direct mail piece. They're not going to call you up and say, "Okay, I'm ready to sell the property. Let's get it going." You simply, at that point, want to elicit the phone ringing. So make sure your phone number is very dominant. Also, don't put in a whole lot of disclaimers. Don't put, "I only want to buy RV parks of this size. I only want to buy RV parks in this region." No. You decide that when you put that kind of thing in a direct mail piece, it sends a message to the recipient that you are going to be a real pain in the rear, very selective, probably not even worth them calling you. And even worse, maybe they shouldn't call. You might embarrass them by saying, "Oh, I don't want a property like yours. That's not the kind of thing that we buy." Also, it will feel free to send custom handwritten letters if a park is something that really fits. There's an old concept that was done by an old advertising firm called BBDO back in New York back in the '60s. They got the account for Rolls-Royce, and they horrified the world when they brought up their first magazine Ad for Rolls-Royce.
And it had something like 600 words in it. This was a time in which most American advertising had maybe five words or 10 words, and here was a book virtually printed under a photograph of a Rolls-Royce. And they asked the guys at BBDO, "Hey, what is the idea of having this many different words in an advertisement? " To which BBDO responded, "Well, it's our theory that if someone's really interested in something, then they're going to go ahead and read everything there is to know about it." And that was a big hit for Rolls-Royce, a very, very successful program. So if you feel like you want to say a lot, sure, say a lot. You can't say too much. Someone who's really interested in receiving what you've got to say, they're going to read every bit of it. The bottom line is direct mail is a very, very effective way to find an RV park, one of the best. Cold calling is good too, but the problem is most people won't do cold calling, but they will do direct mail. And while it's great to rely on brokers, and we bought a lot of things from brokers over the years, if you're trying to find fresh material, unworked material, then sometimes one of the best methods to find RV parks is direct mail. But you have to do it properly. This is Frank Rolfe of the RV Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.