Using Direct To Vendor Marketing To Grow Your HMO Business: Easy Solutions For Better Results

Does direct-to-vendor (D2V) marketing actually work? Should you be investing in it for your business? If you do D2V the right way, you’ll surface more leads, get more opportunities, and grow your HMO business faster!

If you’re thinking about D2V marketing but don’t know where to start or you’re currently doing it but aren’t getting the results you want, read below or check out the full episode on The HMO Podcast.

We’ll discuss what D2V is, why you should be using this form of marketing, how to do it the right way, and what to expect in terms of results.

What Is Direct to Vendor Marketing?

D2V marketing for HMO businesses involves sending physical mail in the post to landlords that we’ve identified as being potentially suitable for our service. Maybe they own HMO properties that we could buy, manage, or take on a rent-to-rent basis. 

Since 2015, I’ve been sending tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of letters direct to landlords, so I have a lot of experience doing this.

We’ve done some mail drops that have worked incredibly well, and over the years, I’ve nurtured what I strongly believe is the best way to farm leads and find properties to buy or rent-to-rent deals. 

How Is D2V Being Used in the HMO Industry?

For several years, I’ve been getting letters from landlords every single week, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that almost every single letter looks identical! It’s as if everyone has been taught exactly the same method of doing it. 

There’s usually a logo in the top right corner, some business information, a section about their services, and then the benefits of using them. And usually, there is a caveat saying if this isn’t suitable, we can also help with selling your portfolio. In all honesty, these letters go straight in the bin every single time. 

On top of that, I almost never get more than one or two letters from the same person. I don’t understand why you would just send one letter, get no response, and decide to never send one again! The chances of sending out one letter to a landlord and convincing them on that day to call you and use your service are incredibly slim. 

But if you send the right kind of mail to landlords regularly month after month, you can build trust, credibility, reliability, and authority. Then, when that landlord’s circumstances change or they decide to throw in the towel or come away from the managing agent that’s been letting them down, you may be one of the first people they call.

5 Tips for Sending D2V Letters for Your HMO Business

So, how can we do D2V better than the competition? I can’t believe more people haven’t tapped into this yet. I’m convinced these are the only secrets left in the property industry!

Here are some really simple solutions for starting or improving your D2V marketing strategy to help you differentiate yourself. 

1. Send Mail Consistently

For starters, you need to send D2V mail consistently – every single month at the very least. Naturally, there is a cost to that. If you’re sending mail out to a list of 300 to 500 landlords, that could cost you several hundred pounds every single month. 

But let’s do some quick maths. If you send mail out for 12 months, let’s say it’ll cost you about £500 a month and around £6,000 across the whole year. While that is a lot, if you were to do one deal from that mail, the return on investment could be substantial.

What if you made £50,000 over the term of a five-year rent-to-rent deal? Or let’s say you bought a property £10,000 below market value. In both cases, your return on investment is substantial, and what if you did several deals from your D2V mail in one year? 

All of a sudden, that return on your initial investment of sending mail out every single month looks incredible. So, if you can find that money every month to invest in D2V marketing, then it could be the most powerful thing you ever do in your HMO business to market your services and find HMO deals.

2. Utilise Content Marketing

Now how do you differentiate your letters and make sure that they stand out? How do you ensure that landlords pay attention to what you’re sending? 

The answer is by embracing content marketing! This isn’t unique to HMO businesses; content marketing is the mainstay of almost all business marketing. And the idea is that we send useful and valuable information to landlords, as opposed to just trying to flog them our service. 

Think about what’s relevant to landlords. We need to build trust, rapport, reliability, and authority, and that happens by sending them useful content. This can be about anything going on in our industry, including:

No matter what the topic is, it needs to be a research-based, high-level, informative piece of content. Then, when the time’s right, the landlords are more likely to call you because you were the person that’s been showing that you’re an expert, that you can be trusted, and that you know what you’re talking about. 

3. Think About Branding and Design

Next, you need to make sure that the letters you send are well branded and well designed. Use the right fonts and bring everything in line with your brand. Give more attention and thought to this, so you can stand out. It’s also really easy to get a newsletter template created. There are people on Fiverr who can do this affordably. 

4. Use Direct Mail Services

Then, once you have the design finalised, you’ll drop the content into the newsletter template and send it out to your mailer. Of course, you could do it all by hand like we used to do, but that takes a long time. And actually, it’s cheaper to use online direct mail services nowadays.

5. Put Time into Your Website and Social Media 

Once you’ve sent your D2V mail out, what do you do next? In part, you have to wait. But during this time, make sure that your website and social media accounts are supporting whatever you’re saying in your newsletters and have a consistent tone of voice and branding. This is important as some landlords may do some research on you before calling.

What Should You Expect from a D2V Campaign?

A number of things will impact the results you get from a direct-to-vendor campaign. However, a good month would be hearing from 1% of the people you send the mail to. So, if you’re sending this out to 500 people and you get five people to call you, that would be a good result. 

But keep in mind that certain months are often quieter, such as January and December. And be aware that you’ll get rejected far more than you’ll get accepted. That’s part of building any business, so it’s something you have to be ready for. 

We Can Help!

When it comes to D2V marketing, there’s a big commitment to create and produce content regularly. It takes a lot of time, effort, and energy. But fear not… because I’ve got some good news for you! 

As I write this content every single month to send out to landlords, I know what works. And now we have an opportunity for a small number of HMO investors around the country to use our content and send them to their list of landlords every single month!

Would that help you build your business, bring on more leads, and scale up to more quickly? If you are interested in this, drop us an email at info@staging.thehmoroadmap.co.uk and put “Content Service” in the title to see whether or not you could take advantage of this. 

Let us know where in the country your business is based as we can only let one person in a given area use this content. This service is also only available on a 12-month subscription program to ensure you get the most out of your direct-to-vendor campaign. Get in touch if you’d like more information!

If you want to ask any questions about D2V marketing, I’m on hand over in The HMO Community Facebook Group, and if you want to take things to another level with your HMO business, sign up for The HMO Roadmap today!

 

About the Author:

Andy Graham is the founder and the lead trainer at The HMO Roadmap! He is also the co-founder of The HMO Mastermind and Smart Property, a specialist HMO property investment and management company. He writes as a regular columnist in different magazines about a variety of HMO topics and is the host of The HMO Podcast! Follow Andy on Instagram!