Janine Sasso the Hyper Local Agent with Coldwell-Banker in Chicago talks about how she got into real estate and grew her business. Janine discusses the role open houses played in the beginning of her career. Janine also discusses how she addressed her youth to make people comfortable to work with her. Next, Janine describes how she built and perfected her mailing list and how she grew her farm.

You can buy Janine’s “Success With Real Estate Mailers” book here.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Janine Sasso can be reached at (847) 754-1835 and janine.sasso@cbexchange.com.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
I’m gonna blow your mind right now. Did you know that in 2023 the ROI on mailers, physical mailers is 10x? Guys, we’re gonna make the case today why mailers are important and you need to be doing these in 2024. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with author and top producer Janine Sasso. But before we get to Janine, just a couple of quick reminders as always support our sponsors. We love our sponsors. And they are helping us continue to produce episodes for our show. So please check out their products and services, I promise that they will only select sponsors that will actually help you grow your business and continue to tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing like great agents like Janine says, so we’re about to hear from and send them a link especially this episode. Guys. Just wait until you hear what Janine is about to say it’s pretty wild. So anyway, it even blew my mind and I was like, really? We’ll just wait. It’s awesome. All right, let’s get right to it. My conversation with Janine Sasso.

Today on the show we have author and top producer Janine Sasso from Coldwell Banker in Chicago. Let me tell you more about Janine now, Janine Sasso is on a mission to impact more agents with young children to earn their dream income. Now forget about time blocking and say goodbye to expensive mailing companies or mailer companies Janine is going to share her proven lead generation tactics that have been ranked the number one lead generation technique for decades. But with a modern twist for today’s busy agent, Janine was tired of choosing between a career of being a mom and discovered how geographic farming has allowed her to scale her success quickly, mainly with mailer marketing, and community events. And before you go, I don’t want to do mailers. I am telling you, you want to do mailers. Stay with us. We will convince you in this. This conversation why that’s important. To learn more about Janine I want you to go visit her website. There’ll be a link to this in the show notes. The hyperlocal agent.com is the hub of everything Janine, you can also find her on all the different social channels except Twitter. She is She is not a Twitter person. I don’t even know who is Twitter person anymore in real estate but she is on every other social channel including Tik Tok. We will have links to her social channels in the show notes, but just do a search for Janine Sasso and find her and also she has an amazing book that I want you to check out called success with real estate mailers. And that is on Amazon. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. Janine, welcome to the show.

Janine Sasso 4:20
Well, thanks for having me and introducing me to your audience like this is going to be a fun one. Because we’re going to convince people right convince people have done direct mail is not that. I

D.J. Paris 4:32
hope so. So I am holding up right now a a handwritten card, which if you’re listening, you won’t hear this from one of my last guests. And I we were talking about we were talking about mailers, and in this case, handwritten cards. And I was saying to him, he because he’s a big fan of writing handwritten cards that I know we’re gonna be talking about something slightly different, but just sending things through the mail. And I said, how often how many cards do you get a year from anybody? You know, outside of your birthday outside of, you know, the holiday, I mean, just like random, hey, I’m thinking about you cards. He goes, I get about one a month. And I was like, you get one a month, I get like one a year. So I’m holding one up from the guy who I actually said that to and he, after the thing, maybe he was just trying to be funny. He wrote me one. And so I got my one for the year. But this is how big the opportunity really is to send mail. I mean, I don’t even get junk mail anymore. Like it’s amazing. Like, my mailbox is usually empty. And it is certainly the mail I do get is not real is not from realtors, it might be like a catalog or something. But that is about all I receive. But Janine, let’s start. Before we get to mailing. I want to start at the beginning and sort of learn your story and how you grew your business and how you came to be. So how did you get involved in real estate?

Janine Sasso 5:47
Alright, so here is my fabulous story. I was born and raised in Germany. So I didn’t grow up here. I didn’t go to school here. And when I came over, I have an early childhood educator education degree. So that was where I thought I was gonna end up and I started looking at daycares. I had a three year old at the time that I finished my degree. So I started looking at daycares. I interviewed thinking, well, at least I can bring him with and I can be with him. And after the first interview, I was mortified at the working environment, I was mortified at the pay. Mind you, I had to figure out how do I go back and visit my family as a first generation immigrant in so many words. And you can really not afford a you know, flight ticket back home to Europe, if you are on that kind of salary. So it posed a big, like obstacle when like, Okay, I need to find something else. My husband’s mother’s and my mother in law has been in real estate. And she was the nudge that said, why don’t you give it a try. I started going to evening classes knock that out in like, eight weeks, I believe and got my real estate license. Wow.

D.J. Paris 7:09
And so being an immigrant in in the Chicagoland area should also mentioned I think I said this earlier, but Janine here is here in the Chicagoland area along with me. But it’s not the easiest, you know? Yes, we have millions of people who live here, however, you’re not from here. So your sphere of influence, I assume was almost nothing or very small, maybe limited. Was your husband from Chicago? I guess he’s from Chicago,

Janine Sasso 7:32
I guess. Well, so that was my, you know, a little caveat there because my mother in law is still a licensed and active agent, my husband’s referral business in so many words. I wasn’t even going to touch that. Because unless I wanted to have a really awkward Thanksgiving conversation was hey, you sold and Judy’s house, I was my deal. Right? I wasn’t gonna go there. So I’m like, Okay, so there went that. No family here didn’t grow up here. No school, my kids were too little. So I didn’t have any school, PTA sports, all of that good stuff. I had nothing and okay, this is gonna be interesting. So I started literally with zero. I did open houses. So that was my start. I’m like, Okay, let me figure out something. And open houses was where I got my feet wet in real estate, you know, leads, per se.

D.J. Paris 8:21
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s something that we hear from literally almost every agent we’ve ever had on the show. And we’ve done over 515 episodes. Everyone says I started doing open houses. And then, you know, people listening are like, Well, what happens when you don’t have a listing, you beg everyone in your office to allow you to do a listing? I’m guessing that’s what you did.

Janine Sasso 8:45
That’s what I did, in addition to rental leads, so our MLS does allow rentals. And because of that, I’m like every rental lead, I was like, me, me, right? I mean, my email folder, because it wasn’t for this transaction. It was always, hey, I have another rental lead for you. Right? So and

D.J. Paris 9:02
we should also mention, too, that Chicago is not known as a huge hub for Germans to emigrate to. We have like a large Greek population, we have a large Polish population. We have lots of cultures that are here. But German, there’s, I mean, maybe there’s a large German constituency here. I don’t think so. But, but but it’s not like you could just go oh, I’m just gonna go sell to all the German people. I know. I’m assuming that that wasn’t as easy to do either. No,

Janine Sasso 9:28
that wasn’t on the, on the table either. And we blend extremely well. So most often people need to listen to me for like, a little while before they catch on to an accent. So you know, it’s one of those things where we we blend in. I’m like, I can’t even tell I mean, and I get polish a lot people are like, Oh, are you polish? I’m like, no, yeah.

D.J. Paris 9:45
But well, the country is a very close, close proximity. So yeah, so the accents are similar, but you’re right. Yes, you do blend in, especially here with the large Polish community that we have. So the bottom line is you have to start from zero Go and tell us how did you so open houses were a key. Tell us more like, how did you really move forward?

Janine Sasso 10:07
So the first year, I tried everything that, you know, you see these Facebook posts of like, hey, I really have to get a deal in the next 30 to 60 days, what should I do? And you have 365 different answers. And you try to do as many as possible. And that’s what I did, right? I tried the open houses, I looked at cancelled listings I looked at for sale by owners, but just what happens when you look at a little bit here, a little bit there, right? You don’t really get that traction. And my first year, I am not your average success story. I’m like, my first year, I made $15,000, which is not terrible, but it’s true. It’s one five, so one, five, that was it. And for a career that I thought like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be you know, I’m gonna be rookie of the year or something. It was really eye opening, that there was a lot of things involved to learn. And the main one was running a business. Again, I came from an employee mindset, right, you show up, you get paid for your hours, you go home. So it was really a crash course of you could work 24/7 If you really wanted to, it’s crazy.

D.J. Paris 11:21
Yeah, and trying to figure out what’s the what are some of the best sort of strategies to build a business and there are so many different strategies, like you said, and we were just talking about this with a friend the other day, she was saying, you know, my, she goes, I think my parents made a terrible mistake when I was a child. And they put me in every sport in every activity. And I said, Yeah, parents do that I kind of the same thing sort of happened to me. And, and I didn’t look at it as a negative. And she’s like, it’s very well intentioned, like, it’s a good, you know, it’s a lovely thing to do that for your children. But she goes, what it didn’t do is it didn’t get me to hyper focus. And one thing that I really, really enjoyed, and I could have really done something special in, you know, whatever, whatever she was was talking about. And it was just a good reminder that like, oh, yeah, when we, when we try, when we do try to do everything, we end up not really specializing in anything. Yeah,

Janine Sasso 12:19
so one of the things that again, my first year was very similar, I tried so many different things. And now one of the resources that we have on our website, that hyperlocal agent is 35 plus free lead gen strategies. And the reason that, you know, there are so many different ones, the basics that everybody talks about, but a they’re free, you can do them literally with $0, because that’s where I started. But you have to find something that connects write something where you’re like, I can get up each and every morning, and I can do something with that. And for me, that was geographic farming. That is where I decided I can be happy here.

D.J. Paris 12:58
And what’s great about geographic farming is it is focusing you into one well, obviously you can’t farm everywhere. So you have to just by default, choose a geographic area, or could be more of a demographic farm. I guess if you were like only going after doctors, you could buy a list of doctors and I guess you could mail to them. But geographic farming seems like it makes the most sense. Because of course, it allows you to then really hone your your skills on the inventory and the needs of that community. Right? You you’re going to learn over time where the best starter homes are for families moving maybe out of the city into the suburbs, where the best school districts are you this is just going to allow you to really build a brand around a particular geographic area is that is that fair to say?

Janine Sasso 13:44
Right. So once I started to get hyper focused on that being my you know, preferred way to get in front of buyers, as well as seller leads, everything just became easier, because it wasn’t like I was you know, I was like flailing around before trying all the things. And now it’s like, okay, you had to focus you’re like, did it serve my purpose of becoming a better known name, a better known person, people will refer and trust because the other part I had to overcome when I started I was I was in my early 20s. So I had to figure out, right? How do I make them feel like I have all, you know, the know how that somebody in their 50s or 60s Probably has, even though they might be licensed for two weeks, as you know, fourth career versus somebody that decided to make this the career in the first place. So again, it’s just things in my head, probably but people will have a certain perception. So

D.J. Paris 14:42
I don’t think that’s yeah, I don’t think that’s in your head at all. I think that is a 100% absolutely logical sort of objection, right? Somebody goes, Hey, we’re gonna buy an $800,000 home. Do we want to give it to the 22 year old Right? Like maybe not only because not that the 22 year old couldn’t be the Greatest agent on the planet they could be. But if we’re playing the odds, maybe that would be a hurdle to overcome. I’m just curious, before we move on, how did you address sort of your your youth your age, in a way that was allowed people to still feel comfortable, you know, giving you those transactions?

Janine Sasso 15:17
Knowledge? I mean, honestly, that’s what it came down to. When you started having a conversation with me at the open house. It was a very detailed conversation, right? It’s like asking the right questions. Well, tell me like, What were you you know, thinking for your ideal home? And it’s like, okay, like, what were you thinking in terms of downpayment? What was more important, those specific questions? And, and then you start also demonstrating all of a sudden, they were like, Oh, I didn’t even think about that. That was interesting.

D.J. Paris 15:56
Yeah, that makes sense. I’m curious to you were your I think your net was going out a little bit, but you came through just fine. Your video is was frozen, which is no big deal. I have a question, though, for any of our audience that hasn’t yet chosen to geographically farm. How? Or maybe up, here’s a bet maybe a different question. Let’s say we picked you up and dropped you into a city where you didn’t know anybody, which is basically what happened to you in the Chicagoland area. But let’s say we did it today. And we moved you to another area knowing everything, you know, now, different city, you know, nobody, and you don’t have to choose a new farm, what would you look for? In picking the geographic farm? How would you make that determination of where

Janine Sasso 16:38
so my first farm, the one that, you know, I still farm to the state i i lived in. So being close to home was, you know, one of the first things if I get dropped in the middle of a new place, I hope I’m gonna have a house over my roof, or, you know, a roof over my head. And I would probably start there, right, just because it’s close to home. And one of the reasons that I did decide to farm was, I didn’t want to drive 30 minutes to a listing appointment, I didn’t want to drive an hour for showing, right. I’m like, call me call me crazy. But I’m like, my time is not really well spend getting to and from appointments, one of the reasons being, I have to hire a babysitter to kind of make sure my kids don’t have to tag along, right. And I have this rule, I’m like, kids do not belong on listing appointments, they have come to open houses, they have come to buyer appointments, they have come to, you know, office events, they they’re pretty much there half the time, all the time, but not listing appointments, and not brand new clients. Like that’s my Sure,

D.J. Paris 17:38
of course, I want to make I want to make a quick point to because also choosing an area, that hope that you live in is also beneficial, because you get to say to everybody, by the way, I live down the street, or I live just you know, a few blocks over this is this is my area. This is where I live, this is what I know there’s something powerful in that versus Oh, where do you live? Oh, I live in the city 30 minutes away, or I live, you know, in another suburb? Which again, all of that is fine. Maybe not everyone lives in an area that they want to geographically farm. But if you do, Boy, that’s a powerful thing to say to somebody. It’s like, oh, by the way, this is where I choose to be here. And this is why I want to work with eight people in this area. Yeah,

Janine Sasso 18:18
so one of the biggest things on that one is my home value is directly tied to the listings that I get, right? If I give away the listings in so many words, it’s not going to do my own house any good. Now, if I want to fight for the best possible price that they can get, it’ll benefit my my own home as well. Right?

D.J. Paris 18:39
Oh, that is a very Hold on a second. Well, we’re gonna start we’re gonna pause that that is brilliant. You just said something really, really, really smart. And kind of it’s kind of a cute thing to to say it’s sort of almost as a little bit of a humor to it. But boy, that is I just don’t I want to slow that one down just a little bit. Because that is something nobody has ever said on the show. So Janine just basically said, she also gets to say, you know, if it comes up, she can say, Hey, by the way, by me getting you the very best price on your home, Mr. And Mrs. Seller, that’s actually going to help everyone in the community, including me, because I’m in your community. So I am incentivize, not just for my commission, but I at some point, I’m going to leave, and I want to sell my home and I want to make as much money as possible to obviously she’s not going to say quite like that. But you get the point. That’s a very, very good point.

Janine Sasso 19:28
It doesn’t, you know, I mean, you will not find the hardest working agent for that reason alone inside your hyperlocal area. Now, if you live there. Now, you might say, Okay, well, I don’t live there and I don’t you know, I can’t use that one. That’s true. However, if those are your stomping grounds, you then have to face the next seller that you sit down with and say, Well, what did you do over at Mary’s house because you gave it away? Right? You will not do that. You will say I fought the best I could for Mary’s house. So I can sit here today with you. And I feel really confident to tell you I did a super amazing job over there. And I’ll do this Same here because for me, it’s my reputation. And that part, right? It’s an easy one.

D.J. Paris 20:07
And how big is your farm? Meaning? Is it a certain number of households? Is it just a particular area? Like, how do you think about that?

Janine Sasso 20:14
Okay, I’ll take you back through my farming journey, because when I tell you my number right now, it is over 5600 homes. So that’s a lot. That’s where I started, I started out with 100 printed flyers, and 100 printed flyers, I decided to invite them to a neighborhood garage sale, out of that 100 flyers. After two years, I finally decided there has to be a better way. And I graduated into my first mailing route. So I use a service called Every Door Direct Mail through the United States Postal Service, when I started. And that’s where I graduated to my first route, I want to say in 2017, it was 400 houses, I felt so proud of me that I can like you just push a button and there’s like, postcards going out. Right? And I was literally heading to the playground and the mailman working his nine to five would deliver it. So I could still be at the park. And I could still do the mom things I do. Sure. And things were happening, like I had leads coming into, you know, my email inbox as I was pushing them on this way. So I’m like, I need to do more of that. So one route led to a second one, a second to a third and third or fourth, I believe I’m at Well, for more at this point. So

D.J. Paris 21:38
yeah, so when you first were doing the flyers, were you hand delivering them? Were you putting them on people’s doorsteps, that kind of thing? Yeah,

Janine Sasso 21:47
so I I’m not a door knocker. So I will, you know, try my best not to encounter people. I’m an introvert by nature. So just you know, striking up a conversation with strangers might be also partially a cultural thing. Everybody is into the small talk about the weather, especially in Chicago. And having you know, somebody in the elevator tell me hey, yeah, nice weather today, right? I’m not sure. What’s happening, right? Used to those little cultural quirks. And you know, now I talk about the weather just like anybody else in Chicago. But it’s one of those things where I just made flyers, I put them in door hanger backs. I took my kid, but I get in the stroller, and I just hung it on the neighborhood, right? took a walk, like that’s what I did. So when

D.J. Paris 22:35
you were doing 100, let’s just talk about how long it takes to actually start to make an impact and get results because we know that one mailer is basically no mailer, right? If you just do one, you might as well don’t do anything, because the odds of you getting a success, there are obviously very low, but over time, and with consistency, those numbers increase. So when you were doing 100, flyers, you know, how long did it take before you started getting any reach outs?

Janine Sasso 23:02
So that first flyer I did was actually an event invitation, I said, I would love to do a neighborhood garage sale. So I would like to coordinate a date I would be helping with advertisement. And if this date works for you, go ahead and send me an email that you’re in. And then I’ll just send you the details. And that flyer 100 flyers out I did get 10 responses back.

D.J. Paris 23:27
Wow, that’s sweet. You were offering I want to make sure I understand. So you’re offering to promote someone’s garage sale, but you don’t know that they even want to do a garage sale. You’re just saying, Hey, if you’re thinking about a garage sale, I’m going to help you is that basically it?

Janine Sasso 23:43
That’s basically it. I don’t know, you remember, I’m in the suburbs, right? So people love to have things to do Sure. On door. And that event for me. So garage sales, for me was always like, fun to look through other people’s right junk. And like, I love it. It’s like one of those things when again, you find something that you love. It makes sense. I’m like, okay, rather than now going from like, you know, different different houses all over the area. Why can I have a garage sale in my own neighborhood where I can literally just go from house to house to house to house and have it my way right? So that’s what we did.

D.J. Paris 24:20
So how would you help them with their with their with their garage sale?

Janine Sasso 24:26
So the garage sale itself was obviously for me if you think about garage sale. Why do people have garage sales? Obviously the first one is right, too much stuff or kids have outgrown things. But then you also have the people saying like well, we’re actually getting ready to downsize. Right so the first one was like, oh, that’s

D.J. Paris 24:45
brilliant. I never Oh my god. I have net well I look as a not look. When people when people ask me when people I don’t I say I’m in marketing when people ask me because the moment they ask when I tell them I’m in real estate they’re like Oh, how’s the market? I’m like, No, I don’t practice real estate. So I am always the lat the last one to the to the to the party. You what you just said is so brilliant. And I have I and by the way, I don’t think anyone’s said this on the show ever before. So this this is something that I imagine a lot of our audience Yeah, guys, people have garage sales might be moving. Brilliant.

Janine Sasso 25:19
Well, you’re welcome. So thank you, it goes back to mentality, right? I mean, it goes back to know your audience know your crew. And when you look at our baby boomers, right, when you look at the people that are currently selling based on Nar stats, or whatever your you know, report you look at, these are the people that have the equity, these are the people whose houses are paid off. Those are also the people that come from a generation of war, it’s like it was really hard to accumulate the things that they have donating the things that they paid, like the dining room set 1000s of 1000s of dollars for and you just now give it away. That doesn’t make any sense, right? So it goes back to understand who you are serving. So for me, it was like, okay, I can have somebody come to their house to a driveway, and then give them even a little bit of money for the dining room set that nobody else wants anymore. Anyhow, right. They’re happy, they see me drive traffic in terms of marketing, they understand that’s what I do for a living and I get hyped.

D.J. Paris 26:17
So you would basically say I will help try to drive traffic to your to your to your garage sale, maybe you provide some signage, things like that. How would you actually market how would you sort of attract people to go to the to go to do that? I keep saying open houses the garage sale,

Janine Sasso 26:35
but that one evolved, right? So but same principle for the open houses, the marketing principles behind it are all the same, you find the person that you think will be aligned with what you have to offer? Might that be a garage sale, might that be an open house might be a listing, right, you find the person, you find what they need, you find the right messaging, and then you just bring them in. So in this case, it was a very simple one for Hey, you love garage sales. Not only do I have one, I have a you know, neighborhood garage sale to promote where you can just hit 10 houses in a matter of a day. And you don’t have to drive all over the place. So it eliminates that time constrain, right. And you bring them in. So for the open houses, same scenario, you have an open house you like, Hey, if you’re looking to get into the open house, you don’t want to wait for an agent to schedule a showing perfect opportunity. We have an open house on Saturday, right? Come on by. And then same for the listing, I’m sure you’re tired of seeing all the crappy listings on the market. Good for you, I have the perfect one. It’s, you know, hitting the market tomorrow. If you want the details, let me know find the right audience, find the right message and get it done.

D.J. Paris 27:41
And you know, I my marketing wheels are spinning because I was now thinking basically what you’re doing is going into a neighborhood and saying I’m going to organize a neighborhood garage sale and whoever wants to participate can participate I’m gonna leave a flyer on is that my understanding is you basically come in saying, hey, I want to do one for the entire neighborhood or get as many people as possible, because there’s strength in that that’ll help everyone. Oh my gosh, this is I love this ever. By the way. We’re gonna pause, go get this book, because this is what she literally wrote a book about success with real estate, mailers. It’s on Amazon. It’s got great reviews. Please go there’s a link to that in our show notes. I’m sorry. Continue. Good, you good. So let’s

Janine Sasso 28:21
break it, I guess down for the mailers because they might be like, Okay, we’re talking a garage sale. And now we’re going back to a book like where’s the connection? So I’ll break down the connector for you guys. When it comes to mailers, you have three calls to actions, right. And I kind of have them described as a stoplight. So if you think about red, orange, or yellow, whichever color you want to have there and green. Red is the hardest call to action you can have which is come schedule an appointment. Yet every single agent puts on their mailer, something along the lines of Call today for your free consultation.

D.J. Paris 28:56
Who does that nobody calls nobody gonna call and I

Janine Sasso 28:59
don’t want to consultation, right? It’s like a timeshare. I’m like, No, I don’t want to sit through a free breakfast so I can use all the timeshare. I don’t want it. But it’s hard, right? It’s hard to get an appointment booked from a mailer, a piece of paper. So the second step and that’s the one I use for the garage sales strategy is registrations. It is not quite as difficult to get people to say, hey, I’ll register for that. Because if something changes, they can just say, hey, something happened. I’m gonna have to back out. Okay, no problem, right? We have that happened was our seller sometimes. Well, I was scheduled a listing appointment and then we get a message like, Hey, I forgot about this appointment or hey, can we you know, again, it’s okay. They registered and now I can continue on with my follow up, right. And then the easiest way, by far when it comes to postcards is simply Hey, I already went ahead and put you free home value report. And you can get it right over here and we Just drive them to a website to offer them a free home evaluation at the push of a button. Right? Three o’clock in the morning, three o’clock at night. It doesn’t matter they can get.

D.J. Paris 30:13
Yeah, I like that. I like that I’m with you on the red, the red light part about call for a free consultation that just doesn’t appeal to most people. The other two options seem much, much, much stronger. But I love the idea of say, hey, just get a free home evaluation. But doing it via postcard, as opposed to where most people will do those is via email. And that’s okay, too. But it’s a little bit. It’s a little bit easier to ignore on email, I believe. And that’s my my guess. Because we all just get flooded with emails, we don’t really get flooded with mailers anymore. It just doesn’t happen. And I was going to ask you why you chose postcards over you know, envelope types of mailers. But I’m guessing it’s because it’s one less step. And it’s cheaper?

Janine Sasso 31:06
Well, I actually do both. So postcards was just you know, what everybody ended up knowing me for. But it’s really the the print marketing behind it, right. So we do have microphones we work for, you know, people that have been in the house for 15 years or more like some of them will get a note card, we do a color like a color coded system. So we can like batch create them and then it just like, Okay, we just send out based on color. So it’s really simple to keep track of a lot of the things, postcards, they are just simply the easy button of you know, somebody like we have a local printer. And we do recommend everybody typically does go with a local printer when it comes to EDDM mailings. Because it will cut down on shipping costs and the local printer oftentimes can also drop off directly to the designated mailing office that it needs to go to. So local printers have always been my recommendation for agents to utilize on that. And it’s like it’s just easy, right? You just design the front, the back, you send it off to print, and then from there, it gets delivered. It doesn’t have that extra step like you said.

D.J. Paris 32:14
And so but you do both. So let’s talk about the envelope mailers as well. So you started with postcards, and now you’re doing both. What do you do for the open meat, you know, kind of mailers?

Janine Sasso 32:27
That opened me? Okay, so that one is bought off my follow up? When somebody asked for a home evaluation, right, there has to be a follow up. And the cool thing is was a geographic farm, I really don’t have to worry about too much about what do I do next. Because as I’m concentrated in my geographic farm, I’m always going to have something going on, right? There’s going to be there an event maybe there’s going to be another mailer. Like there’s always a follow up that is already taking off the hassle of whatnot, what’s the next step? Right, because they get to lead people get a leader salary, and they’re like, I got to sell a lead. Now what it’s like and even if I was to drop the ball on the follow up, I know something else is in place, which is fantastic. So little peace of mind there. But the envelope, for example, we use them for a follow up every single month after you say, hey, I want to know what my house was worth. Chances are you’re not going to list with us that day. Sure, what a week, and probably not that month, sometimes you do. But sometimes you don’t. We’ve had people in our follow up for two years. And again, if I just send them one envelope a month, at you know, 66 cents right now for a stamp. Again, I was in office where I can print and the envelope cost me about 11 cents, I think so my follow up to that person 77 cents. And, again, for me to get my name out to make sure I get a listing, I do track it. I don’t have my numbers for this year, I can give you 2021 I was looking at a 10x ROI. So based on I sent 60,000 mailers, I want to say it cost me about 24 grand and 2021 2022 each individual year and well over $240,000 in Commission received. So one to 10 as a return. I’ll take it I keep

D.J. Paris 34:25
mailing Do you know I have lived at so I’m in a new development. And I tell the story all the time. So I apologize to the audience if they’ve heard me say this a million times. But I’m gonna keep saying it because it is exactly what you’re talking about. So I’m in a new development. When I say new it was built three years ago and I was one of the one of the first people to move and we’ve got 40 Some units. Not one, not one mailer have I received in that three years now. You can make the argument well, yeah, you just moved into a new development. You’re not moving. You don’t know that and seven Real people have moved Believe it or not, to at least two couples have these are not my resident, but but some of them are million plus dollar listings. And two of two of those people have actually moved in within those three years. And not there’s 46,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area. Not one of them has sent me a mailer crazy. Well,

Janine Sasso 35:23
I mean, it’s really not that crazy, because everybody is so focused on the social media, right? And that’s like, one of the things that I tell people, it’s like, okay, you have two choices to make, you can continue to go where everybody else is going, right? Because it’s it’s allowed container. If you want to be noticed online, either, you’re going to do something really, really crazy. We all seen the listing agents standing butt naked in front of their listing, going viral and then getting kicked out of the brokerage. Right? We’ve all seen that one. But either you do something really crazy, or you go somewhere else, where it’s not that hard to get attention, right? Because it’s either you’re going to do more, or you’re just going to do it a little bit smarter. So

D.J. Paris 36:03
yeah, and what’s funny is, you know, 30 years ago, mailers, what was everybody was doing, and they moved away from it to go into social because technology has pushed us all in that direction yet, you’re right that that is a much you have to scream pretty loud and social to make any sort of impact, or you’re going to be just creating content, constantly just constant content. And boy that that can be I mean, for a working mom, that’s difficult. So yeah, you’re a single person in your 20s. Yeah, you can make content all day, you can probably do that. But for and I’ll tell you, every postcard I ever receive, I at least look at before I throw it away. I don’t always open every envelope, especially if I know it’s junk mail, like, Oh, this is my credit card company pretending that it’s not my credit card company, you know, one of those, those things where it’s like urgent, open, and you’re like I know this is this is not an urgent open situation. So I toss it, I don’t open everything. But I look at everything that’s a postcard. So that’s also a really, really great point. And it’s also the most inexpensive way. For people that are thinking, Oh, mailers are expensive. Well, are they I mean, if you’re getting a 10x return, I’d like to get a 10x return on any investment I ever make. So I mean, that’s an incredible return. So yes, this is awesome. So tell us, let’s get to the specifics. How often are you mailing? You talked about the follow ups at least once a month? Is there? Is there more to what or is it the same message every month? By the way?

Janine Sasso 37:26
No, I mean, the message itself depends on what’s going on to you, right? I mean, especially like COVID is a prime example. There was a lot going on during that timeframe, our messaging has really, you know, depending on what is happening, like the interest rate being what the interest rate are, right? I mean, that becomes a message message is really dictated by market happenings, and where your prospect is your ideal person. So if you are focused on families, for example, and you’re going back to school, like you’re going to have a lot of other things on your plate, and if you are a retired person looking to downsize, so it goes back to No your ideal person, right? So if you are looking at okay, what is it that that I do? First up, I do not believe, like, you don’t have to mail monthly, like, I’m just gonna put that out there. I do have a big thing where I think you really have to think about who’s telling you, you have to mail monthly.

D.J. Paris 38:23
And people who have the mailing stores

Janine Sasso 38:26
telling you exactly these people will sell you on a 12 month contract, because then they don’t worry about getting another customer for the next 12 months because they just have one. It’s like you have to mail at least 12 months in order to see a return. Now I’ll give you the story for my brand new farm. So I recently expanded into a brand new area. I walked out of it with a listing within the first 30 days. Now, do I have to mail monthly? No. So I personally mail about roughly eight times a year. So with the Chicago market, we do have a little bit of seasons going on. So I have more activity more signs on the ground in the summer. So you will typically see me mail more towards like the later part of the year over the winter when nobody wants to set foot outside into the spring market. Because it’s not my decision to say you know real estate sale to you around it’s matters, what the consumer thinks. And if the consumer things Super Bowl Sunday is the day the spring market kicks off. I just have to come to terms with that. That that is their thinking right? Me trying to explain to them that they’re wrong. It’s going to take much more effort than me just saying okay, fine, you’re right. But we should start in October to talk because otherwise you have missed the prep time and your beautiful spring pictures of your beautiful yard because again, I’m in the suburbs, we put a lot of pride into our you know, curb appeal and our yards. And you can see them in February when it’s all snow covered and blah and all the leaves are gone. So it’s one of those things where you just want to make sure that you really understand your market, which, again, every agent, I’m sure knows their market that they’re in. Right. And then you just act accordingly. So between the eight mailers, and one event, initially, I have since branched out and added a couple of other events for December right now, for example, we are doing letters to Santa for the community. And it’s just again, you make a child smile, and that goes back to my early childhood degree. So again, I’m, you know, I take more to the kids sometimes than the parents. But when you have, you know, little campaigns like that, that make the children happy, and they help the parents take something off their plate, your name just comes along with the goodwill that you’re demonstrating for the community. And that alone, and it needs to be genuine, in my case is very, very genuine. It needs to be genuine. You can’t just do it for the money, right? I could get nothing out of it and still be happy that I’ve done something nice for the community that I live in.

D.J. Paris 41:01
Yeah, I want only because I don’t have children. I just and this is my ignorance. Probably people will ask me what is the letters to Santa things? Explain that to me.

Janine Sasso 41:12
So when I look at the letter to Santa, right, it’s like every kid writes a letter to Santa. And we have put up a mailbox inside the community. And we tell our parents drop it right, make sure you scan our QR code, because in that QR code will now lead them to a Google form. And we just say, hey, we want to make sure your letter doesn’t get lost at the North Pole. So let me know your name. Or your children’s names, let me know where the response letter is getting mailed to. And this year, we added actually a certificate. It’s like Do you want a nice lifts certificate? Or do you want a warning letter off like come on little Johnny Coronavirus, you know, turns up behavior. I love that. Um, so that’s what we added this year, and they just fill out the form. Okay, so we get their email, we get their we get their address, they subscribe themselves to our email list with that. And we just send out a letter and continue growing our you know, hyperlinks away,

D.J. Paris 42:11
I just want to put a I just got to get to the end of this. So the letter goes out and it says it’s to the child back from Santa saying, Hey, we got your letter, like what does it say in there? Other than that,

Janine Sasso 42:22
yeah, it says like, hey, thanks so much for your letter. You know, me and Mrs. Claus are really excited to come down and you know, visit your house soon. Rudolph was excited, I know, you’re probably going to leave me a cookie, something along those lines. And if we have a parent, adding something in the special notes feels like, Hey, can you mention like he’s been really good was his new baby, you know, baby sister, we squeeze that one in there, we customize it a little bit for them, and then we’ll send it up in the mail. And they love it. They love it.

D.J. Paris 42:56
You know, I was just thinking as a child, I wrote a lot of letters to say no, because that’s what you do. And I never got one back. So that is awesome. I, I didn’t even know that was an option. So I am I am. I’m being educated. But guys think of how exciting this would be for a child to get a letter back. And probably unless, unless I would just my parents just didn’t know about these things. I never got one. So I imagine a lot of people didn’t. So you’re right, even even if it doesn’t translate into a deal. It almost certainly will at some point, because you’re doing something that is very, very special for that family. And it’s not expensive. It’s really pretty inexpensive. Yeah,

Janine Sasso 43:36
I mean, the the letters to Santa last year, we brought just over 100. So you know, I’m looking at $66 that I spent in postage. Again, this was not an expensive campaign, but it had a huge impact of just having somebody really feel grateful for having you there as a community expert as a hyperlocal agent of choice. And then again, if they have friends looking to move into the neighborhood, if they are having parents that need to sell, right, that is that part of goodwill, we were like, Hey, you should talk to Janine right? And you should have a conversation. Or you should at least interview her. I know you have your best friend was an agent, but at least maybe interview her right? It gets our name out there with them. And I can it’s easy to do because I don’t have to worry about when do I do my follow up. I could do my letters to Santa and just get them out at 11 o’clock at night. Like I can do the activity itself. Regardless of you know, the working hours per se, again, when you go back to being a mom. You know, I know we tried to schedule this episode and I’m like, Well, I’m driving my kid. 12 o’clock comes along. I’m like, my kids going to school and I’m the designated driver. Right then three o’clock rolls around. I’m like, all of a sudden there’s pick up again. And it’s like, my day is spent in the car a lot and I know I’m not the only one which is why postcards and envelopes and mailers have been so fun. Giving, just this week I put a post up. And it was all about my calendar mailers. And I said, what other lead generation activity lets you do this at, you know, 11 o’clock at night, in your rubber ducky bathrobe and get developed eight leads out of it. Like there’s not many other lead gen and you can do it during normal business hours, of course, right. But it’s like, it’s the flexibility that it allows, you know, as parents who want it all, because I know I’m not alone, when I say I want to have a really good career, I also want to be there when it comes time to pick up my kids from school to make breakfast could be there for dinner, right. And so it’s like trying to fit all of this into a 24 hour period is sometimes a little rough. But this is why postcards and mailers, emails have really afforded me that lifestyle. I know other agents can have too, which

D.J. Paris 45:53
versus doing things on social, which really requires more attention, more energy more time, because social media is really best done in as a two way communication, right? You might post something, someone writes you back, you’re gonna want to continue to engage with them. So that of course, you build a relationship from there, but postcards are really a one way. And that frees up your time to continue to do mom activities work on other parts of your business, and you’re not constantly you know, 24/7 Checking your Instagram and Facebook. Did I reply to every comment that I did? I it’s it’s a lot of work.

Janine Sasso 46:32
Well, it’s that and it’s like, every time I have like this content creation worthy moment where I’m like, Oh, I gotta you know, I gotta get it on camera. I’m like, my kid sits there. And he was like, you know, talking to grandpa on the phone on my phone. So it’s like, my phone is occupied, because he needed to FaceTime his Papaw or, you know, he was just because I’m still working at like, are trying to work and do something at four o’clock. I’m like, hey, here, watch a YouTube episode, right? Or where we’re out running errands, and he’s got my phone. I’m like, I can’t even record what I’m doing. Because my phone is occupied. I’m a little guy. So there’s a struggle there. Oh,

D.J. Paris 47:11
quick question about when you identified your farm, then you had to collect the data of that community? Did you? Do are there certain services? You recommend to pay for that? Or how do you recommend sort of collecting all the neighborhood information?

Janine Sasso 47:28
You have MLS access, right? So you know what’s happening in your areas, you have tax record access. So for those listeners that do not have anything like that, obviously there is the title companies, there’s really no need to pay for a service giving you data. And I’ll, I’ll give you the example for my email list. I do not purchase an email list for my neighborhood, I compare it to when we as real estate agents get messages, hey, I have a new healthcare quote for you. Do you want it? I am very annoyed with it. If I personally do not like it, why would I want to do that to somebody else, and I don’t care if it’s an SMS, if it’s an email, if I do not seek out the information from you, and you just decide to buy a list from somebody and then start spamming me, you’re gonna put a certain taste in my mouth that I personally don’t like. It is a little bit more effort to collect the emails on your own through open houses through the Senate, letter to Santa campaign. But your open rates will be better, your click rate will be better. And with that, again, it’s not about you know, those vanity metrics of I have 3000 people on my list, it’s like, you could have 300 people on your list and be extremely profitable, more so profitable if these people actually want to hear from you. So it goes back to vanity metrics on social media. It’s the same for geographic farming, right? I’ll get scooped up on those. So

D.J. Paris 49:00
you so you wouldn’t purchase a list of a geographic farm and just start mailing out? You?

Janine Sasso 49:06
Well, so purchase a list of emails and phone numbers.

D.J. Paris 49:10
Okay, so I know you don’t do that. So you’re only directly digitally marketing to people that you’ve had some sort of connection, you’ve met them. Now for mailers you do you would buy a list of of that area.

Janine Sasso 49:23
So for mailers, the EDDM is an app service available through the United States Postal Service, right. So that part is readily available, there is no need to, you know, have any secret connection, it just you can you can do it as an individual agent. And that part alone has helped me. Now if I go and find individual addresses and say, Hey, I only want to look at people who’ve lived in their house for 15 years. And I want to send them something a little bit more specific that states Hey, after having lived in your house for such a long time, you know sometimes the thought about moving comes up I just want you to To know that I am here, whenever you’re ready, if you’re not ready to move, that’s fine. You live in a perfectly amazing neighborhood, you and I both know that, you know, wishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever it is. But if I look at like these types of marketing campaigns, we have tax record access, or title company, depending on you know, where you’re listening from, we really don’t need to pay anybody anything to get that data. And then it’s just a matter of Oh, yeah, that’s a fair bit of a right and sweat equity. Which one do you want to put in? Do you want to pay a service to get it done? Or do you want to stuff the envelope themselves? And put in spec? S, but equity? So? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 50:42
it’s a good question. And I you just brought up a really strong point for anyone listening who’s like, how do I get access to this kind of information, reach out to lenders reach out to title companies, attorneys. Between those three resources, somebody will be able to get you the data that you want. And title companies, attorneys, and lenders all want your business. So they want you to be successful. So yes, leverage your relationships with the other professionals.

Janine Sasso 51:14
Absolutely. So I mean, obviously, then there are other ways. And right now we’re exploring a CRM that will have an integrated postcard, you know, service with it. And I tried it. So far, loving everything about it. So you know, I’m in the middle of getting all of this built out. It is really, really powerful when you are starting to have QR codes, and then you add those to your mailing pieces. And I was sharing that in one of my groups yesterday, I send out a mailing to 90 or 75 homes roughly. And I had a QR code on there that was trackable per house per address. So far, I got two scans back. And it states the name of the person, it states the address of the person the campaign of came from. So these are now leads that I can follow up on based on a QR code scan. Right. So super powerful direct mail has evolved. So so much. And it’s not just paper anymore, it is smart paper. And people need to see where the gaps are for the attention, and then go after that one. Don’t go down the mainstream of AI, right. I mean, yes, I use AI to a certain degree in my business, it is not to create 365 pieces of content for the week. Right? It is it this is what everybody is trying to do more and more and more. Don’t go where everybody’s gone. Go the other way.

D.J. Paris 52:39
Yeah, and, and go where people will have enough attention to see your message, social media, you’re fighting, you’re fighting a lot of different people for that attention, mail, you’re not fighting that many people. And you know, you’re fighting a couple of catalog companies and a few credit card companies that’s about it. I mean, I don’t even get I don’t even think my banks and I don’t even think my bank sends me statements. They have it for years, you know, in the mail, so I literally get almost no mail. So I get excited when I get a postcard. Or, gosh, a handwritten note, I’d probably fall over some, I get just a couple of those a year or two. That’s another amazing thing. Now that’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to do it, but boy, you want really great return, you know, but if you’re getting a 10x on you know, doing an audit through an automated system that’s a pretty pretty strong that now for people that you don’t yet know that you’re sending stuff out to you haven’t yet met them. How are you? Because I know that people that you have that are in your lead list are getting about eight mailers a year. What about the people who aren’t yet who haven’t yet raised their hand, but you’ve you’ve put them into your you know, into your mailing

Janine Sasso 53:53
actually it’s the reverse weight so people that I have not you know, people in my farm all of them about eight mailings a year people that have raised their hand they do not go on a monthly

D.J. Paris 54:07
got it so they get more got it

Janine Sasso 54:09
they get a little bit of I love it. So you know they raise their hand they took the next step so now it’s up to me to take my next step and and that again builds that relationship right there I’m watching from the sideline they might have seen my sign they might just watch and see you she actually able to do it she actually gonna sell it and it’s like oh they’re so sold writer she did it you know what the sign came down? You know what it’s time for her to come over to my house and have a conversation people need to form trust

D.J. Paris 54:39
Absolutely. And and now with QR codes like you were saying on the mailers everything can be tracked you so I think well we don’t really know what the return or the return on investment necessarily. It’s kind of hard to how many people even you know, check this out. Well now with QR codes, everything’s trackable. So that’s to say

Janine Sasso 54:55
so I know we’re gonna have a recording on there. So I guess sometimes the video people get a little bit of an X One. So this one here is just, you know, I’m holding up a screenshot right now showing what the QR code messages look like. So if you have that video, you know, you can see it, it’s just the name just like I described it, it has the name, it has the address in itself, you get real time notified real time notification. And the interesting part is, these people did not complete our opt in form. So all they did was they scan, and then they stuck. They’re like, Oh, I have to enter my information. I’m not gonna do that. That’s okay. You don’t have to anymore. I’m already there. So I already know, what

D.J. Paris 55:33
does each person have? It’s their own unique QR code, or is it just what? Oh,

Janine Sasso 55:40
I getting fancy for 2024. So that is fancy. It’s, it’s starting to take shape. Again, that’s part of what we’ve been working on at the hyper local agent to make it more affordable and accessible for real estate agents, who are not mega teams who do not have a marketing budget that is bazillions of dollars. And it’s like, putting data back in front of the agent that you know, should have it and not the companies was holding that information. It’s our little thing we’re working on. I

D.J. Paris 56:15
love it. And Janine has all sorts of courses that you should check out at the at. Sorry,

Janine Sasso 56:21
I got asked so many questions. Over the years since I started sharing what I’m doing. Everyone’s like, how do you do this? And every now and then there’s a course that comes out for it. My Calendars. For example, my garage sale is on there, because people ask what do you do? Or how do you do it? There is a process because I actually, you could have seen me on TV was the garage sale, I had Fox 32 news report on my garage sale about two years ago, because we had 180 sellers, and it was wild. And the streets were packed. And it was crowded. And it was amazing. So

D.J. Paris 56:58
yeah, I love that. And so guys, I think this is a great really a great place to wrap up because I really want I think we’ve made the case mailers work in 2023 2024. We anticipate being just as successful with these because why shouldn’t they be and no one’s doing it. So let’s start doing it. And it’s it’s not as expensive as it sounds. And yet, you may need to give it a couple of years, you may need to think, Hey, I’m going to be doing this for a couple of years. And you know what, faster? Well, Janine says no, Denise says it’s, you’re gonna get you’re gonna get results faster than that. But I am telling you even even if you just keep doing it, you will, you will get absolutely results because you’re gonna follow Janine method. And you’re going to do that because you’re going to pick up her book, which is success with real estate mailers on Amazon, or you’re going to and or you’re going to also check out all the different courses. She has some really cool ones. Like, what if I want to do a fun comic, like comic book style mailers, she has a course on that, like, that’s cool, right? That’s fun. She has some a bunch of free stuff as well for different lead gen ideas, how to do garage sales, how to do you know all sorts of geographic farming quarterly newsletters, green screen course how to actually use green screens for video stuff. And anyway, she’s got really, really cool stuff. She has even monopoly style mailers, you can have really a lot of fun. So she’s got a lot of it’s for free. And some of it costs money, but it’s all worth your time, and your resources. So if you go to the hyperlocal agent.com, you’ll see all of her different courses. And again, the book is success with real estate mailers, which is available anywhere books are sold to certainly on online as well as Amazon, we’ll have a link to that. Now. And I also want to say for anyone listening who is like, this sounds pretty cool. But maybe I could partner with Janine and maybe I’m a local Chicago agent, and I kind of want to do what Jeanine is doing and maybe I’d be a good fit for her team. So if you are somebody that wants to geographically farm and maybe want to partner with Janine, in particular, in any way that makes sense, you can reach out to her. Also, if you’re an agent who has, maybe you don’t live in Chicago, of course, most of our most of our listeners don’t. And you want a good agent to refer business to if any of your clients are moving to the suburban area, Janine would love the opportunity to develop a referral relationship with you. And of course, she has people you know, here in Chicago guys is as people get older, they go south, a lot of them leave and they go to Florida and Arizona and Texas and lots of places where it’s a lot warmer, so she has referrals that she needs to start sending out as well. So wouldn’t be the worst idea to reach out to her and maybe put her on your mailing list and start mailing her ever I mean, honestly, it’s not the worst idea. Natalie like, because Janine is going to get honestly about 50 people who reached out to her after this after we published this episode, so stand stand apart. But you know whether You’re not you reach out to Janine and partner with her or just will read her book or go to one of her courses. She’s the real deal. I think she’s proven that in this conversation, she’s super, no nonsense, here’s exactly what to do. And it works. In fact, Ginni, and I want to invest with you. And I want to give you all my money, because I want a 10x return. So I may just deposit money into your bank account. And you could, you could do the heavy lifting, I teach you how

Janine Sasso 1:00:25
to because you are in charge of your business, right?

D.J. Paris 1:00:28
Oh, darn it, I gotta do it myself.

Janine Sasso 1:00:31
And you can train the assistant, it’ll be the best asset in your business promise.

D.J. Paris 1:00:35
And you’re absolutely right, with a 10x return, you can hire an assistant, you can have somebody basically stuffing envelopes, doing some of the heavy lifting, or just designing it or whatever, when you’re getting that kind of return. It really frees up even more of your time because you can then delegate. So that’s the

Janine Sasso 1:00:53
biggest part. You don’t have to scale, you can just increase the quantity increase the money, and it scales beyond anything else. You don’t have to hire additional isas. You don’t have to do anything else other than scale up, which is really

D.J. Paris 1:01:06
Janine, I’m gonna, I want to ask you one last question, because I recruit Realtors for my company. And this is just such great timing, because we have planned our 2024 How are we going to recruit agents? And yes, of course, we’re going to email everyone you have to you know, of course, we’re going to be sending a monthly email with a cute little whatever. But our main focus is not email and it’s not social media. It is mailers. Funny enough. Now I want to ask here’s my question to you. How many recruiting emails do you get from other brokerages? Because look, the reason I’m asking telling this and I want you everyone to stay tuned while I’m while Janine is answering because everyone’s you know, right now, people are exploring other brokerages or they’re thinking of creating a team, or they already have a team and they want to grow their team. So recruiting is going on. Outside of people like me who recruit for a brokerage, you might just be wanting to start a team or build your team even further. So you probably get a lot of recruiting emails, I’m guessing. So

Janine Sasso 1:02:06
the recruiting is one of those things where, you know, I like to look and see how I feel after I got to recruiting. I’m not a feely person. But it’s like, it’s interesting, because we will feel first before our brain kicks and analyzes. Right? So I always see like, how do I feel about it, and I do have like, a lot of them actually come in via SMS. So they are paying services, I will say the SMS are mediocre at best. So they are getting deleted right away. There’s people that I actually know, since I am a trainer, there’s also like I said, a lot of people that I have relationships with, and that I’m now on a list. So I feel like it’s very impersonal. So you know, the, the SMS, not connecting. And

D.J. Paris 1:02:54
by the way, nobody really wants to get an SMS from somebody they don’t we just don’t share

Janine Sasso 1:02:58
anything. You know, it’s like, hey, no, you cannot. It’s very impersonal. It’s, you know, I didn’t ask for that. So it’s you know,

D.J. Paris 1:03:07
so you get a lot of too

Janine Sasso 1:03:11
many emails, it is just the emails, the way they are presented, the more polished an email looks, the faster it goes in the in the spam folder, right? So the emails I send are more like newsletter or not newsletter more like journal entries, right? It’s like a little life update on like bringing people into my story. So there are different, which is also why my open rate on my emails is typically about 50 to 60%. And it’s one of those things where you really just think things through, like, how do you feel about it? What do you want the person to feel? Right? And when you look at recruiting from a piece of mail, it’s gonna stick around longer. Make sure you have a really good call to action, not just sign up was my brokerage today. Right?

D.J. Paris 1:03:53
Yeah, cuz no one does that either. And, but how many mailer recruiting mailers Do you receive as an agent per year? Zero, she just showed zero, guys. So this is my point. Nobody is doing this. Whether you’re trying to find for your own business and find clients or you’re a guy like me, who needs to recruit for your team or your brokerage? This is the missed opportunity. Yes, it’s a little bit more expensive, although not really, actually now that I think about it, it actually isn’t because I pay for email services, I pay for people to help with content. All of this costs money, it’s really probably not that much different from mailing.

Janine Sasso 1:04:32
That’s not and your attention is going to be much more focused on it.

D.J. Paris 1:04:36
Well, guys, everyone should be mailing in 2024. Janine Sasso is the queen of the real estate, mailers. I dumped her that. So that’s not an official title, but you’re actually not the

Janine Sasso 1:04:47
first one who came up with a title so you know, I’ve heard it before interest. Maybe you should make this my thing. So

D.J. Paris 1:04:53
could be your brand. Well, you’re the queen of it on our podcast. How about that? That for sure. So Janine Has woke up to send her a tiara and a sash.

Janine Sasso 1:05:05
So I will go.

D.J. Paris 1:05:07
Oh gosh. Now I have to go get a tiara and a sash. All right. Well, everyone, please go out and get yourself real estate, mailers, the sorry success with real estate mailers, the Book link to it on Amazon. And if you’re not a want to read books, she’s got all sorts of odd video courses as well. Go check it out and written courses. She’s the real deal. She’s also an instructor, and that’s her backgrounds education. That’s what she’s good at. So why not reach out and partner with her? Check out her? All of the resources, the hyper local agent.com is where you can find everything Janine, funny. It was funny at the very beginning. Before we started, I asked you and I go, what social Do you want me to promote? She’s like, No. And I was like, oh, yeah, of course. You’re the mailer person. So it was it was real. But she is also on every social platform. She’s she’s all over social. So sad to say hi to her there as well. But certainly check out for 2020 forecast, let’s let’s all have a better 2020 More than 2023 2023 was tough. It’s tough. It was a tough year this year. But you probably weren’t doing mailers. So next year, probably going to be tough, too. So let’s go ahead and try to make it as easy on ourselves as possible, especially those of us with part time jobs or our our moms or dads, you know, raising children. Your time is valuable. And you know, just posting content of you at the gym every morning showing how fit you are. Yes, that’s cool. And yes, that maybe might get you a deal or two. But that’s not really really what people want, right? People want something that is specific to their particular needs. And Jeannie is going to show you how to do that through her mailing system. So All right, guys. Janine has to run up. She has been amazing. On behalf of everyone listening. Janine, thank you for your time. Janine is a very, very busy mom. Thank you. Thank you. And on behalf of Janine and myself, we say thank you to our audience. Thanks for sticking around to the end. Please tell a friend, please support our sponsors. Please support Janine and reach out to her tell her that you loved her on this episode. She would appreciate it. All right, Janine, thank you so much. You are amazing. I will see everybody on the next episode.

Janine Sasso 1:07:08
I’m keeping it real.

Episode 144: Nico Walker (teaser)