Direct Mail: Honing in on your Target
By Mark Willinger (Modern Builders Supply)
January 31, 2008
1.) Go to www.zillow.com
2.) In the search bar at the top of the page type in your city and state or zip code and click go.
3.) On left side select recently sold homes, note that you can adjust how recently they have been sold (1,2,3,6 or 12 months)
4.) Underneath the map you will have a list of neighborhoods to select from, choose the any you want.
5.) You will now see a list of recently sold house addresses (click on the address for more information).
6.) Put these addresses into a database (access or excel) and start building you mailing list.
7.) Next go to www.yellowpages.com and click the find a person tab. Then choose find by address on the right side.
8.) Enter the address you just got from zillow and you will find the names of the previous owners (yellowpages.com)
9.) You can create a database with those names and try the phone numbers to see if they had their number transferred to their new house.
10.) Another option would be to put them in a database with the old address and then cross-reference those names at www.switchboard.com (a more updated address listing site) and look for those people with new addresses
11.) Finally if gather those names and then check back in 4 months or so for an updated residence, I would recommend using switchboard.com to look up new address, as yellowpages.com can be a bit behind on updating.
