Real Estate Marketing Gets Desperate - and Creative
Checked the mail today, and from among the stack of envelopes I opened the one addressed by hand first. As it turns out, it was a solicitation from a luxury condo building being constructed a few blocks from ours. The two sheets of paper had a post-it note hand written with “Thought of you. -EM” and I thought to myself, I don’t know those initials. The enclosed letter was made to look as if it were a draft, with “Draft: not for public distribution” typed at the top. The content contained within (and I just skimmed) was the basic rundown of what was still available in the building. We’re talking expensive condos here, over a million dollars just to walk through the door - clearly with two properties and the current state of the economy we’re not in the market at all.
I commented to Kevin that it was amusing how much work had gone into this particular marketing campaign of theirs. Each of the hand addressed envelopes, each of the handwritten post-it notes. Probably hundreds of them. While I can appreciate the desire to make it seem like I am an insider from a marketing standpoint, as a consumer my first thought is, “do you seriously think I’m this stupid?”. The machinations are so clear that its obnoxious, and anyone not smart enough to realize this isn’t actually a personalized correspondence is unlikely to have the money needed to respond to the call to action and buy a place.
