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Natascha Pieper, director of marketing and sales, Baywood Homes, wanted to peak people's curiosity. Her job was to make an unusual downtown development stand out in the city's cutthroat condo market. The tactile direct mail piece Pieper and her marketing team came up with certainly tapped into the neighborhood zeitgeist. Of course, not every project can benefit from such an over-the-top creative approach, but in the highly competitive real estate market, many developers and builders are turning to personalized direct mail to help them reach their own niche markets. The marketing of a real estate project near Collingwood, Ont, this past winter might be considered one example of the ultimate in direct mail personalization. The first step in selling The Orchard development was to mail inexpensive, oversize glossy postcards. While there is no guarantee response rates will always be this stellar, personalized direct mail has proven highly effective across the real estate sector.

Natascha Pieper wanted to peak people's curiosity. As director of marketing and sales for Bavwood Homes in Toronto, her job was to make an unusual downtown development-the Bohemian Embassy-stand out in the city's cutthroat condo market. An additional challenge? Her target market, the close-knit Queen Street West artistic community, was well-known as a skeptical crowd.

For Pieper, the project wasn't so much about attracting outsiders into the Queen Street area, as it was about communicating with the people who already accepted this funky location and who lived or worked in the neighbourhood. "This is not your typical condominium project where you have residents who aren't associated with one another," she says. "Because most of them are artists, they all share a common interest"

The tactile direct mail piece Pieper and her marketing team came up with certainly tapped into the neighbourhood Zeitgeist. Imagine reaching into a mailbox and feeling, not the expected cool smoothness of paper, but something almost warm and fuzzy-a brighdy coloured, personally addressed fabric invitation to a hip-sounding event. "We actually had someone specially produce this piece," says Pieper. "It was expensive, but to get recognition, you have to invest more on something creative." Bright purple, orange and red, the mail piece definitely stood out. And it worked, attracting about half of the 1,000 potential attendees to the Bohemian Embassy's VIP launch.

"Direct mail has definitely been efficient for us because you can reach out to the local community," says Pieper. "We've had so many special events." One in particular, Fashion & Art Workz, combined the efforts of local art galleries and boutiques. It featured artists painting new works, as well as a local-couture fashion show. In fact, the character of the Queen St West area is so embedded in the Bohemian Embassy that it was a focus group of locals who came up with the project's artsy-sounding name.

Of course, not every project can benefit from such an over-the-top creative approach, but in the highly competitive real estate market, many developers and builders are turning to personalized direct mail to help them reach their own niche markets. Like Pieper, some developers are relying on making recipients feel they'll be part of a vibrant special community. Other homebuilders are gleaning detailed information from their own sophisticated databases to target consumers at pivotal moments in their lives. Then there are those who link their direct mail efforts to individualized websites, guaranteeing a strong personalized message across media. But no matter how simple or complex the project, direct mail acts as a core component in most of today's real estate marketing efforts.

Aiming at lifecycle

In a hot real estate market on the other side of the country-but one that's more about bird-watching than hip fashion hunting-the challenge is capturing potential buyers poised to make an important life-altering decision: where to live once they retire. "What we're looking at from an age perspective is people who are around the [age] 50 mark," says Lisa Corcoran, director of marketing at Predator Ridge, a golf resort and affiliated housing community in British Columbia's scenic Okanagan Valley.

Corcoran's specific goal was to launch a unique new area of the Ridge called Osprey Coach Homes. "These were 18 semi-detached houses that have spectacular views overlooking the golf course and the village square beyond, so they were quite high up in an area we hadn't developed before," she explains. To get things rolling, Corcoran developed a three-pronged direct mail program that was closely integrated with the rest of the company's marketing campaign, which included advertising, billboards, e-mail marketing and direct sales.

But it was direct mail that provided many of the insights that drove the wording and lifestyle images key to eventually selling out the Osprey Coach Homes in less than an hour. The first step was to drop 30,000 Addressed Admail(TM) pieces using the names of anyone who had visited the Predator Ridge resort in the past five years. Corcoran also purchased a list that targeted specific neighbourhoods in B.C. and Alberta, as well as some in Ontarion, where buyers of houses in earlier Predator Ridge developments had come from. And the opportunity to win a coveted prize-a weekend at the Predator Ridge Golf Resort-was an added incentive for filling out the form.

Corcoran says this first mailing was purely exploratory, designed to determine what people wanted. "We asked, 'Are you interested in being on a golf course? If yes, what price range are you looking for? How much space do you want? What kind of activities do you participate in?'" As well as determining the size and style of the units, this information reinforced what Corcoran already knew about her audience, and these insights helped in Grafting a letter that would strike the right chord with potential buyers.

The second prong of the mailing series went to roughly 5,500 respondents from the first mailing and additional key contacts. It featured a dramatic die-cut brochure focusing on the potential lifestyle of someone living in an Osprey Coach House. "They are typically golfers but not always, but they are definitely active in their lifestyle," explains Corcoran. "So they are the folks who have a boat at the marina down the road, they ski and they want to be close to everything because they're not dedicated to one specific leisure activity."

The third and final direct mail element, which went to fewer than 500 keenly interested prospects, was a Preview Discovery Kit. Printed on 11 by 17 paper, it provided the gritty details: what the houses would actually look like, their specs, the finishings, when they would be available and how to purchase a golf club membership. "There were various ways people could respond-pick up a phone to call one of our salespeople or e-mail-and we were measuring that response," says Corcoran. "People who had expressed interest could put up a small refundable deposit to secure their place in line to choose their unit. The morning these were released, there were people lined up to purchase. It was quite a day!"

A website...created just for you

The marketing of a real estate project near Collingwood, Ont. this past winter might be considered one example of the ultimate in direct mail personalization. The Orchard, a development of high-end chalet-style homes that start at half a million dollars, was being marketed in partnership with a nearby private ski club, Craigleith. The developers received permission to use the database of the ski club's 1,300 members. And while this project was focused on a particularly wealthy sector, the approach used to make it a success was one that had been tested on more than 100 projects worldwide.

"We apply a formula to come up with the different buyer segments," explains Roman Bodnarchuk, CEO of N5R Realty Advisors in Toronto who developed the marketing strategy. Bodnarchuk has spent nine years researching and refining his knowledge of the specific media and approaches that work best when it comes to selling real estate and condominium developments. To determine where to put its clients' media dollars, N5R used unique URLs and toll-free numbers to track every element, including radio, print, online, direct mail, TV and billboards, of a number of campaigns. The results? In terms of lowest costs per lead, direct mail and online were always the top two.

When it came to direct mail, in particular, Bodnarchuk found that most developers were sending one message and one kind of campaign to everyone. "If it's for empty nesters, you've got people with grey hair on the postcard, and when they go to the website if there are 20-somethings with hard bodies, it doesn't resonate with them; it doesn't work. If they go to a website that also has people with grey hair like them, we, get exceptional response rates."

The first step in selling The Orchard development was to mail inexpensive, oversize glossy postcards. The cards were personalized using digital variable printing, and an individual website address, personsname.theorchard.com, was added to each. Of the 1,300 Craigleith members tracked, 130 people-or 10% of the recipients-visited their own personalized website. "By just doing a couple of things like segmenting your buyers, using digital variable printing and using very inexpensive direct mail postcards-these were not $8 pieces-we got a 10% return," says Bodnarchuk.

While there's no guarantee response rates will always be this stellar, personalized direct mail has proven highly effective across the real estate sector. Whether promoting a funky condo development, an active lifestyle housing community or upscale chalet-style homes, developers and builders can ensure their properties will benefit, rather than be burned, by a hot market.