Best Company for Real Estate Flyers

Reader Question: I have used those flyer companies and I wonder if the flyers got anywhere. I asked some friends and they didn't receive one. Do you know which flyer company is the most reliable?

You were right to add the names of some friends to your mailing list. This is a good practice in direct mail marketing. It's referred to as "seeding" the list. If you seeded your list with legitimate addresses, but the real estate flyers did not reach some recipients, then there's a problem.

Sometimes you can have a legitimate mailing address that is formatted differently from postal specifications -- at least, as far as the flyer company is concerned. Some direct mail companies will validate your mailing list when you upload it to their website. This is a useful process, because it flags any addresses that might be a problem for some reason. Often, the street name will be written differently than how it's listed in the U.S. postal database. This validation process alerts you of such problems and gives you the opportunity to correct the problem.

My advice is to do a bit of list maintenance and verification to make sure all of your addresses are good. I also recommend using a direct mail / flyer company that offers an address validation service of some kind. Some companies allow you to purchase a mailing list during the flyer ordering process. Most of them get their data from a partner company such as InfoUSA.

To the best of my knowledge, Express Copy offers this kind of mailing list service. You can find some deals on their printing services through this site. You'll have to do some homework to find out if they offer the real estate flyer format you're after.