If your agency sends prospecting letters, someone will soon ask whether to keep paying for them. For a lot of agencies that question lands at renewal, and the honest answer is usually “we think it works”. That isn't a criticism. Most agencies have never been given a way to answer it. The letters are sent from one system, the valuations are booked in another, often months apart, and nobody joins the two up. It's worth joining them up now. Zoopla's September index has the number of homes for sale 5% higher than a year ago and sales agreed 9% lower. More homes failing to sell means more to prospect for. It also means every marketing cost is being looked at more closely, and prospecting is usually the hardest one to defend, because nobody can put a number against it. This guide sets out a manual method any agency can use to get that number from its own records. You don't need to buy anything. You need a spreadsheet, your mailing records and an afternoon. ## Why most agencies can't answer the question Three things usually get in the way. The record of what was sent sits with the supplier, not with you. You might get a monthly summary of how many letters went out, but not always a list of which addresses received them and when. Valuations aren't tagged by what prompted them. When a vendor calls to book a market appraisal, the source is either not asked or recorded as whatever the negotiator remembers. “Saw your board” and “been meaning to call you” cover a lot of ground. The gap between letter and valuation is long. A vendor who receives a letter in October might not pick up the phone until February. By then, nobody connects the two. The result is that the supplier's figures become the only figures, and those are usually averages across other agencies rather than results from yours. ## A manual method you can use this month **1. Get the full send list.** Ask your supplier for every address mailed in the last 12 months, with the date of each letter. If they can only give you totals, that tells you something in itself. **2. Export your valuations.** From your CRM (customer relationship management system, where your contacts and properties are held), export every market appraisal booked over the same period plus three months, with the property address and booking date. Add the outcome if you can: instructed, not instructed or still open. **3. Clean the addresses.** Put both lists in a spreadsheet and create a matching key for each property, for example the postcode with spaces removed plus the house number or name. Addresses are rarely typed the same way twice, and this step decides how good your match is. **4. Match the two lists.** Use a lookup formula to find every valuation at an address that received a letter beforehand. Keep the date of the first letter and the date of the valuation side by side. **5. Set a time window and stick to it.** Decide how long after a letter you'll count a valuation, for example six or twelve months, and apply it to everything. A longer window gives the letters more credit, so write down which one you chose and use it again next time. **6. Take out the ones you'd have had anyway.** Remove previous clients, anyone already in your system as an active vendor or applicant before the letter arrived, and anyone who had already booked a valuation. What's left is the fairest estimate of what the letters produced. **7. Follow it through to money.** Count how many matched valuations became instructions, how many of those completed, and the fees they earned. Then divide your total prospecting cost, including letters, print, postage and any subscription, by the number of matched valuations and by the number of matched instructions. You now have a cost per valuation and a cost per instruction for your own agency. Set those against your average fee and you have a far better basis for the renewal conversation than anyone else's average. ## ## What the number will and won't tell you Be clear about what this shows. A match means a homeowner received a letter and later booked a valuation. It doesn't prove the letter made them call. Some would have called anyway, and some matches will be missed because an address was typed differently. That's fine. You're not looking for a perfect figure. You're looking for a figure built from your own records that you can check, repeat and improve. It's also more useful split up than as one total. Run it by branch, and by the type of property you mailed, such as withdrawn listings, expired contracts with other agents or homes that have been owned for a long time. You'll usually find that some letters do far more work than others, and that the cheapest improvement is sending fewer of the ones that don't. Resist comparing your result with published response rates. They're averaged across agencies with different patches, fees and follow up, and they tell you very little about your own business. ## Questions to ask before you renew If your prospecting contract is coming up for renewal, these questions will tell you a lot about whether you can measure what you're paying for. • Can you give us a list of every address you mailed for us, with dates? • Can that record sit in our CRM, rather than only in your reporting? • Can we see and approve what goes out before it's sent? • Can we choose which types of property to mail, and leave out the ones that don't work for us? • What does each letter cost us, including print and postage? If the answers are mostly no, the method above is the only way you'll get a number. If they're mostly yes, it becomes much easier. ## ## Make it a quarterly habit Doing this once is useful. Doing it every quarter is where it pays. Letters sent in October and November often show up as valuations in January and February, when homeowners who made their decision over Christmas start booking appraisals. Start the record now and you'll have a real answer by the spring, well before most renewals come round again. ## If your agency uses Reapit This is the problem Homesearch Prospector is built to solve. Every letter it sends is written back into Reapit against the property it went to, and every valuation that follows is matched to the letter that produced it. The matching in steps one to four happens for you, and the record lives in your CRM rather than in a supplier's dashboard, so you can check it yourself. We'd rather show you your own number than quote you an average. [**See how Prospector works**](https://agents.homesearch.co.uk/product/prospector)

Table of contents

If your agency sends prospecting letters, someone will soon ask whether to keep paying for them. For a lot of agencies that question lands at renewal, and the honest answer is usually “we think it works”.

That isn't a criticism. Most agencies have never been given a way to answer it. The letters are sent from one system, the valuations are booked in another, often months apart, and nobody joins the two up.

It's worth joining them up now. Zoopla's September index has the number of homes for sale 5% higher than a year ago and sales agreed 9% lower. More homes failing to sell means more to prospect for. It also means every marketing cost is being looked at more closely, and prospecting is usually the hardest one to defend, because nobody can put a number against it.

This guide sets out a manual method any agency can use to get that number from its own records. You don't need to buy anything. You need a spreadsheet, your mailing records and an afternoon.

Why most agencies can't answer the question

Three things usually get in the way.

The record of what was sent sits with the supplier, not with you. You might get a monthly summary of how many letters went out, but not always a list of which addresses received them and when.

Valuations aren't tagged by what prompted them. When a vendor calls to book a market appraisal, the source is either not asked or recorded as whatever the negotiator remembers. “Saw your board” and “been meaning to call you” cover a lot of ground.

The gap between letter and valuation is long. A vendor who receives a letter in October might not pick up the phone until February. By then, nobody connects the two.

The result is that the supplier's figures become the only figures, and those are usually averages across other agencies rather than results from yours.

A manual method you can use this month

1. Get the full send list. Ask your supplier for every address mailed in the last 12 months, with the date of each letter. If they can only give you totals, that tells you something in itself.

2. Export your valuations. From your CRM (customer relationship management system, where your contacts and properties are held), export every market appraisal booked over the same period plus three months, with the property address and booking date. Add the outcome if you can: instructed, not instructed or still open.

3. Clean the addresses. Put both lists in a spreadsheet and create a matching key for each property, for example the postcode with spaces removed plus the house number or name. Addresses are rarely typed the same way twice, and this step decides how good your match is.

4. Match the two lists. Use a lookup formula to find every valuation at an address that received a letter beforehand. Keep the date of the first letter and the date of the valuation side by side.

5. Set a time window and stick to it. Decide how long after a letter you'll count a valuation, for example six or twelve months, and apply it to everything. A longer window gives the letters more credit, so write down which one you chose and use it again next time.

6. Take out the ones you'd have had anyway. Remove previous clients, anyone already in your system as an active vendor or applicant before the letter arrived, and anyone who had already booked a valuation. What's left is the fairest estimate of what the letters produced.

7. Follow it through to money. Count how many matched valuations became instructions, how many of those completed, and the fees they earned. Then divide your total prospecting cost, including letters, print, postage and any subscription, by the number of matched valuations and by the number of matched instructions.

You now have a cost per valuation and a cost per instruction for your own agency. Set those against your average fee and you have a far better basis for the renewal conversation than anyone else's average.

What the number will and won't tell you

Be clear about what this shows. A match means a homeowner received a letter and later booked a valuation. It doesn't prove the letter made them call. Some would have called anyway, and some matches will be missed because an address was typed differently.

That's fine. You're not looking for a perfect figure. You're looking for a figure built from your own records that you can check, repeat and improve.

It's also more useful split up than as one total. Run it by branch, and by the type of property you mailed, such as withdrawn listings, expired contracts with other agents or homes that have been owned for a long time. You'll usually find that some letters do far more work than others, and that the cheapest improvement is sending fewer of the ones that don't.

Resist comparing your result with published response rates. They're averaged across agencies with different patches, fees and follow up, and they tell you very little about your own business.

Questions to ask before you renew

If your prospecting contract is coming up for renewal, these questions will tell you a lot about whether you can measure what you're paying for.

• Can you give us a list of every address you mailed for us, with dates?

• Can that record sit in our CRM, rather than only in your reporting?

• Can we see and approve what goes out before it's sent?

• Can we choose which types of property to mail, and leave out the ones that don't work for us?

• What does each letter cost us, including print and postage?

If the answers are mostly no, the method above is the only way you'll get a number. If they're mostly yes, it becomes much easier.

Make it a quarterly habit

Doing this once is useful. Doing it every quarter is where it pays. Letters sent in October and November often show up as valuations in January and February, when homeowners who made their decision over Christmas start booking appraisals. Start the record now and you'll have a real answer by the spring, well before most renewals come round again.

If your agency uses Reapit

This is the problem Homesearch Prospector is built to solve. Every letter it sends is written back into Reapit against the property it went to, and every valuation that follows is matched to the letter that produced it. The matching in steps one to four happens for you, and the record lives in your CRM rather than in a supplier's dashboard, so you can check it yourself.

We'd rather show you your own number than quote you an average.

See how Prospector works

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