One Score Never Tells You How to Market a List
Everyone grades a list by how good it is. That is one axis. Every list has two, and they are independent.
A hot list is not automatically a fast deal. A slow list is not automatically a crowded one. Foreclosure closes in weeks and is the most saturated list you can pull. Obituary is the least saturated and moves at the speed of an estate.
Saturation
How much prior marketing the list already absorbed. The fresher and more first-to-market the pull, the higher your connect rate, the more open the owner, and the cheaper the touch that works.
Saturated lists are not dead. They are harder to reach, so they take a stronger caller and premium touches to stand out.
Sales-cycle speed
Where the seller sits in the funnel. Bottom of funnel is forced: a foreclosure 45 days from auction closes now. The middle is decision-based: the owner can sell, nothing makes them.
The top is long nurture: the pipeline you feed for months before it pays.
The rule: the two axes are independent. Saturation sets how you reach the owner. Cycle sets how long you work them. Read both before you spend a dollar.
Every list sits on this map. Where it sits sets the touch plan.
Click any list, on the map or below it, to see its position and what that position tells you to do.
A fresh pull connects on a cold call. Cheapest working touch in the stack.
A door knock is what it costs to stand out on foreclosure.
From auction countdown to sale. Bottom of funnel moves now.
A probate cycle. Top of funnel pays the patient.
Foreclosure
The lis pendens fired months ago and every investor in the county has marketed this owner since.
Touch plan
Premium. Door knock at $25-50 plus handwritten mail. Cheap touches still run here, they are less effective.
Caller
Your strongest. The seller must act within 45 days and ten operators are calling. Caliber decides who gets the contract.
Obituary and deceased
Almost nobody pulls at this level, because the owner cannot answer the phone.
Touch plan
Call, voicemail, then mail. Never a cold text on a deceased list. Deep prospect the heir or executor at $1.50-4.00 per record: Deep Prospecting.
Caller
Empathy over pressure. The list runs 14.8 doors per deal because so few investors compete for it.
First-to-Market courthouse
Low saturation has a clock here: these records are first-to-market only if you pull and market them the same day.
Touch plan
Cheap touches carry it. Cold call first at $0.03-0.06, the $0.01 text follows on non-sensitive categories, mail behind that.
Caller
A standard caller produces here. Expect a 3-6 month cycle and $500-2,000 per contract once the build runs.
Senior, vacant, tired landlord
You cannot pull these from PropStream or DealMachine, which is exactly why the owners still answer.
Touch plan
Cheap touches connect, but the lists are huge. Narrow them with doors per deal first and market only the top cut: Doors Per Deal.
Caller
Standard caliber, standard cadence: 4 full attempts per record. Nothing forces the sale, so consistency beats intensity.
Recent probate
The estate can sell, nothing forces it to. Expect a 4-7 month cycle.
Touch plan
Call, voicemail, mail on a patient cadence. Treat it as sensitive: no cold text, ever.
Caller
Same profile as obituary: measured and question-led. Follow-up cadence closes this list, not the first call.
Everyone's pulls
The standard exports every investor runs. The owner has heard from ten of them this month.
Touch plan
If you work it, expect cheap touches to be less effective and budget premium ones. Better: re-cut it by doors per deal or skip it.
Caller
Stronger than the list deserves. This is the quadrant where average callers burn out and blame the phone.
Three Funnel Bands, One Saturation Check
Funnel position sets the clock. Saturation sets the cost of being heard. The bands make the pairings obvious.
Foreclosure
The sale happens with or without you, 45 days out. It is also the most saturated list in the model: marketing started the day the lis pendens fired.
Door knock it, mail it by hand, staff it with your best caller.
Senior, vacant, tired landlord, recent probate
Can sell, not forced. Low saturation because the big platforms do not carry them. Volume is huge, so narrow with doors per deal and work the top cut on cheap touches.
Obituary sits here too: the least competed list on the map because it is the hardest to reach.
The courthouse pipeline
First-to-Market county pulls and broad probate. This is the consistency engine: $500-2,000 per contract on a 3-6 month cycle once the 25-35 day build runs.
Cheap touches carry the whole layer.
Match the Touch to the Saturation
The fresher the list, the cheaper the touch that connects. Saturation, not habit, decides where each dollar goes.
A text costs a penny. A door knock costs up to $50. Low-saturation lists connect near the penny end. High-saturation lists earn the other end, because the deal closes in weeks.
Deep prospecting at $1.50-4.00 is a reach tool, not a saturation tool. It exists for owners you cannot find, the deceased and their heirs, and it is the reason obituary stays uncrowded. Full channel economics: Channel Cost Per Touch.
Cheap touches do not fail on saturated lists. They get less effective. The $0.01 text and the $0.03 call still run, they need premium touches layered on top and a stronger caller behind them. On a fresh list, they are the whole plan.
Saturated does not mean dead. A foreclosure list still closes, somebody must sell within 45 days. The operators who win it pay for the door knock and put their best caller on it.
Assign Callers Like You Assign Budget
Caller caliber is a resource. Spend it where the noise is loudest, the same way you spend channel dollars.
A caller runs $750-1,000 a month and 150 dials a day. Where those dials land decides what they return. A fresh same-day courthouse pull forgives an average opener. A foreclosure list does not.
Do This
- Pull First-to-Market lists and market them the same day
- Put your strongest caller on foreclosure and other saturated lists
- Door knock the 45-day auction window
- Narrow senior, vacant, and tired landlord by doors per deal first
- Lead every sequence with the cold call
Not This
- Hand a saturated list to your newest caller
- Door knock a fresh list a $0.03 call would connect
- Cold text a deceased, obituary, or probate record
- Call a crowded list dead instead of upgrading the touch
- Grade a list on one axis
A new caller at $750 a month can produce on a same-day courthouse pull in week one. Put that same caller on foreclosure and you will conclude, wrongly, that the caller is broken.
Next live cohort: Monday, September 21 to September 25
5 days live with Ty, free. Built for investors who have already closed at least one deal and want a repeatable pipeline instead of a lucky one. Save your seat in the next cohort. Already in? Use this guide as your between-session refresher.
The Four-Factor List Read
Run four checks on any list before it reaches a dialer. The whole read takes under a minute.
Doors per deal
Records worked per closed deal, lower is better. Judgments run 6.2, deceased 14.8, broad unscored data 118 and worse. Rank first: the full leaderboard.
Saturation
How much marketing the list already absorbed. Fresh and first-to-market means cheap touches connect. Heavily marketed means premium touches and a stronger caller.
Reach
Can you find the owner at all. Deceased and hard-to-trace owners take deep prospecting at $1.50-4.00 per record. That difficulty is the moat: hard to reach stays uncrowded.
Cycle
Forced closes in weeks: foreclosure, 45 days. Decision lists move when the owner does. Nurture lists pay in months: probate runs 4-7.
Running this at scale is a Phase 2 problem. Once a Data Manager preps lists and callers work them, the four-factor read becomes their SOP, not your morning. See Phase 2: The Delegator.
Go Deeper on Each Axis
Five guides pick up where the map leaves off.
5-Day Deal Flow Challenge
Next live cohort: Monday, September 21 to September 25
5 days live with Ty, free, for investors who have already closed a deal. Save your seat in the next cohort. Already in? Use this page as your between-session refresher.
Doors Per Deal
Rank every list by records worked per closed deal
Channel Cost Per Touch
The full economics of every touch, from the $0.01 text to the $25-50 knock
Deep Prospecting
Find the heir or executor behind every obituary and deceased record
Phase 2: The Delegator
Hand the list read to a Data Manager and callers without losing quality