For most real estate investors looking for off-market, discounted deals from motivated sellers, one of the most important search components is the data.

The quality of your list (how current, accurate, and up-to-date it is) plays a MAJOR role in how effective your marketing efforts will be.

But most marketers don't realize they can weave some incredibly valuable information into an existing list to target and refine who they are targeting in the first place.

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Most of us use the standard filtering options in our data service, and we might contact:

• Absentee owners who own a certain property type
• Located in a specific county or zip code
• Between a certain number of acres or square feet

But what if you could also understand things like:

• Each recipient's age, gender, and marital status.
• Approximate credit scores.
• Marital status.
• Household income.
• Are they homeowners or home renters?
• Phone number(s).
• Email address(es).
• and a lot more.

Can you imagine what this information would allow you to do??

It can almost give you to read the minds of your recipients, giving you much more insight into your prospects' financial situation, psychology, and preferences.

You can get all of this information with an online service called Versium.

What Is Versium?

Versium is a direct source of customer data. It's used by many of the biggest companies in the world to help them understand their customers so they can target and communicate with the right people more effectively.

If you've never heard of Versium before, don't be surprised!

Versium isn't trying to get real estate investors like us to use their service.

As real estate investors, we are small fish. It's frankly not worth their while to chase us down because we aren't their primary type of user…

But that doesn't mean we can't get access to this kind of valuable information and use it to whittle down our marketing lists and be much more efficient with who we contact and how we communicate with them.

What Is Versium For?

Two primary groups of real estate investors stand to gain the most from Versium:

• Those who want to perform skip tracing at a cheaper cost.
• Those who want deeper insight and filtering options for their marketing lists.

Versium offers insights into various aspects of a prospect's life, including financial habits, FICO scores, age, gender, political affiliation, or religious background.

But where it shines is its ability to scale, because it lets you do skip tracing at a fraction of the cost of traditional services. At just 1.7 cents per lead, you can save an enormous amount of money if you do a lot of skip tracing each month (4,000+ leads per month).

In fact, many skip tracing services use Versium as their backend and pay Versium just 1.7 cents per lead (or even less, as I explain in the pricing section below). If you use Versium directly, you can effectively cut out the middleman, depending on which skip-tracing service you already use.

As I mentioned earlier, Versium isn't solely for real estate. From giant companies to political organizations, many companies utilize Versium's vast pool of data for their purposes—be it direct mail, texting, or even running Facebook ads.

One important thing to understand is that Versium is not a wholesaler or aggregator of data. They actually own around 95% of the data you'll find on their platform. This adds another layer of credibility to their already impressive offerings.

Compared to other skip-tracing services, Versium is a bargain, assuming you do enough volume to justify their bottom-tier pricing. It's a great choice for those who do heavy skip tracing, but if you're processing less than a few thousand per month, you may find other services like Direct Skip more suitable.

If you've never used Direct Skip before, I'll explain how that works in the video below.

Skip Tracing

In the realm of skip tracing, Versium truly stands out with the wealth of data you can extract.

Let's say you have a list from a data service like DataTree, PropStream, or PropertyRadar with property owner names, mailing addresses, and property addresses. However, you might not have their phone numbers or email addresses.

Versium steps in here to fill those gaps. You just need a CSV file with minimal data to get started.

The list you upload to Versium should have at least one piece of contact information. Whether it's a list of email addresses, phone numbers, or postal addresses, as long as you have one of these, you're good to go.

Once you upload the CSV file, you have to map the headers. Versium seems to do this automatically but cross-verify to avoid discrepancies.

Organizing Your Lists

Versium offers the feature of creating “Projects” to keep your lists organized. You can separate audiences based on different states and counties. This helps keep track of your potential contacts.

The entire process, from uploading the list to getting the matched data, is fast and convenient, even compared to similar data services.

Making Sense of the Raw Data

Once your data is ready, you'll see individual-level match data and various demographics. From the date of birth, ethnic group, religion, and education level to occupation, marital status, and even details about children in the household, Versium presents all this information neatly.

Versium outputs two CSV files, each containing different sets of information. The first contains contact information: email addresses, phone numbers, and identifiers for landlines and mobile phones. The data can be quite specific, showing whether the contact number is a first, second, or third mobile phone.

Personalization and Cost Efficiency

Versium allows you to match data on an individual or household level. The latter can be handy when dealing with properties where multiple individuals reside. Each successful match, either an email address or one or more phone numbers, is considered a category match and will cost you one credit.

You can pull just the best phone number, mobile phone number, or multiple phone numbers for each individual. Pulling multiple phone numbers doesn't cost extra, so this is an excellent feature if you're habitually sifting through options.

Keep in mind, though, not all the numbers may be active or usable. However, Versium identifies each phone number type, which can be particularly useful for targeted communication.

And it's not just about skip tracing. Versium lets you gather more information about your list and understand the people behind the numbers. This brings us to Versium’s next great feature: demographic append.

Demographic Append

Data is meaningless if you understand what it represents, and Versium’s demographic append can help with that.

Demographic append allows you to get extensive demographic information about the people on your list. It provides data such as age, gender, house value, political affiliation, credit score, car type, and more.

In addition, it provides household financial and auto information, which can be quite useful, especially for real estate investors. This includes spending habits, credit score, home value, and credit card usage. These details can help you tailor your approach, saving money by avoiding reaching the wrong people.

While these may all seem overwhelming at first glance, let's break down what some of this information could mean for you.

Credit Ratings and Mortgage Information

The credit ratings and mortgage information Versium provides aren't an end-all-be-all judgment of someone's financial situation. However, they can give you a general idea about someone's financial status, similar to checking the delinquent tax list.

Versium offers data such as the mortgage purchase amount, loan type, and purchase date. While the interest rate column may seem sparse, there's enough data to garner valuable insights. And if a prospect has a second mortgage, the tool also shows you that.

Some data may seem less relevant for real estate investors, such as information about car types and purchase years, but it can be quite valuable for others in different industries. It's all about understanding and using the data that matters most to you.

It's crucial to remember that a low credit score doesn't necessarily mean financial distress. It may simply be a remnant of an incident that happened years ago and is no longer relevant.

Diving into Lifestyle and Political Affiliations

Versium's data extends beyond just the finances. It offers insights into lifestyle preferences like magazine subscriptions and interests, which can hint at what topics they're into. More uniquely, it even provides information about political affiliations.

While the source of this data remains unclear, having an idea about someone's political leanings can be insightful for some users.

Selecting Information Types

Versium allows you to choose the type of information you want to extract from your list. You can select anything from lifestyle and interests to household financial and auto information. Selecting the types of data to append depends on your needs and purposes.

Processing and Costing

Versium's processing time and cost depend on the number of matches found and the data you want to extract. It offers an estimate before you start so you know what to expect.

Versium Pricing: A Detailed Look

At the time of this writing, Versium plans start at $3,600 a year.

This may seem hefty, but it can be a worthy investment for those who will utilize the service regularly and sift through a larger volume of leads.

It's fairly obvious that Versium is primarily geared toward those handling high volumes of leads. If you're a casual investor or not sending out thousands of marketing messages per month, you may not find much value in Versium.

Paying Only for What You Get: Versium's Pricing

What's particularly appealing about Versium is that it's affordable. With only 1.7 cents charged per category match, it's relatively cost-effective.

You only pay for the information you receive. You won't be charged for a category that comes back blank. For example, if you're worried about uploading your list and getting nothing back, fret not; if no information returns, your credits remain intact.

However, at 1.7 cents a lead, that's the lowest volume plan. If you're handling larger volumes, you can get it even cheaper per lead!

Closing Thoughts

Remember, Versium isn't limited to the features I've mentioned. It also offers an API to integrate with your CRM for seamless functioning. The platform also has many “how-to” videos and customer support to help users maximize the tool's potential.

To explore Versium and experience its rich feature set, click the button below, fill out the form, and a rep from Versium will reach out, to help you figure out if Versium is the right fit for you.

Get Started With Versium!

DON'T FORGET! If you sign up through this button above, you can get an additional 15,000 matches for free on top of your annual allowance. Just sign up here, and you'll get the bonus matches!

Have you tried Versium yet? What was your experience like? Let us know your thoughts in the forum!