Gus, on direct mail: we see it work as a second touch on a narrow list, never as the volume channel. Take your top 200 highest-fit accounts, the ones you'd genuinely want to own, and mail those after email has already run. As a replacement for 10,000 emails it doesn't pencil. But the thing I'd question is the 50-70% open rate. Opens stopped being a real signal once Apple Mail Privacy Protection and every security scanner started pre-fetching images. A meaningful share of those opens are machines. We turned open tracking off in our campaigns entirely, because a number that good makes people optimise the subject line when the actual problem is downstream. If replies are the constraint and the list is right, the answer usually isn't another channel. It's time. Most owners aren't selling this quarter, they're selling in some quarter. Recycling non-responders on a 90-day cycle has done more for us than any new channel did.

Don't ask about their interest in selling. Lead with pain or pleasure, e.g. "Tired of everything falling back to you on the owner? If you're ready to lower your stress and fill your bank account..." --> It is much more likely they thought about how tired they are of the business than they thought about actually selling. Higher likelihood of hitting a chord. Also, anything you can do to increase credibility. If you've bought or run other businesses include them. Be transparent with who you are. Business owners get emails from cryptic nobodies all the time. I don't see how they get any responses. If it's a letter, a picture of you or your family.