Did you know that as a recruitment business owner you are likely sitting on a goldmine?!
Yes really. If you have a database you certainly are. No matter what the naysayers might spout email marketing works, especially in the recruitment industry and even post GDPR for European recruitment organisations.
There are few online marketing techniques as effective as email marketing. Despite constant predictions about the imminent demise of emails, email marketing remains a powerful technique for recruiters delivering one of the highest R.O.I.s of any marketing strategy.
Here is a quick guide to how it all works, explaining why it is so effective and providing advice on how to go about setting up your own campaign.
Benefits of Email Marketing
The most successful forms of marketing for recruitment agencies involve regularly getting your brand in front of the right candidates and clients to scale your business, and that is exactly what email marketing achieves. The very nature of email marketing means that the only people who receive your emails are those who have actively expressed an interest in receiving them – and these are your most important targets.
In addition, email marketing for recruitment and staffing companies is:
- Inexpensive to set up.
- Allow you to nurture candidates and clients that aren’t ready to work with you straight away.
- Allows you to provide real-time updates for new jobs and important information.
- Is an excellent way to improve your brand image and boost your reputation by providing valuable content.
Common Pitfalls of Email Marketing
Despite the benefits of sending out emails to highly targeted candidates and clients, there are a number of common pitfalls to avoid when you first start using email campaigns as part of your marketing funnel. These include:
- Sending out too many promotional emails, which can quickly annoy the recipients and encourage them to unsubscribe.
- Failing to provide enough substance in your email content, which can affect open rates.
- Failing to make the unsubscribe option clear enough, which can see your emails get marked as spam instead.
How to Increase Your Open Rate
The biggest challenge with email is ensuring that recipients actually open your emails once they have signed up to receive them. You can track the open rate of your emails using tools provided by most email marketing platforms, and if you see that yours are particularly low you could be doing something wrong.
To improve your open rates, make sure that your subject lines are compelling and tempt people to click on them. Your emails will be competing with hundreds of others, and you only get a split second to get noticed. The good news is a great headline works wonders. As a given, ensure that the content that you include in your emails is useful and valuable to the recipients. Email marketing for recruiters works best when the recipients are actively looking out for your emails, and that is the goal you should aspire to.
You don’t have to stick to sending out the latest job offers. You can also include articles providing advice, information and tips that will be of use to candidates. The more effort you put into your emails, the more you will get out of the technique.
How to Get Started with Email Marketing
It is not hard to start up an email marketing campaign. You just need software to deliver the emails, your current recruitment software may do this for you. Active Campaign and Drip are two great alternatives we recommend to clients. The basic process involves:
- Signing up with a dedicated service like Active Campaign, Mailchimp which makes the whole process easier.
- Creating an ‘ethical bribe/lead magnet’ to encourage people to sign up to receive emails. This could be an ebook, mp3, or something else of value that you give away free to recipients.
In recruitment, job alerts work really well. - Creating an initial email series that all new signups will receive. This could comprise five to 10 emails providing useful job hunting tips or other information. You can get a service provider like ourselves to do this for you
- Writing a ‘broadcast’ email that you can send out to your entire list instantly.
- After that, all you have to do is continue to send out regular emails on a weekly or monthly basis and watch your list grow. As long as you add value to your subscriber they will stick with you.
Start Building Your List
Email marketing works no matter what stage your recruitment business is at. If you already have a database you are in a great position to market your offerings fast. If you are relatively new you can build your own database that overtime will be an asset to your business.
If you are consistent and continue to send out valuable emails on a regular basis, your list will start to grow, and soon you will start to think of this list as your most important marketing asset. Have a look here at a case study from a couple of clients of ours, and you will see what is possible.
Thanks,
Denise
P.S. Do you want to send out targeted emails campaigns only struggle with writing? If the answer is YES. Then get in touch with us here. We have been writing email campaigns for our clients for over 14 years.
