How to Use Email Marketing for Recruitment and Hiring?
Whenever we think about the marketing team, we see people throwing numbers and paper balls at each other. As a recruiter, we can always learn a thing or two from marketers (Maybe, leave the paper ball thing for now). Marketers regularly send emails to the prospective user base to create awareness, engage and finally acquire them. While sending recruiting emails, recruiters can also think like marketers to get their stallions.
Marketing and recruitment are not so different. Your ideal candidate would probably be working at Google or Amazon or Tesla and not be actively looking for a job. However, she might join you if given a fast career path. How do you create awareness and engage your candidates to make them apply to your company? Traditionally, marketing has been doing the same when it comes to user acquisition.
Also, check our Guide to Create a Recruitment Marketing Plan for Your Staffing Agency
source: Slideshare
Writing recruitment emails are tricky! But you don’t need to be a marketing maven to attract talent. Here is how you should think like a marketer when sending emails:
Define your target audience
Defining the target audience is the first thing a marketer does before creating any campaign. It helps you streamline your messaging and channels. As a recruiter, you should create an ideal candidate persona to define your target audience. Get to know where your candidates spend their time online, what they read, and what skills they have!
You should also define a list of negative keywords which you don’t want to target. This is a fundamental strategy that’s taught in blogging, email marketing, and the best affiliate marketing courses. It helps you save time otherwise wasted on candidates whom you don’t want to reach out to. To improve your reach and efficiency, consider partnering with email marketing agencies to fine-tune your campaign strategies.
Source Users
Defining your ideal candidate persona helps you figure out sources where these candidates might be. Try to be as specific as possible in defining your search criteria. Most recruiters use generic keywords and end up connecting with the same bunch of people as their peers. Targeting specific niche keywords helps you reach new candidates. Every recruiter loves LinkedIn as a primary source. Try to remove your LinkedIn love bias and explore other sources as well. For
Every recruiter loves LinkedIn as a primary source. Try to remove your LinkedIn bias and explore other sources as well. For instance, GrowthHackers is a great community for marketing and growth people. GitHub and StackOverflow can help you get awesome engineers. Never be platform-biased! Use Recruiterflow’s sourcing toolkit to see how to do this effectively and easily at scale!
Also, check Top Recruitment Marketing Strategies for Staffing Agencies To Attract High Ticket Clients
Study Candidates
It is really easy to send a mass email to your candidate database but you hardly get any reply. Studying the candidate and sending them a super personalized first email really helps. I have personally seen some recruiters getting close to a 70% response rate when they send a super-personalized introductory email.
You should always study the person you are reaching out to. Talk about their interests, achievements, and life and make the first touch-point highly personalized.
Create drip campaigns for recruiting emails
Drip email campaigns are a set of emails sent out automatically as per a predefined schedule. Sending a super personalized first touch point gets your candidate’s attention, but to actually get a reply you need to follow up with the candidate. Most people usually reply to 2nd email of the campaign. These personalized
Most people usually reply to 2nd email of the campaign. These personalized follow-ups can be automated using recruiting CRM tools like Recruiterflow. Try not to send emails on weekends. Also, figure out what time of the day works best.
Measure data
A true marketer always measures data while running a campaign. It helps them figure out what’s working and what’s not and iterate their campaigns accordingly.
As a recruiter, you should always measure data like email opens, reply rate, link clicks, and file downloads. It helps you optimize your content for better conversion and lead nurturing.
Do A/B testing
A/B testing has been traditionally used by marketers to know which version of their messaging works better on their customer base.
You, as a recruiter can send two or more variants of the same email to your candidates randomly and see what works best in achieving your goal.
However, to run an A/B test your candidate database should be large enough to get measurable results. Also only change, one thing at a time! For example, if you are running an A/B test on the subject line, only change the subject line. Leave the other parts of the email intact.
AB testing can be used consistently to continually improve a given messaging, improving your conversion rate over time.
Engage candidates even if they don’t convert
All of us receive communication from brands even if we show just a little interest in the product and do not buy the product. In marketing, these users are typically acquired at a cheaper cost as they are already aware of the brand (remember the first stage of the marketing funnel). Do the same for your candidates as well.
A candidate may not be open to applying to your company right now but this doesn’t mean you drop them out of your talent acquisition funnel.
Also, check 6 Steps to Building a Strong Recruiting Sales Pipeline
Keep them engaged, send them content, and news about your company, and congratulate them on an achievement. Maybe the next time they are looking out, they will reach out to you as they have crossed the awareness and engagement part of the talent acquisition funnel. You can even use AI to automate this; however, while leveraging AI for the same, it’s equally crucial to establish a comprehensive corporate AI policy to ensure that AI utilization aligns with ethical standards, mitigates risks, and upholds the company’s values.
By adopting the marketing mindset while sending emails, you focus heavily on converting great candidates and making your recruitment engine more efficient.
Use Recruiterflow to source candidates with super personalized drip email campaigns that convert 2.3X better.
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