Email marketing is an excellent channel for recruitment agencies. It helps you find employees to hire or refer, companies that pay for candidate placement, and build more industry authority for your brand.
You’re likely using email marketing to reach your clients and candidates right now. How effective is this asset?
A single message typically goes unnoticed in a busy inbox. If you send two dozen emails about the same information on the same day, you’ll get reported for spam.
How do you find a happy middle?
How Email Marketing for Recruitment Works
Email marketing for recruitment agencies follows a similar approach that you’ll find in other industries. You’re sending a commercialized message to a contact list that gave you their expressed permission to receive communications from your business.
This technology isn’t new, but the approaches are evolving for recruiting agencies that use it for marketing purposes. Even though the concept was first introduced in the early 1970s, we’re using it more than ever to stay connected.
You can use email marketing to build a community around your brand, drive sales, or inform contacts about specific information.
Email marketing is powerful because it delivers direct access to the inboxes of your clients and candidates. 80% of people check their emails at least once per day, and about one in four scope their inbox multiple times daily. [[1]]
Unlike other marketing options for recruitment agencies, you get to own your email list. If social media were gone tomorrow, you’d lose all your followers. That’s happened to businesses and individuals who get banned from a specific platform.
That means you’ve got an entire list of businesses and people who are interested in your services. Since the contacts feel like one-on-one communication with the right message type, you can get even closer to your targeted audience.
Is Email Marketing for Recruitment Agencies Valuable?
It’s not unusual for a recruitment agency to have dozens of clients and thousands of potential candidates in their databases.
Most people who work with you have dedicated some time toward filling out applications or signing contracts to work with your agency.
With all the time spent on each client and candidate, why have that information locked away in unusable data? By the time you reach out, they’ve forgotten about you or why they applied.
That’s why email marketing is valuable to a recruitment agency. When you create messages that work from a foundation of value, relevance, and timeliness, you can strengthen the connections you’ve forged.
Each message you send to an email list creates new data points to consider. If you work on optimizing your content each time you receive results, it’ll be much easier to finetune the process to encourage more click-throughs and conversions.
Types of Emails to Send as a Recruitment Agency
People are using email as a preferred communications channel more than ever. The statistics show that almost everyone is looking to their inboxes for relevant information.
- Almost 70% of email subscribers prefer to receive at least one branded message each week.
- Only 35% of email marketing efforts reach out to clients and candidates at least three times per week.
- 59% of B2B marketers report that email marketing is their most effective revenue generation channel.
- Email recipients are 88% more likely to look at a message favorably if it feels like it was written for them personally.
As a recruitment agency, you have the option to use email marketing in two fundamental ways. It becomes a tool to reach clients and candidates within your lists and databases, ensuring that your connections stay strong.
That process starts with the welcome email. It’s one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolbox because the open rate is consistently above 80%.
Although there can be some variety in what you’d send when comparing clients and candidates, you’ll generally see the following email types providing a positive experience.
1. Service Cross-sells
Email marketing is an effective tactic that works hard to increase your profits. It achieves that outcome because it allows you to sell more to your current clients and candidates.
If you think about the cross-sale emails you receive from your favorite online retailers, you know what this communication offers. It’s an opportunity to communicate about new services or opportunities, especially since those on this list already trust your company.
A great example would be sending an email that discusses the advantages of contract staffing to your clients who work with you for permanent hires. Letting them know you’ve got temporary help available allows for a potential boost in business activities.
2. Cold Contacts
With an effective email marketing presence, you can reach out to potential clients and candidates to promote your recruiting services.
Although these messages are unsolicited, you’ll often get email addresses from referrals, social media conversations, business card exchanges, and other networking opportunities.
These emails don’t need to be extensive. A short message that gets straight to the point with your offer is usually compelling. Show people who you are, and they’ll decide if there is value in reaching back.
3. Touch Base
Email marketing allows your recruitment agency to stay in contact with clients and candidates. Your services aren’t always needed, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stay at the top of the mind. By letting people know that you’re thinking about them, it causes them to do the same.
It also helps to send messages to clients that worked with you in the past, but they haven’t reached out recently. Maintaining those relationships makes it more likely that they’ll use your services again.
The same principle applies to your best candidates. If someone hasn’t talked to you about placement opportunities in a while, an email can bridge the gap to see what is happening.
4. Newsletters
Most businesses send an email newsletter to help them stay at the top of the mind for each recipient. It’s not unusual to see this messaging serve as the cornerstone of an overall marketing effort because it works hard to educate clients and candidates about your recruitment company.
You can use an email newsletter to feature candidates, talk about specific clients, or discuss a passion project.
Before sending a newsletter to your email marketing list, it helps to set a goal to achieve. Are you trying to nurture your existing contacts? Do you need to push information out to resolve a potential crisis?
5. Stand-Alone (Dedicated)
A stand-alone email contains information about a single offer or event. You can use this outreach effort to talk about a specific candidate, provide a discount, or invite clients to an industry event you plan to host.
Dedicate messages make it easier to set up the context necessary for an effective call to action. That makes the structure similar to what you’d see on a landing page.
In most situations, you’d want to segment your email marketing list to maximize the benefits of this email type. You can focus on different interests, behaviors, or needs to deliver a relevant piece of valuable information.
Tips for Maximizing the Value of Your Email Marketing Efforts
It doesn’t take much to skip over an unexpected email. Some inboxes might even screen out your messages to a spam folder. If you want to get noticed, the best tip is to create readable content that the recipient needs.
Here are some strategies to consider when using email marketing for your recruitment agency.
Emphasize the Subject Line
The subject line is what encourages a recipient to open an email. If there isn’t verbiage to draw them into the message, the item will get skipped or deleted.
There are a few strategies to use when creating an intriguing subject line, but the most crucial step is to provide an accurate preview of what to expect.
- Ask a question that encourages someone’s curiosity to grow?
- Add urgency to the note so that the recipient will want to act quickly.
- Stay away from details or formats that could cause someone to report the message as spam.
It helps to stay away from ALL CAPS phrases when email marketing. As long as you provide valuable information and summarize it accurately in the subject line, you’ll get some attention.
Personalize the Message
Can you remember the last time you received a form letter? Did the message feel personal, customized, or important?
People want to receive emails crafted for them. That’s especially critical for clients and candidates with an established relationship.
The first step is to use the person’s name. From there, you can add reference information. It takes more time to put together these messages, but the investment is worth making when you can forge a connection.
It also helps to leverage social media for your emails when you don’t know a lot about someone.
Get to the Point
You don’t need to write a short novel about the recruitment services you offer. All it takes is a brief mention of how you can be helpful. Once you’ve made the pitch, let your work stand for itself.
If there’s interest in what you offer, people will follow up with you. If not, you can review how you present information to see if inaccuracies exist.
Focus on the Recipient
When you start talking about what your agency offers, it’s easy to fall into the trap of talking about yourself. Try to focus on who you are and let your clients and candidates learn about what you can do.
It’s not always easy to stay recipient-focused when creating a sales pitch. Think about what your clients or candidates need, then show them how you can solve that problem.
If you’ve won an award, how does that help the recipient? When you’ve placed 1,000 people in your community with various clients, what does that mean for the candidate who has been out of work for the past few months?
Be Specific About Actions
Each email should end with some encouragement for the reader to take action. After you’ve discussed the point of the message and why your approach is valuable, guide them toward the next steps to take.
When you’re specific about the actions the recipient must complete, it’s much easier for them to weigh the pros and cons of proceeding.
An effective call to action has five elements.
- It begins with an imperative. What is the reason behind trying to convince the reader to take another step? Use strong language to support the idea, such as an action verb. Terms like “Click” or “Respond” are used frequently, so try to switch things up to stand out.
- Use persuasive writing through the message. You’re summarizing the value proposition that your email offers. The incentive should benefit the reader in some way.
- Eliminate the risks. The best calls to action promote a high-value incentive while reducing potential issues when following through with the idea. Don’t put pressure on the recipient. People are more likely to explore when they have 100% confidence that they’re not committing to something.
- Be urgent with your verbiage. You need people to fear that they’re missing out on something.
- Make the idea pop. Structure your call to action with some extra white space in your email to help it stand out. You can also use brighter colors on the button to catch the eye.
Are You Using Email Marketing Effectively?
When recruiting agencies send emails to clients and candidates based on the information found in this guide, it becomes easier to diversify the created content.
The goal is to turn each prospect into a paying customer. When you communicate the value of your services to those who need them the most right now, you’ve got an excellent chance to see positive results. If you haven’t started email marketing yet, now is the time to begin! For those already investing in this space, think about refining your approach. When you can personalize and customize effectively, your messages will deliver an efficient lead generation process that helps your bottom line.
