In the game known as recruiting, without email marketing you may be falling behind. The days of posting a job listing and waiting for candidates to apply are now over. Candidates are both passive even as the job market tightens with increasing competitiveness in almost every job category. As a recruiter, you’re worried that you’ll be able to fulfill job openings quickly enough to keep your hiring managers content. What are you missing? It may be an emphasis on email marketing to bring more candidates to your pipeline. Here’s how to use email marketing to expand your reach.
How Can Email Marketing Be Utilized to Reach Out to Candidates?
Why Recruiters Should Use More Email Marketing?
Trolling a job board is the bare minimum for finding talent these days. Recruiters can up their game by using smart automation coupled with targeted emails to build their brand. Although email has been around a long time, it’s still highly effective at reaching talent. HubSpot says:
- For every $1 spent on an email campaign, it yields $36 in ROI.
- 4 billion people use email every day.
- 99% of email users check their inboxes each day—some check up to 20 times a day.
- 64% of small companies use email to reach customers.
Reaching candidates regularly through an email campaign is a way to forge a relationship with potential talent and build your network. But how can you start a campaign if you’ve never used this tool to build your pipeline? Here are some tips.
Five Steps for Using Email Marketing in Your Recruiting Effort
We understand a few things about email marketing, and the data backs us up:
- Email automation campaigns are most effective at building your brand over time.
- Fridays have the highest email open rates.
- Mobile-friendly emails stand a higher chance of being read.
- The most effective email subject lines are both personalized and engaging.
Now that you understand the efficacy of attracting candidates through email, here are six tips to get you started.
- Start with your applicant tracking system (ATS). It should have automation features that allow you to schedule regular communications with candidates. While you’re working the phones or sourcing, know that your automated emails are extending your reach and improving your effectiveness.
- Now, look at your database. Junk data can muddy the waters when it comes to building an effective candidate pool. Make sure you’re entering in all of the information properly upfront because this will affect data quality and ultimately your email marketing effectiveness later on.
- Personalize your messaging. Your ATS should allow you to insert fields that draw from the candidate’s data to make the message seem more personalized. Sending a spam-like message will only turn off the candidate.
- Do not over-saturate your audience. Consider this less “carpet bombing” and more of a precision hit. Sending out too many emails will turn off your audience and you’ll end up in the spam folder.
- Test, evaluate, and tweak your messaging to improve the quality of your campaigns. The better your message, the better the return.
Are You Using Email Marketing To Reach Out to Candidates?
If you’re struggling with your ATS, you don’t have to. The next generation of these tools makes designing and conducting email campaigns a cinch. If you haven’t had a demo of Exelare yet, we can show you how much easier the job of recruiting can be. Contact us today.