How to Use Email Marketing for Recruitment and Hiring

Emails are an excellent tool for getting in touch with your prospective candidates, even in the times of other recruitment tools. When used correctly, recruiters can engage with potential candidates. As well as track the progress of an individual across the hiring process.

Using email marketing has two significant benefits for those in the Recruitment and Hiring Industry:

  1. With the constant engagement via emails, you are more prone to be remembered when someone plans to shift jobs. Periodical newsletters and other helpful content will create a lasting impression in their minds and increase the chances of them contacting you.
  2. By sending a weekly or bi-weekly email newsletter that lists out helpful articles as well as job listings related to the subscriber’s field of interest, you can instill an authoritative stance via emails. And your subscribers tend to consider you an expert in the field. This greatly helps in making candidates, who are on the fence regarding something, take the next step.

This is the reason why 85% of recruiters rely on email marketing as their top choice of a communication channel for building relationships with the candidate.

Now that we are convinced about the effectiveness of email marketing for recruitment and hiring. Let’s move towards learning how to use email marketing for recruitment and hiring.

 

Build a reliable mailing list

The effectiveness of an email campaign relies heavily on the activity level of the subscribers in the mailing list. One of the best ways to get prospects who will engage with your emails is to get them to sign up for your emails via different lead generation methods.

Such as:

  • Offering a joining incentive
  • Provide a free downloadable resource
  • Registration for a free webinar

When your prospects sign up, it is an indication that they are interested in receiving emails from you. Additionally, when you ask about their preferences during sign-up, you get relevant information regarding what the specific talent is looking for.

 

Identify your audience and segment accordingly.

Now that you have enrolled your target audience to your mailing list. It is time to fulfill your promise and send them relevant emails. Sending email begins with identifying your audience and the goal of the email campaigns.

What is their current job profile, and which industry are they associated with? Do you need to notify them about any job vacancy or educate them about your offerings? Once you have fixed the target audience and set clear goals for your email campaigns, it is time to segment your audience.

Segmenting your email list means breaking your existing email list into smaller chunks. Grouping the subscribers together based on a common trait.

The most common segmentation criteria for recruitment emails can be any of the following:

  • Job Title
  • Industry
  • Experience Level
  • Location
  • Activity level

When you segment your email audience in the finer niche, you have a higher chance of providing them with tailormade content. This will significantly reduce your unsubscribe rates as well as increase your open rates.

 

Add the magic of personalization.

While segmentation allows you to send customized content, you can go a step further in providing personalized content that sounds more personal. As if written manually. While addressing your subscriber by their first name is a great way to start. You can further implement personalization tactics based on the interaction someone has with your emails.

Send them birthday greetings on their birthdays. Based on the skills they have specified on their resume, send them links to relevant content for skill-building. Based on the educational institutes they have studied, suggest jobs chosen by their peers.

When you send them personalized content via emails, it shows that you care about them and don’t treat them as a name on the list. This helps you build meaningful relationships with candidates.

 

Guide them to an actionable call-to-action button

Irrespective of the goal of your email campaign, it is important for your email copy to engage your subscribers and redirect them to a call-to-action button that takes them to the next step. It can be to update their profile, read an informative article, or download a resource that you are offering.

Depending on the design of your email template, you can either have a button that your subscribers click to be redirected to the appropriate page or as a distinct plain-text link. The thing to keep in mind is that the call-to-action copy needs to be actionable, and using direct conversational words such as “Download your copy,” “Update my profile” work better than generic terms.

In the example below by Litmus, an email marketing agency. They posted an email listing out the available positions, and then the call-to-action was kept as ‘Find Your Dream Job,” which is quite actionable.

 

Always use a compelling subject line.

When anyone receives an email, the first thing they do is read the subject line. By practice, the subject line should highlight what the email copy talks about. Based on the subject line, your prospect will decide to open the email or ignore it.

So, it is important to use a compelling subject line that pushes the reader to open the email. The trick lies in raising the curiosity of the subscriber by using a short yet punchy statement.

 

Optimize for mobile and make it scannable

Most of the emails nowadays are opened on mobiles and other handheld devices. So it is important to make sure that your email template looks correct when opened on mobile devices. This would mean the subject line should be compact enough to accommodate the standard view of a mobile device.

The call to action button should be big enough to be tappable with a thumb. The font size of the email copy should be big enough to be decipherable from an arm’s length.

Also, people will not spend more than 12-15 seconds to glance through your email content before moving to the next email. So it is important to format your email copy in such a way that it becomes easy to glance through. And yet get all the important information in a single take. 

In the example below by Freelancer, they divided the email copy into paragraphs. And the email address is a different color to be differentiated by the reader in a single glance.

 

 

Use automated emails for reminding schedules or interviews.

Email automation is a boon for most. You can program the sending of individual emails automatically when a specific trigger condition is satisfied. This will send automatic reminders to your candidates for job interviews or periodic newsletters carrying articles of their interests.

 

Wrap up

Email marketing is relatively easy. And it only needs a little time to get used to all the bells and whistles available. Once you have mastered the ability to send relevant emails and do regular follow-ups with emails, you can manage your recruitment as well as the hiring process from the email itself. 

 


Authors
Kevin George

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest-growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion, and free HTML email templates. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.