Eric Kenney is a Sr. Sales Rep at Yahoo! HotJobs. When he's not selling me down the river, he's strategizing with his clients on new ways to attract passive talent via things like organic and paid search, email marketing etc.
Here Eric clues us in on email marketing...
According to our friends at DoubleClick, 81% of consumers reported being online to send and receive e-mail multiple times daily. Depending on who you ask, you’ll find that only 20-25% of the online population visits a job board regularly.
So what does this mean to recruiters? Email marketing, if done right, can connect you with qualified candidates that aren’t seeing your postings on your favorite job board.
Here are some tips for effective e-mail marketing:
- Use a permission-based list – Simply put, if a person has not agreed to receive an e-mail, you’re breaking the law by sending them a message and its likely landing in a spam folder.
- Use a targeted list – If you're using an opt-in list from your vendor, chances are they’ve asked the recipient for some information about themselves to help you target the right audience.
- Create an effective subject line – You know you’re targeting the candidate, but they have no idea. As a sales guy who lives in New York City, I’m much more likely to open an e-mail with the subject line of “Sales openings in NYC” than “Career opportunities with XYZ Company.”
- Creative, creative, creative – You can send an e-mail to the most targeted list in the world, but if your creative stinks, it won’t be effective. Make sure that the creative enforces your organization’s brand, communicates an engaging message, and offers the candidate multiple links to click. Each link is another opportunity to get that candidate to your job or career site. Finally, sell the opportunity. A direct e-mail with a laundry list of necessary qualifications is the most common mistake I see.
- Make it viral – Encourage the recipient to forward the e-mail to their friends. Your potential candidate may be very happy with their job and not really interested in your opportunity. However, they probably have a lot of friends with a similar background who could be looking to make a change. Best of all, there’s no cost to you when they forward it on!
When done correctly, e-mail marketing can be an inexpensive, highly effective way to reach a very large, passive audience quickly. |
Creative of the email is important but that emphasis also needs to carry through to the landing page(s). This will pay off in conversions. Many companies are learning this the hard way when they don't have to!
Same for search engine marketing.
Great article. Keep it up.
Posted by: Matt D | December 26, 2006 at 01:56 PM