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5 Common Email Marketing Myths...Busted!

5 Common Email Marketing Myths...Busted!

Email marketing is the most common tool in the recruiting belt, but there are many misconceptions about how to use email and what it can actually do for staffing and recruiting businesses. Email isn't an alternative for cold calling online. And don't use it to spam strangers with requests for placements. Email's greatest value is as a tool to engage and place top candidates, stay top-of-mind with clients, and yes - make sales, too.

5 most common misconceptions about email marketing for staffing.

 
1. Nobody Reads Email

1. Nobody Reads Email

We'll start with this bullet, because it's just plain wrong. As we have reported before, these statistics prove that misconception couldn't be further from the truth:

  • [...] for ten years in a row, email is the channel generating the highest ROI for marketers. For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI.
  • 1 percent of U.S. adults like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with.
  • Email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in helping your business acquire new customers.

As email marketing advocates, Haley Marketing knows just how well this tool works. We've seen clients pay for an entire year of marketing from just one well-designed email. We've had clients place candidates, fill open positions, and even turn past candidates into clients - all through a single, successful, well-executed email.

 
2. Everyone Gets Too Much Email; It's Not Effective

2. Everyone Gets Too Much Email; It's Not Effective

Email isn't effective for starting a conversation with a stranger, that's true...so no spamming! However, it is effective for continuing a conversation, staying top-of-mind, and getting in front of your client and candidate list every month. In fact, many Haley Marketing clients have used email marketing campaigns that resulted in immediate, one-click candidate placements and job fulfillments. How's that for quick and effective marketing?!

In addition to using emails for relationship nurturing, you can also use your email list in conjunction with PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising. Upload your email list to Facebook or Google and you can advertise to past candidates. This "matched audience" advertising is an ideal way to reactivate past candidates and open doors with new employees. And it's inexpensive!

While it's true we are all getting tons of email, email marketing still provides the fastest response of any marketing tool, and it allows you to engage - and re-engage - your clients and candidates...for a fraction of the cost of other marketing tactics.

 
3. Email Marketing Is Boring

3. Email Marketing Is Boring

Email marketing COULD be boring. If all you're doing is sending lengthy text-only emails with no visual elements and no reason to continue to read for your audience, I agree. That type of email is boring. However, there are many things you can do to add excitement and increase engagement with your email marketing campaigns.

Strong Visual Design: Text-only email is effective for getting a quick and concise message across, or sharing one direct link to your audience. But for longer emails, especially ones with several pieces of click-through content, you need a strong visual design that not only makes the person reading it react to the email, but take a secondary action (reply, click on the articles, etc.).

New Stock Images: It might be time to switch it up from that outdated photo with the person who has an alarmingly white smile. And no, don't change to the group shot of every single race, gender, ability and orientation somehow working within the same four cubes. Try a different angle, some levity, or even - can you imagine - people who look like your clients or the candidates you're trying to engage with. Emails with bold visuals get read more often.

Educate Your Readers: Want people to read your email ... your whole email!? Then have something interesting to tell them! Employment law, staffing updates, local news - all of these can be engaging and informational to your audience, and improve your chances of recipients saving your email, instead of tossing it in their "junk" folder.

Entertain Your Audience: Sometimes our brains need a break in the middle of a hectic workday. That doesn't mean hiding in the bathroom playing Candy Crush. But it could be a quick, a fun email from a staffing agency that includes timely information, a quick trivia game or a holiday-related recipe that just so happens to come a week before your family comes to town. While entertaining emails don't offer any direct sales benefit, they do help you stay top-of-mind, nurture relationships and set you apart from your competitors.

Incorporate Social Media: According to research out of MIT, the average American spends 24 hours a week online. If you're not using social media as part of your recruitment or marketing strategy, you may as well give up now. How can email and social media work hand in hand? Include links to share stats or snippets on social media channels. Make simple "click to share" buttons available on all articles in your emails. Post links to your email content on every social media channel - especially LinkedIn and Facebook Groups, as we see their popularity and effectiveness continue to soar this year.

 
4. Email Doesn't Work for Recruiting

4. Email Doesn't Work for Recruiting

Email marketing is actually incredibly suited to staffing and recruiting - if you're not just throwing darts blindfolded. Here are a few of the most common ways we've seen clients have tremendous success with email marketing:

Top Candidate Mailings: Skill market your best available talent...with email! Send out a quick blurb about the top people you have available, or those coming off assignments, and send it to clients you currently work with, or want to work with. Don't sit on your hands waiting for people to knock on your door, bring the candidates directly to you!

Hot Jobs Mailings: The same thought applies with available jobs. To get the best results here, you should separate your "Hot Jobs" mailings into industries. Send five light industrial jobs to the light industrial candidates in your ATS. Same goes for admin, clerical, etc. Candidates are more likely to read and respond to job openings that are relevant to them.

Follow-Up Emails: It's a hard fact of the job that you can't hire everyone. And while most candidates can accept that, you will leave a bad taste in their mouths if your candidates never hear from your company. Want to keep your candidates engaged? Send them a quick follow-up email letting them know you appreciate their time and effort and will contact them if they're appropriate for another position. Even better? Include a link for them to browse other opportunities on your website. This lets them know they're not just a number to you (even if you send this mass email to every single candidate you've interviewed this week or month).

 
5. We Can Do Email Marketing In-House

5. "We Can Do Email Marketing In-House"

Yes, technically, you can do this on your own. But I could also pull my own teeth. Would the results be good? No. But I could do it!

The better choice, of course, is to leave it to the professionals - dental and email, respectively.

Consider the time and effort it takes to send an effective email to your clients or candidates. You would need to, each time, do all of the following:

  • create a monthly content calendar;
  • update email addresses;
  • remove duplicate emails so you don't get flagged as spam for sending "doubles";
  • craft compelling messaging;
  • test subject lines; and
  • write engaging content your audiences want to read!

If you're doing anything more complex than a simple monthly email/newsletter, the time and effort increase ten-fold.

Do you have the time to do these things each month? What about additional mailings for holidays or special events? If you're using a third-party email system, do the emails look good? And not just "stolen images from google on a blank background" good; actually visually appealing and stimulating. Chances are, they don't (Spoiler: We see some of these emails, from clients and vendors, and they DO NOT look good.).