Email Marketing Archives - Superfast Recruitment

Let me ask you something. When did you last send a planned, consistent email campaign to your database? Not a one-off update when you had a vacancy. Not a quick check-in because you remembered someone existed. A proper campaign. Sequenced. Segmented. Designed to build trust with the people who are not ready to work with […] The post The Marketing Channel Recruiters Keep Underestimating (And It’s Not LinkedIn) appeared first on Superfast Recruitment.

In this post and podcast, we are continuing our series where we answer the burning questions we have been asked during the year related to how to create more demand for your recruiting service. Today’s topic is email marketing. Why am I a big fan, and why do people in our Superfast Circle Membership get so many email campaigns written by me that they can use? Because it still delivers the highest ROI of any marketing strategy you can use. I am sure many of you listening to this podcast will have been bombarded in your email with offers from multiple stores or places where you buy your food, telling you why you must get this particular ham joint or nut roast or whatever, especially over the last few weeks. This strategy is well-known and well-versed in the B2C environment. However, many people don’t realize that business-to-business email marketing is vital for B2B marketing. Why? Because conversion takes more touchpoints. High-value purchases take a lot longer for people to say yes; of course, a human being is a high-value purchase. Therefore, it can take longer for someone to decide to work with you as their recruiter. Email marketing works well in the recruitment and search sector because it lets you be at the forefront of your candidates’ and clients’ minds. I’m sure many of you have seen some of the content Sharon and I posted about the need to nurture and how candidate AND client relationships are important, and email marketing will help you with that. What Email Campaigns Are The Best To Use? What are the main email campaigns that we would recommend that you use? These are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference for you. There are four that I would suggest you start with and move towards having all of these in place in 2024. Re-Engagement Let me start with the easiest one, which gives amazing results. That is a re-engagement campaign with people already on your database who may not have heard from you for a while. People come to us, saying;  Oh, yes, I’ve got 4,000 people on my database. We’ll say, How often have you been contacting them? And they will respond with; not very often. Which is a lost opportunity. This is a gold mine for you. Imagine, have you got a group of either clients or candidates you have not been in contact with for some time? They’re on your database, but you’ve not had an email interaction with them. That is your first starting point. It’s called a re-engagement. Clue in the title. It’s a re-engagement campaign. Make sure that you are sending content out to re-engage. When I say re-engage, it’s not like, “Have you got any roles?” or, “Would you like to re-upload your CV?” or, “Are you interested in this job?” I’m talking here about a campaign that checks in with people and gets them to consider having a call with you in a very different way. It’s not in a promotional way; you start by adding value. If you were on our list, you would have received an email from me a few days ago saying, “Do you need to audit your marketing? When did you last do it? It was a short, value-added email suggesting you click a link. That is the style of email that you can use in a re-engagement campaign. That’s number one. Two Nurture Campaigns: For Clients and Candidates One Each Next year, you need two other types of campaigns for clients and candidates. These are nurture campaigns. These are where you offer something valuable, such as a report, a checklist, or something of value for your clients and candidates. They are then on your database, and you nurture them until they are ready to buy. You consistently send them emails that add value to their journey so that they get to know and understand you as an individual and appreciate that you are the recruiter who can help them. These nurture campaigns are about sending regular communication out to your list consistently. It’s drip-feeding about you, how you can help them, how they can develop their career, how they can build a talent pipeline, depending on whether it’s a client or candidate. For those of you who have been on our list for some time, every Friday, you might get one later, earlier on in the week as well, you will receive an email from us, and those emails will have a link, say, to our latest blog, our latest podcast, a snippet of information, something that’s useful for you. Imagine doing that consistently with your candidates and clients; you would have a completely different relationship with them. You’ve got the re-engagement campaign, a nurture campaign for clients, and a nurture campaign for candidates. Then there’s the other one that many people forget about a cold outreach campaign. Cold Outreach Email Campaign Who hasn’t received an email from someone you don’t know well, and you get engaged? Yes, some of you might delete them, depending on how poorly written they are. Cold outreach is the way forward, guys, particularly in 2024, when BD, particularly client BD, will be at the top of your agenda. You need to create and implement a cold email campaign. Within GDPR and all the regulations you need to adhere to, you can get a cold email list that you can use. It might be that you have 100 people on it, and you’re emailing them through your Outlook, whatever that might be, depending on the size of your organization. You can implement your cold outreach strategy in multiple ways, which we cover in Superfast Circle; having a cold email outreach campaign works. You will be amazed at how well it works. There are four campaigns for you to implement next year, which are not hard to set up. Good Luck! Denise How We Can Help You in 2024 If you are a solo, micro or small SME recruitment or search company that wants to create more demand for your service in a cost-effective AND impactful way, we can help. We have been working with our recruitment and search clients for over sixteen years, providing them with the clarity and direction they need to stand out in their sector. To find out more, read our Superfast Circle case studies here and testimonials here, and then book a call for a chat. The post Email Marketing: Your Candidate and Client Goldmine appeared first on Superfast Recruitment.

Today, we’re talking all about email marketing and the common mistakes we often spot when talking with new clients and prospects.  Email marketing is the holy grail of any of the marketing strategies you’re likely to implement. Even with chatbots, programmatic marketing and remarketing, email marketing still has one the highest ROIs of anything you could potentially use as you take your recruitment business forward.   However, it is fraught with mistakes, and this is because people don’t understand marketing. They don’t know where their focus should be or how to ‘do’ email marketing correctly.  Today we look at five specific mistakes that could be ruining the results you are getting from your email marketing.   The good news is they’re pretty easy to rectify.     1. Clean Your Database   The first problem is using an unclean database. Now, what do we mean by unclean?  Imagine if you’ve got a database on your hard drive or in your CRM system that you have not regularly communicated with. That particular database will likely be old and out of date.   There are various ways you can clean up your database, depending on its size.   You can go old school and get one of your team to pick up the phone and speak to the database to check the emails are still relevant and in use. That’s one way of doing it, but this can be a lengthy process.  The other way is to use email cleaning software, which you can find online.   There are hundreds of them, so I won’t recommend any specifically here because they all work pretty well.   You want to have people open your emails consistently, but if you are regularly sending unverified emails that are old, you’re going to get a high bounce rate. Your email supplier will notice, and that’s going to work against you.   Suddenly, you get a reputation for sending out spammy emails, which you want to avoid. And it’s not that you’re sending out spam emails, but they are categorised this way when you are using old email addresses which don’t exist.   It’s worth noting that AI software is out there currently, although it’s incredibly inexpensive.       2. ‘Hit or Miss’ Emailing   The next thing is what we call ‘hit-or-miss’ emailing. This is where people get some sudden inspiration and think, “Right, we need to get some emails out.”   So they send emails… but then they don’t send any out again for weeks, sometimes months; lack of consistency can kill your results.   As we all buy services, we know it’s the consistency that makes a difference. When people come to us and say, ‘email marketing didn’t work for us’, we drill down and ask them questions such as:  How often are you emailing?   When are you emailing?   When did you last email?  Often, it will come to light that people are not emailing regularly. Email marketing works best when you’re using a consistent and regular sending schedule.     3. Poor Headings   Number three is poor headings.   With headings, make them relatively short. When the title only has around four or five words, people can quickly work out what this email is about. Whereas if you use very long sentences, then half of it gets cut off, and people can’t tell the email’s subject.  Of course, what then happens is people won’t bother to open your email.  Remember to use three fundamental premises when it comes to email marketing headlines, and they are; benefit, curiosity, and questions.   All of this speaks to the way our brains work. We love to know how something will benefit us.  We want to know, “what is the benefit of me opening this email? What piece of information am I going to find out?”  If you’ve used a heading such as, “Jane got X number of job offers or X numbers of interviews because of the way she wrote her CV.” If you’re a candidate, you’re going to want to know, “What did Jane do with her CV that I’m not doing with mine”.   Also, remember the importance of question marks.   Our brains are naturally wired to want the answers to questions, so when you pose a question to your database, it’s more likely they will open your email to discover the answer.  Writing great headings is a quick, easy win. Because you can write the best email in the world, but if your title isn’t noteworthy, then you’re not going to get anywhere.    4. Pitching Versus Adding Value   Number four is pitching versus adding value.   If all you ever send are pitch emails, then people will start to recognise your recruitment company is the one that pitches all the time.   That’s going to be an issue, and they’re going to stop opening your emails.  What you need to have is a balance between how often you pitch and how often you add value. People are looking for suppliers today who have fantastic customer service and who add value.   The great thing is, as a recruiter, you have a wealth of knowledge to share, which will add value. You know everything about your sector’s careers to help candidates, and you know everything about building talent pipelines to share with employers.  Demonstrate to potential clients and candidates that you can add value to their job search or recruitment process.  Finally, I want to talk about one-off blasts versus longer campaigns.    5. Blasting Versus Campaigns  This alludes to something I talked about earlier about hit-and-miss emailing. If you’re sending one-off emails all the time, you’re not building that relationship.  You may be on our email list; I hope you are. If you’re on our email list, you know that an email from Denise and Sharon drops into your inbox every Friday morning. It will contain some marketing information or recommend you come along to watch a training class or something similar.  You know it’s a value-add email, but it’s consistent, and it’s there because we are there to nurture you.   We know that some people don’t start working with us straight away and might be at a different part of their business’s growth cycle. They’re not quite ready to work with us yet.   However, sending an email once a week for us is a pretty inexpensive process. That individual is being nurtured to a point where, eventually, we will be able to have a conversation with them, and they will start working with us.     Next Steps?  Here I’ve talked about a few classic mistakes that are easy to alter and can get you some quick wins.  If you’ve got an unclean database, clean it up.   Stop hit-and-miss emailing. Email consistently, and you’ll see a massive difference.  Think about the headings you use because it’s all about the title and getting your email open: benefit, curiosity, questions.   Remember that your emails need to add value, and, yes, it’s OK to have a pitch at some point in your email. However, make sure that you are adding more value than you are pitching.   Finally, think about a one-off blast versus a nurtured email campaign. What’s fabulous currently is with all the different email marketing software, you can easily automate a campaign.   How well is your email marketing strategy currently working for you?  Do you know you need to do something to improve the ROI of your marketing but aren’t sure where to start? We can help – call us on +44 (0)1524 784 331 for a complimentary call about your marketing plan this year.    Thanks   Denise  The post Email Marketing Mistakes That Are Ruining Your Results appeared first on Superfast Recruitment.

Cold emailing? Doesn’t sound the sexiest of marketing strategies in our hyper-connected world and yet it continues to work every time; especially if you want recruitment client leads. Cold emailing is a timeless marketing strategy that keeps on delivering. It’s what helped us get to the first six figures we ever made in our own company fourteen years ago. The first campaign we sent out was to 23 email addresses of recruitment business owners using a similar content flow to what we still use today. Why? Because it works. We then went on to purchase a database while we were building our own targeted list, and as they say, the rest is history. The fact is if you write a cold email well, speaking into a need your clients have and send it from a recognised email address you will be surprised how effective it is. I have written about cold emailing many times before and I wanted to revisit the topic today as many recruitment companies are scratching their heads on how to bring on more clients as our Covid challenged world continues to limp along. So, let’s take it step by step and explore why it works and strategies you can deploy to run a successful campaign ASAP. …so first, let’s address the elephant in the room. GDPR GDPR is still alive and well in the U.K., so it’s vital we consider ‘how’ we email. The good news is when it comes to sending an email to a potential new client, there is a clause that states we can send an email that has a legitimate interest of which marketing most definitely is. Below is a screengrab lifted from the ICO website which clearly states that you can send an unsolicited marketing email or text to business contacts. In other words, use a company email address, e.g. [email protected] and always have an unsubscribe link somewhere in your email. Your Database and Software Like any good marketing strategy, your first step is to get all the relevant ingredients. You will need a list of emails and some form of email software to distribute them. Google either of these two things, and you will find multiple options and suppliers at your disposal. A.I. is going from strength to strength now, and therefore I am reticent to give you options. Try Googling best email marketing software for cold emailing, and you will find multiple suppliers you can use. Currently, platforms like Woodpecker, Smartreach, and Mailshake are popular options. When it comes to email addresses, you can: Find them yourself Use a scraping tool Outsource through a platform like Fiverr Use a software platform that will get emails and automate the process Finding relevant email addresses is easier than it ever used to be. You can go to one of the outsourcing websites like Fiverr or Peopleperhour and give them a project brief. As I am a regular user of Fiverr, click the hyperlink, and you will get 20% off your first order. Secret Cold Emailing Ingredients Here is the thing: When it comes to emails, make them targeted for your ideal company and client avatars; when you do this, you will always get a better response. Remember your avatar is your ideal client persona. If you haven’t listened to our podcast on developing your avatars, you can find it here. As an example, let’s say your sweet spot is SMEs turning over 3 million in the manufacturing sector without an internal recruiter. Your avatar is an operations director usually under 40 with an Engineering degree. If this is your criteria, imagine how targeted your email campaign will be when the email addresses you have fit these criteria. How to Write Your Cold Email Campaigns? Ok, there is a clue in the title here. When it comes to cold emails always make sure you send more than one; in fact, send a campaign. The people you are contacting have never heard of you before therefore you need to take them from cold to sold, and this won’t happen overnight because as we have mentioned before, there is a buyers cycle that we all go through. Remember our story at the start of this podcast when I shared our first foray into cold emailing with our 23 email addresses? Well, we had a response straight away by a business owner who then converted into a client within the week; he continued to work with us for ten years. This spontaneous conversion is about right when you consider the numbers. When it comes to people ready to buy now, that is normally anywhere between 3 and 7% of people. That’s why it’s critical to continue being in communication with our email lists. We then go on to convert the remaining 93% into potential buyers; eventually. Make your emails short and lead with benefits explaining how you can solve a specific problem they have and then ask them if it would be worth a call. Don’t waffle on about how long you have been in business and how you provide recruitment solutions; otherwise, your email will be in the spam folder faster than you can say ‘stay alert’. Make sure your email is sent from a recognised email address that aligns with your company, e.g. [email protected], not [email protected]. You are a serious player with a recognised brand, and it’s likely the company contact you are emailing will go and check your website out. Which leads me onto sharing your website details. Make sure you add a link that goes to a page on your website that communicates who you are and how well you help your recruiting clients in filling their roles. An example of how NOT to do it: Just this morning, I received a ‘cold’ email from a video production company. When I went to check them out the copyright on their website footer was 2016, and the last blog that showcased their work was 2017, and it wasn’t a video!! Both of these are no’s in the marketing industry. This was a marketing company telling me how good they were in helping other agencies who hadn’t thought about the impact of what they were sending. Don’t let that be you. Final Secret Sauce The final secret ingredient to share with you is the phone. Send your cold emails, in a campaign, and follow up with the phone. Blindingly obvious and yet so few people do it. Remember if your cold email is getting opened, someone is interested and potentially ready to take the next step – so call them. Dial this in as a consistent strategy, and your business might change overnight. In our Superfast Circle, we have a whole series of training and email templates you can then use that cover this topic step by step. If you want to find out more call us on +44(0)1524 331 or book a call here. Thanks,   Denise P.S. Neal @ Lucas Executive Search had his best month ever when he used the cold email process in Superfast Circle. You can read about the results here. The post How to Use Cold Emailing to Bring in More Recruitment Client Leads appeared first on Superfast Recruitment.

Welcome to part 10 of handling what is happening. So you have been hitting the phones and now you might be wondering how you can you start to connect on a broader scale with people. Remember many people will be having multi conversations going on in their head about: Fresh starts Moving companies Moving Suppliers …. and you need to be ready. Email is a great way to keep front of mind and we explain more in today’s podcast. See you again on Monday. Thanks   Denise The post Handling What Is Happening Part 10 appeared first on Superfast Recruitment.

Do you remember what was happening two years ago? We were all getting frustrated and pulling our hair out about the GDPR coming into force. Well, the thing about GDPR and its implementation is it probably saved email marketing, and in this video, blog and podcast I want to share why. Excuse and rogue typing errors as this is a direct transcription from the video for your benefit. Email Engagement Two years ago, many business owners were concerned that GDPR could be the end of email marketing; historically a great way to interact with candidates and clients. Fast forward two years, where are we? We’re still here and so is email, so are our lists and CRM systems too. There have been some great lessons though related to why GDPR has saved email, and that’s because it made organisations take action and sort at our act when it came to our ongoing relationship with our ‘list’: We had to look at our databases, clean them up. Does The Size of Your Database Matter? The second lesson is that we’ve realised it’s more profitable to a business to have a smaller list that you’re marketing to, people who are engaged, rather than having these big huge lists where people are just disenfranchised, their disengaged and they’re not responding. So today where are we? We know that email marketing is still the most cost-effective marketing strategy for your business. We’re not leveraging it though in the way that we could. So there are three strategies I want to share with you that you can start using today. Share High-Quality Content The first thing is to make sure that you are sharing far more consistently high-quality content, whether that’s blog posts, whether that’s videos, podcasts, et cetera. We live in the knowledge era and people that is your candidates and clients are looking for help daily; so help them and then watch what happens. Use a Mix Of Promotional and Value Add Content The next key area to implement is continue to make sure that you are, every third or fourth email, promoting your service. Fact: Logically, you will promote your services to your database. Which of course you can do in a variety of ways. Like using a testimonial or case study from a client and stating your unique value proposition and what is different between you and your competitors. Segmentation The third thing is, you’ve got a database, how about segmenting this down and sharing different kinds of content. Many people are sharing candidate content and client content, but you can still break that down into smaller subgroups so that you’re sharing more personalised content. So please make the most of email, it works, and you are sat on an untapped profit base in your database. Thanks Sharon. P.S. Would you like us to write your email campaigns? Then book a call here and let’s have a chat. The post How GDPR Saved Email Marketing For The Recruitment Sector appeared first on Superfast Recruitment.

Episode #180 : The 4 Email Campaigns Recruitment Companies Need To Run This Year Contrary to popular opinion email marketing is alive and kicking post-GDPR. SMS text, bots and video have yet to take over the world; however, good old fashioned emails (the more automated, the better) dropping into our inbox are still working and […] The post The 4 Email Campaigns Recruitment Companies Need To Run This Year appeared first on Superfast Recruitment.