Whenever people talk about email marketing, the subject of automation always comes up. It seems like automation is one of those ‘must-have’ tools, drawing in leads and supercharging promos. But this isn’t some retail or tech sector, it’s recruitment. Does it have any application for you?
Let’s discuss the basics of email automation, how it works, and the benefits and use cases for Australian recruiters.
In this article:
What is email automation?
Benefits of email automation for recruiters
Use cases for email automation in recruitment
What is email automation?
Email automation is the strategic use of automation software (software which does tasks automatically) to organise, personalise and send email communications at set times. While it’s commonly used to send out marketing campaigns and promos, it can also be utilised in the recruitment context to...
Nurture new client leads.
Send job application updates.
Collect NPS survey responses.
Self-update your CRM.
Re-engage older clients or candidates.
As you might already start to see, while we commonly talk about ‘email automation’, this software can automate a lot more than just emails. We’ll talk more about the use cases below.
How effective is recruitment email automation?
According to an Ascend2 report, 91% of email automation users (marketers, in this context) said it helped them achieve their objectives. An additional report, from Liana, found that some of the specific objectives it could achieve were:
Improved targeting of messaging.
Improved marketing ROI.
Better customer experience.
More leads.
To summarise: if you want to improve your ability to attract new client leads, give them (and candidates) a better experience, and see greater ROI on your marketing spend, email automation is likely going to be very effective.
Benefits of email automation for recruiters
While there are many small benefits to email automation, there are three main ones which are most relevant to recruiters:
1. Save time
The greatest benefit is how email automation saves time. If you’re able to set up a piece of software to send out key comms to certain clients or candidates automatically, you don’t need to remember to do it yourself – or spend the time getting it all done.
You can focus on value-adding tasks, while the automation software does all the finicky daily comms.
2. Better client & candidate experience
Email automation doesn’t leave people waiting, and it won’t forget to send a message. If you tell it to send an email at a set time and date, or to deliver strategic messages based on key triggers (i.e. someone fills out X form, and receives Y email automatically), then it’ll get the task done.
This can help provide a better experience for people in your email marketing pipeline, whether they’re prospective clients being nurtured towards an initial call, or a candidate navigating a recent job application.
3. Generate useful insights
The use of email automation software generates data insights based on how people interact with your messages. Do your emails get opened? Do users click links? Do you end up in their spam folder? All of this is highly valuable data which can be used to further optimise your message and create better results in future.
Learn more: Quick strategies to improve your email engagement rate
Use cases for automation in recruitment
Let’s look at some specific things you can do with email automation as a recruiter, so you can better understand what it actually looks like in practice.
1. Automate external comms
If it’s an email you need to send to someone, and especially if it’s an email you must send regularly, it can probably be automated.
Some examples of external email comms which you can automate include:
Common candidate updates. Think application updates, notices of rejection, auto responses, NPS surveys, that kind of thing.
Re-engaging your database. For example, automatically sending a check-in to candidates whom you haven’t spoken to in two years, reintroducing your services and requesting that they update their profile (which, in turn, automatically updates your CRM).
Business development. You could create an automation which finds clients who haven’t utilised your services in a little while and reintroduces your services to them.
Offers and promos. Got a new promotion running? Use automation to send it out to the relevant people in your database, while avoiding sending it to users who wouldn’t be interested. Personalise it further if you want, offering greater deals to VIPs or to encourage old clients to come back.
Website subscriptions. If someone fills a form out on your website, it should send relevant comms immediately. That way your website feels responsive, with no delay to the user. You can also set it up to send multiple messages, feeding someone relevant content or sales messaging over a period of time to ‘nurture’ them towards an eventual sales conversion (or an objective of your choice).
2. Database health
Email automation isn’t a CRM magic wand which automatically cleans up your internal database, but it’s another tool in your toolbelt which can help maintain clean data over time.
A lot of automation software can look at a database and help to remove contacts with no email address or contact details, or to archive old contacts you’re unlikely to re-engage with. For instance, you might do this after sending out a re-engagement campaign, archiving those who did not respond so you don’t push them again in future.
And, if you link your email platform with your CRM, you can also send emails encouraging users to update their information – letting people tidy up their own data. Popular automation platforms like Bullhorn and JobAdder are even integrated with CRM by default!
3. Internal workflows and notifications
Finally, you can set up email automation to send internal communications too.
Mainly you would use this to help remember key dates and upcoming events, allowing you to balance managing many candidates and their roles without having to keep it all in your head.
For example, you might ask it to notify you when a candidate has started a new placement, or two weeks later when you want to check in, or when their placement is coming to an end.
Make email automation easy by partnering with the experts
Here at Three Sixty, we’re experts at digital marketing in the recruitment space. We know what recruiters need to grow their business, and we know how to build automations that deliver results in the recruitment context.
To cater for agencies at all levels, we offer three tiers of email automation service. You can outsource the entire thing to us and we’ll handle it for you, outsource part of it to us and handle the rest yourself, or utilise our experts for guidance while doing all the manual work yourself.
To learn more, check out our email automation service page. Or, contact us for a chat and we’ll talk about your unique business needs.
