Recruitment marketers who want to make a real difference to the sales and recruiting process of their businesses need to read these recruitment marketing insights.
Recruitment leaders who are looking to generate more from their marketing function can use Lisa's insights to help them drive marketing ROI.
Vanity v Sanity
Recruitment marketing can often stray into "vanity" world. It's never been easier to "spray and pray" with marketing due to automation and AI. The sheer volume of platforms you can use for recruitment marketing, and the communities you can access and attract, can keep even the most well-intended marketer too busy to generate ROI.
But with 69% of online content never even being read, and the vast majority of emails never being responded to, it's never been more important to be targeted with your recruitment marketing and focus on the sanity!
Lisa has done a lot of work with recruiters over the years helping them shape their recruitment marketing strategies, so I made her a rare coffee and asked her 9 questions about recruitment marketing ROI.
9 Questions I Asked Lisa About Recruitment Marketing ROI
1. What is the Function of Recruitment Marketing?
Crucially to attract, engage, convert, and retain your 3Cs – candidates, clients, colleagues.
And to help your sales and recruiting teams turn them into the 4th C – cash!
2. What is the Number 1 Benefit of Recruitment Marketing?
Leads (candidate and client) are key...
But often the expectations of what recruitment marketing can do are too low and KPIs are mistakenly around followers, impressions, blogging… The benefits of recruitment marketing need to be SANE not VANE.
3. How Should You Measure ROI on Recruitment Marketing?
Stick to “sanity stats”: Leads generated. Relevant subscribers signed up. Automation click throughs. Don’t not be fooled by people telling you that it’s difficult to measure ROI in recruitment marketing.
4. What is the Difference Between Outbound and Inbound Recruiting?
It is the difference between the more traditional approaches to marketing (email marketing / events) and digital (social / web). Push and pull!
It’s all about whether you’re interrupting someone’s day with your messages or whether they perceive that they initiate the contact.
The key to successful recruitment marketing, whether it be in or out bound, is that the candidate / client feels that they are the initiator... But actually the marketer has stealthily exposed the candidate's / client’s and drove them to click / call you.
5. Is Recruitment Marketing Only for Large Companies?
All recruitment companies need recruitment marketing.
And every recruiter needs to be a recruitment marketer in some way. (Another blog for another day...)
Recruitment HIIT has some cool hacks to help recruitment consultants market themselves, their brand, and their services, too!
6. What’s the Number 1 Pitfall in Recruitment Marketing?
Too much content, not enough marketing! And too much marketing, not enough sales!
7. What's Your Number 1 Hack for Content in Recruitment Marketing?
69% of content is never even seen, so wasting time creating new content, especially in the current market, is nuts!
Repurpose old content. Repurpose other people's content.
Create blogs out of blogs eg. "3 Insights We Found Online That Every Accountant Needs to Read this Week"
And if you really need to create your own content, ask your recruiters to ask the right questions on their screening and sales calls and then craft insightful blogs to attract and engage your community. eg...
What 's the best tech every teacher uses to create lesson plans?
How do you think AI will affect your job in the next 5 years?
How has your legal firm been affected by WFH?
My Recruitment Training platform, Recruitment HIIT has some cool hacks to try, too!
8. What is the Recruitment Marketer’s Essential Tech Stack?
You can get lost in the tech, but as a starter I'd suggest:
Trello for planning.
Google Analytics for website ROI.
Bullhorn Automation (if you have Bullhorn).
An SEO toolkit like SEMRush/AHRefs to turbo boost content – and Keywords Everywhere is flipping awesome!
Speedy video and image software such as Canva to "stretch" content – remember, “less content, more marketing!”
I mentioned other tech in
My Recruitment Training platform, Recruitment HIIT.
9. How Can Focus Your Time and Attention and Not Stray into Vanity Territory?
Plus, I say to my clients who are looking to hire / get more from marketing and need focused revenue-generating outputs.
“Imagine if your recruitment marketer had only 1 hour a day to make a real difference, what should they do? Then times that by 7 and that’s the job spec”.
Often recruitment marketers spend too long doing things that people have asked them to do that offer no real value to recruitment and sales. Stay focussed on the WIIFMB - what's in it for my business?
Automation Buddy
We are Automation Buddies set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses who want to increase speed and sales.
We coach to inspire amazing automation ROI, and are a safe pair of hands to build your automations so you can recruit and sell more.
READ ABOUT OUR AUTOMATION BUDDY SERVICE
media centre
Read more-
Blog
How Recruiters Can Turn Bounces and Unsubscribes into $£€
Recruiters, marketers, automators... If you’re regularly emailing candidates or clients—especially using tools like Bullhorn Automation - you’ve likely become familiar with two things: unsubscribes and hard bounces.At first glance, they can feel like a blow to your efforts—but they’re not always what they seem. In fact, how you respond to them is where the real sourcing and sales opportunities lie.Through the free consultation calls I have with recruiters who have Bullhorn, a hot topic is unsubscribes and hard bounces. Neither outcome gives a nice fuzzy feeling. If someone unsubscribes it limits your chances of reaching out to them again.If you get a hard bounce, their email has failed or the server has blocked you.But rather than get frustrated, slowing down your marketing / automation efforts, get active and turn these apparent dead ends into business opportunities. I've got some tips to help you monetise the "no"!💡Be sure to also read my other blog: Tired of Unsubscribes? 5 Email Tips Every Recruiter Should Knowto help you reduce the volume of unsubscribes.Unsubscribes and Hard Bounces Aren’t Always the EndTake it from someone who sends regular campaigns with Bullhorn/Automation/Sales/Sourcing tips. Here’s what I’ve learned:When you start poking around a database that hasn’t been touched in a while, you need to plan for:Inevitable bad, dirty dataLow trust due to radio silence / low communication volumeBounces and unsubscribesSo:1️⃣ Don’t burn out your entire database all at once and overwhelm your recruiters with pointless "leads". A flood of bounces and unsubscribes is overwhelming—and tempting to ignore. Instead, work with your recruiters to identify the data that matters most (roles, skills, locations), so responses are relevant and recruiters engage.2️⃣ Stagger your outreach. A gradual send schedule helps you build a better picture of your data, keeps your sender reputation healthy, and gives you the time to review and action what’s coming back.3️⃣ Use and A/B testing to tell you what works (and what bombs).4️⃣Then, and this bit is crucial, have a battle plan to turn what seems like a "no" into an opportunity.Not Every Unsubscribe or Hard Bounce is Final🏴Unsubscribes: What we often see—especially in recruitment—is that many unsubscribes are "false flags". It’s not the person opting out; it’s often their old email being shut down or a system admin / manager clearing mailboxes.Often, that person hasn’t unsubscribed —they’ve moved to another company.⛔Hard bounces should be an opportunity to follow the follow the leaver to their new company - and rekindle a relationship.Instead of blindly trusting your email system, build a workflow to monetise the "no".Here’s how I manage unsubscribes at Barclay Jones:Two months after each mailer, I check the unsubscribes.I investigate if they’ve left the company or simply moved jobs.If they’ve moved, I update their details in the CRM and re-engage them.I do the same with hard bounces by checking LinkedIn and updating records.Recruiters can recover valuable contacts this way—some of those “dead” leads could be placements waiting to happen! 💸Campaign the Clean ~ Create the Opps!Treat every email/automation campaign not just as marketing—but as a data quality (and data wealth) activity.Hard bounces? Check if the contact has left.Unsubscribes? Investigate the source.Build this into your CRM workflows—it doesn’t have to be hard or time-consuming.With the right process, they’re signals—not setbacks.Want help building an outreach and automation strategy to keep candidates and clients opted in?📅 Let’s talk!I offer free consultations to help leaders, recruiters, and automators unlock the power of their Bullhorn database.BOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION
-
Blog
Tired of Unsubscribes? 5 Email Tips Every Recruiter Should Know
Recruiters, marketers, automators... If you’re running regular email campaigns to candidates or clients, with tech like Bullhorn Automation, unsubscribes are either a fact of life or something you dread, and may even be the reason you are not ambitious enough with your outreach.Through the free consultation calls I have with recruiter / leaders / automators who have Bullhorn, I’ve been finding myself talking a lot about managing recruitment campaign outputs, and dreaded unsubscribes.Unsubscribes can feel like a blow to your efforts, but there are ways to prevent them which I'll explore below.💡Be sure to also read my other blog: How Recruiters Can Turn Bounces and Unsubscribes into $£€- so that when you get an unsubscribe or hard bounce, you could actually create more recruitment opportunities.5 Ways to Reduce Your Candidates and Clients from UnsubscribingI've got lots of tips to share, that we coach in our Automation Buddy programs, but here's 5 to get you started today.1️⃣Clean up / segment your data I guarantee you have data which you no longer need (old sectors / job titles you no longer recruit for).Perhaps the data you need isn't coded well enough for you to segment it, hence you risk hitting parts of your community with the wrong content.But, don't procrastinate over this - you don't need a 100% clean database to start a campaign, or to make an approach. Clean up some data, and hit it. Then move on to the next layer to attack.2️⃣Subject lines need to punch above their weightKeep them short and sweet, but personalised (about them, not you (or recruitment) and relevant to your community.Think "mobile first" and ensure that your subject line can actually be read on a mobile device. For example, the Mail app on iPhones displays up to 78 characters in the subject line area.Emojis can help you stand out in a big list of emails, too.3️⃣Content, creating contentment (not consternation)I'm still seeing way too much recruitment content online, and not enough sector-specific content form recruiters.I yawn at interview tips / what to wear to interviews etc... It works less well than content aimed at your sector and job titles.At a stretch "Interview tips for Accountants" is better than a more generic topic, but even so, if that's the best content you can create, you need to try harder.What tech does your community use? Find out and talk about it.How is AI / world events affecting them? Find out and talk about it.It's never been easier to find out more about what makes your community tick - ask them, ask Google, ask AI!4️⃣Formatting to attract attention (but be WCAG-aware)I recently spotted a recruitment campaign where the email content was centred throughout and black and white - very uninspiring, and actually quite difficult to engage with.In the very least breath your brand colours into your content and check WCAG guidelines to ensure that you're not inadvertently muting your content.If your community uses Instagram / Facebook etc... be sure that they expect your content to have a life beyond black and white copy. Colour, emojis, personality - shine!5️⃣"Pitch" the unsubscribeWhat does the unsubscribe footer in your mailers look like?Is it simply an invite to unsubscribe? Or have you pitched that if they do, they'll miss out on future helpful content, and life-changing jobs?I see way too many campaigns that look like the goal is to generate unsubscribes! Ironically the footer is often more engaging than the mailer itself."We're fixated on helping our teaching community stay up to speed with the best tips, tricks, and jobs. You can unsubscribe, but then you may miss your next best teaching hack, or career move"...is better than..."Unsubscribe".A great tip is to allow candidates and clients to "Update their Preferences" which can provide your community with a way to help you make ore relevant the communications you are sending to them and/or update you on what they do find interesting. This can be done within Bullhorn Automation and is a useful way to reduce the Unsubscribes.📍Final Thought: Create Recruitment Campaigns to Keep Your Community SubscribedYour data, message, design are crucial to keeping your community from opting out.By keeping your content relevant, valuable, and human—you’ll build a database that’s active, engaged, and ready to work with you.Want help building an automation and outreach strategy to keep your community of candidates and clients opted in? Let’s talk.I offer free consultations to help leaders / recruiters / automators unlock the power of their Bullhorn database and create opportunities .BOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION
-
Downloads
Your Recruitment Training Playbook