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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 That particular database will likely be old and out of date.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
