Everyone wants world class engagement rates.
I hope after putting these best practices in place you’ll be able to get your firm closer to achieving them.
First, let’s start with what world class results look like.
Below are two examples of email engagement stats in the past 7 days for high performing clients.
I assume everyone reading this would be excited to achieve similar.
Your candidate/client experience/business revenue would be too!
Client 1
Client 2
Now that you have seen what can be achieved let’s get into how you can get there.
Engagement Best Practices to Follow
Start with transactional communications to boost deliverability
Transactional communications (communications with candidates/clients that are in process with you currently) have the best engagement and deliverability.
A big mistake to avoid is starting your engagement strategy with a huge re-engagement of people that have been collecting dust in your ATS/CRM.
Start with automations like instead …
Placement checkins,
Interview reminders,
Screening follow ups,
NPS scores at key stages of the recruitment cycle,
Job alerts for active job seekers,
Submission status updates,
etc.
Ensure updated contact information
You won’t have high engagement if you don’t have correct contact information.
High data quality will always produce best results.
Do thinks like …
Verify or update information whenever possible,
Remove hard bounces from future campaigns,
Declutter your database with an archive and duplicate fix strategy.
Enable self service for candidates/clients
You’ll have the best chance to achieve strong data quality if you allow candidates and clients to self serve to update their own information.
Your recruiters will love any updates that come to your database that they didn’t have to provide.
Use dynamic surveys and chats to write back updated information to the correct fields and leverage the ability for candidates to upload an updated resume/CV and have it parsed automatically.
Communication method and frequency preferences
This can be a massive boost. Allow recipients to control how frequently they get communicated with and by which method.
Taking into account their preferences will yield a significant engagement and experience benefit.
How to do this properly likely deserves its own article but let me know if you have any questions on where to start!
Enable omnichannel options to satisfy multi generational preferences
You have to have options to satisfy a wide range of preferences. Ensure your Omnichannel war chest is full with completely integrated phone, email, texting, social media, and chat communication methods.
Have good content
This one obvious but so important it needs to be mentioned. If you want high engagement rates, ensure your content is top notch.
My best tip is give value more often than you ask for something in return.
Have something to offer beyond jobs
What can you provide to candidates and clients beyond jobs?
Here is a quick list I threw together:
Career advice,
Interview trends and tips,
Salary guides,
Screening trends and tips,
Coaching/advising,
Resume tips,
Industry trends and tips,
Candidate and client market data,
etc.
Leveraging data is a firm’s superpower when optimized.
The scale at which you operate brings tremendous opportunity.
If I owned a staffing firm I’d create a separate business and revenue line unlocked from data insights.
But that is best left for another article another time …
Deliver the right content to the right people
(segment, segment, segment)
When you have your data in a good place you have the ability to send more relevant communications.
This type of segmentation is a marketer’s dream.
Done properly you are sending the right messages to the right people at the right time.
Higher engagement naturally follows.
Don't spam people or send duplicate emails
Equally important is what not to do.
Stay away from:
Spamming people with irrelevant information,
Sending duplicate emails,
Bombarding someone with too many communications in a short period of time.
Include personalized touch points
Mix in reminders for recruiters to call or send a personalized message.
Building strong relationships will always require humans.
Blend in recruiter touch points with automated messages in your campaigns and you’ll see increased engagement.
Fall off strategy for your top of the funnel or huge campaigns
Don’t keep trying to email someone if they haven’t opened any of your previous 10 emails.
Lower the frequency, change something, or stop trying if you aren’t able to get engagement.
Don't let people fall into the ATS abyss
Ensure candidates and clients don’t go months or years without you attempting to engage with them.
Setup touch points and reminders to ensure people don’t get forgotten and keep them out of the ATS abyss.
Deliver a great end to end experience
It is no coincidence that firms that deliver the best candidate and client experience have the highest engagement rates.
Someone is much more likely to engage with you if they’ve had a great experience.
Strive to make that happen for every candidate and client.
Ask for feedback and use the answers to improve
Get feedback from candidates and clients at every step of the journey.
Use that feedback to continually improve and provide a better experience.
Find the pain points, fix them, and you’re on your way!
Recap
Hopefully the above tips get you closer to achieving world class engagement rates.
Your candidates, clients, internal employees, and business revenue will all benefit from improvements that you make.
If you have any questions let me know!
Until next time …
Happy Automating!
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