This article originally appeared in the Professional Services Journal, published by InternetViz. http://www.internetviz-newsletters.com/psj/
Employment recruiting has run the gamut, from classified ads, to headhunters and now to online job boards such as Monster.com and Hotjobs. These boards are a great alternative to newspaper employment classified ads and are still being widely developed today. Yet, they are not very targeted, and rely on people visiting them. Fortunately, there's a new marketing method emerging to reach a more targeted niche audience: the employment e-Newsletter.
Recruiting through an employment e-Newsletter is akin to placing ads in the classified sections in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or any other major newspaper, only better. Every single person who receives your e-Newsletter missive is part of the exact demographic you want to reach.
Marketing through e-Newsletters is a proven way to increase your qualified leads and in turn, grow your business. If you want to get ahead of the pack, read the following information based on my experience distributing the Software & IT Sales Employment Review which targets sales professionals in the software and technology industry.
Provide value
Because not many employment newsletters are in the marketplace today - SalesRecruits.com is one of a handful of companies taking advantage of this approach - this leaves room for more companies to reap the rewards of cost effective online marketing through employment newsletters.
In order to become a sought after information source, however, you must consistently provide value with your e-Newsletter, and earn your readers' trust. One way to provide value is to give the specific target audience that you're trying to reach the inside track on the industry.
Our readers are hiring candidates and potential candidates for sales positions in the software industry. We give them the scoop on who's hiring, who the major software companies are, as well as news about some of the smaller and emerging companies. In addition, we deliver timely information about software companies with respect to their sales organizations. Some stories are based on exclusive interviews with CEOs and influential people in the types of companies they're seeking. We ask questions like, "Why would people want to work with these companies?" These exclusive interviews provide invaluable answers and details.
We also provide other information that's relevant to their job search. For example, if you look at any of the major periodicals for a large software company like Lawson Software (one of our clients), you'll read about new product releases, major customer wins and product reviews; but chances are, you won't read about job openings. You won't find out what Lawson is looking for, or get information about the culture of the organization. Instead of relying on company speculation, our e-Newsletter provides first-hand factual information.
Earn your readers' trust
If your e-Newsletter consistently provides relevant editorial content, at the end of the day, your readers will want to continue receiving this valuable tool. Over time, as your e-Newsletter is repeatedly valued, you begin to earn your readers' trust.
In our e-Newsletter, along with job opening information, we work hard to deliver valuable editorial content from industry leaders and experts in the field. Our articles are helpful and timely and keep our readers coming back for more. Since our first issue, we've only had 0.05% opt out of their subscription to our e-Newsletter. This very low rate is due to reaching the right audience and providing what they need and want to read. Frequent readers, who perceive your company as a stable information source, will spread the world about your company to other potential readers and clients. You may be surprised at the types of readers this loyalty incurs.
For instance, many hiring managers, have subscribed to our e-Newsletter due to pass-along referrals, so they can track other companies. They respect our consistent coverage (our e-Newsletter is distributed once a month), and are interested in getting information about their competitors through the e-Newsletter. The more the merrier. For us, over half of our business comes from people whom read our e-Newsletter.
Build your mailing list
The relationship between your employment e-Newsletter mailing list size and recruiting success is direct and powerful. Every single reader added is a potential prospect.
Because greater readership results in greater sales, growing your mailing list is key. Here are four techniques my company has successfully employed to grow from a 20,000 member list to over 80,000 readers in little over six months.
1. Partner with industry associations. The Chicago Software Association (CSA), for example, makes our e-Newsletters available to their members, as do many other associations throughout the U.S. Most of their mailing lists are very large, which enlarges our mailing list.
2. Attend tradeshows and events. We attend 70-75 software and IT tradeshows and industry conferences each year. When we're there, we make our e-Newsletter available to those attendees interested in subscribing.
3. Market through your Web site. Our Web site, SalesRecruits.com, is one of the most heavily trafficked online job boards in the industry, and one of the main reasons we have so many subscribers.
4. Count on word of mouth. In addition to the high Web site response rate, we also get a lot of pass-along distribution, people telling friends or colleagues about the e-Newsletter.
Increase coverage through partnerships
Partnerships are critical to reaching a very narrow demographic, rather than speaking to all the people in one industry. By developing relationships with organizations and associations already talking to your target audience, you can get in touch with more members of your desired niche market.
Partnerships can be built in many ways. One way is to partner up with a trade publication that sends out a print publication several times a year to your target recruitment audience. Develop a relationship with this publisher, and your articles may be syndicated and run in many different publications to a much wider audience, both in print and online. In our case we do this with Software Business, the leading software industry business publication that is widely read by software company C-level executives, and sales and marketing professionals.
Another example of partnering is based on connecting with some of the most popular sales training firms, or marketing and advertising firms involved in your field. Our firm offers a directory of service providers for companies working in the software industry. In exchange for a listing, those partners post a free subscription offer for our e-Newsletter on their Web site.
Grow your business
As you continue to build your e-Newsletter mailing list and develop partnership relationships, not only will your leads increase, but your revenue will also grow. In the second half of 2002, our revenue increased by approximately 40%. This increase in business was not solely from the e-Newsletter, but it definitely has made an impact. Prior to the e-Newsletter, we were dependent on e-mail programs and sales calls, but none of these marketing programs were as effective. No other media would allow us to reach so many people in such a niche audience. Thinking of the e-Newsletter as a sales tool puts our sales force and readers on common ground.
Another revenue building tactic is to offer advertising space in your e-Newsletter. My company stumbled on this idea after customers began to request space in our issues. We reach the very same audience they want to reach; before hearing about us, they hadn't really found a publication contacting this specific target group. We're now at a point where display advertising is sold out in the first or second week of the month before the next issue comes out.
Enjoy the bright future of online recruiting
Online job boards will continue to be refined and do well in the future because a monumental shift is still going on from print advertising to online job boards. Customers know about leveraging the Internet for recruiting. This provides a substantially lower cost way to find talent and is more targeted compared to other methods of recruiting including print advertising, and the most expensive way, traditional agencies with headhunters. No company wants to do that unless they must.
Over the next five years, analysts predict that Internet recruiting will grow by a factor of several billion dollars. I believe many companies will take a step beyond online job boards and follow us into online newsletter development and distribution. If you are a recruiter, you really can't find a better marketing tool than the e-Newsletter. Besides offering the potential for a huge return on investment, it's one of the most targeted tools available for recruiting today; and if your staff is too overworked, the creation, production and distribution of your employment e-Newsletter can be outsourced.
The future for online recruiting is bright!
About the Author
Steven Morgan is President and CEO of SalesRecruits.com, the leading online recruiting service focused exclusively on software and technology sales professionals. Tamara Halbritter is a writer for InternetVIZ, and is available for freelance assignments. InternetVIZ is a custom publisher for companies wishing to find, acquire, and retain customers through Internet newsletters. Visit InternetVIZ on the web at http://www.internetviz-newsletters.com/psj/
