SMS marketing is more than just a fast communication channel — if you learn to use it right, it can open new doors for your staffing and recruiting business.

Why SMS Marketing is a Marketing Channel Worth Considering

Yes, phones are used to call and text, but they’re also the primary way that people schedule business meetings, view work emails, and keep in touch with friends online. By texting recruits and corporate clients, you’ll have their attention right away, since they’re likely already using their phones. 

In fact, text marketing has proved to be a highly successful marketing channel. Consider these statistics:

• Text messages have an average open rate of 98%. In comparison, emails have a 21.33% open rate. This means that your message to recruits or corporate clients will most likely be opened. Other marketing channels like email are often saturated, meaning that your audience might miss your message.
• People respond to messages fast. Around 60% of people open the text messages they receive within five minutes of receiving them. If you have a time-sensitive role, you’re more likely to get quick responses from candidates when you contact them over text.
• SMS marketing is less saturated. Only 39% of businesses use SMS marketing. In comparison, nearly 70% of businesses use a channel like email marketing. Since there’s less noise, it’s easier to break through to recruits and corporate clients with text messages in comparison to emails. 

How SMS Marketing Will Impact Your Recruiting Business

Implementing SMS text message marketing can have major impacts on both your corporate clients and candidates.

Improve the Recruitment Experience

Among the biggest benefits of SMS marketing for recruiters and their target audience is the convenience that comes with texting.

Most candidates will already be working a different job while searching for a new role. It can be tough for them to answer your call while they’re at work, which makes texting a great discreet alternative. With a few texts, you can schedule calls, inform them of new opportunities, and remind them of future interviews.

Similarly, hiring managers and founders will prefer texting over calling. Their workdays are mostly busy, making answering random calls tricky. SMS allows you to quickly and conveniently inform them of your progress in the recruitment process, then they can get in touch with you whenever they’re free to talk.

Accelerate the Hiring Process

Your target audience will see your text as soon as you send it. In comparison, sending recruitment updates over email can be slow. Your message will most likely get lost in the heap of other advertisements and newsletters that your target receives daily. 

You can use text marketing to conduct multiple recruitment processes:

• Reach out to candidates about open roles: If the role is time-sensitive, getting in touch with experienced candidates fast is essential, making texts the way to go.
• Schedule calls and interviews: Use texts to schedule phone calls and interviews with the candidate or your corporate clients. Since it’s less intrusive than phone calls and faster than emails, it’s a great way to keep the recruitment process moving.
• Preparing candidates for interviews: Remind candidates of upcoming interviews via text to reduce the chances of them not showing up. You can also use text marketing to give them advice about how to handle themselves during the interview, which will increase your candidate placement success rates. 

Personalize Communication

Recruiters have to deal with multiple candidates at a time. While you’re reaching out to some candidates for the first interview, you’ll need to keep in touch with other candidates to inform them that they have a job offer. Keeping track of all these candidates and the messages that you need to send them can get chaotic fast. SMS marketing platforms like launch.ai can introduce some order into this chaos.

Systems like launch.ai let you segment potential candidates based on the type of roles they’re looking for and by the stage of the hiring process that they’re currently on. That means you get the speed and efficacy of SMS marketing with less confusion. You can also make sending messages to candidates an automated process with most SMS marketing platforms. When you add a candidate to your contact list, you can automatically send a series of welcome messages to place them in the right categories and give you more information about their needs.

Send More Useful Messages

The fact that SMS marketing puts you closer to the candidate means that you need to be responsible for the messages you send out to them. If you’re sending irrelevant messages to the candidate, chances are that they’ll unsubscribe from receiving your messages.

With text marketing, you can ensure that you’re only reaching out to candidates with useful messages that will make their job search better. Use text messages for personal, immediately relevant communications, like informing candidates about a new job opportunity or updating them about a recent interview. Long-form content on the other hand, like information about the latest finance industry trends, can be useful for growing your brand identity but risks cluttering up your communications.

By pairing text marketing with email campaigns, you can get the benefits of both quick, personal communication and longer, more detailed content without overwhelming your target or allowing important messages to slip through the cracks.

Get Started on SMS Text Message Marketing Today

SMS marketing is an under-utilized marketing channel that offers substantial benefits to your recruitment business. It ensures that your business can communicate quickly with candidates and corporate clients, improving the success rate of your recruitment operations. If you’re looking for a platform that will simplify your SMS marketing, we’d love to talk to you about a plan that’s right for your business.