We’re sure you’ll agree that recruitment fairs and live events are a fantastic opportunity for consultants to engage with clients and candidates face to face and build ever stronger relationships.
But after the show is over, the hard work begins. All those individual conversations need to be captured and followed up – or you risk having your newly formed hot relationships turn cold.
Traditionally, following up event leads has relied on the delivery of a CSV file from the event organisers (normally the day after the event), or worse, transcribing business cards (and the scribbles on the back of them) into your CRM, before consultants start picking up the phone.
Let’s be clear. This way sucks.
Not only does it rely on your consultants having the time to respond, it also relies on them inputting their own data (try doing that after a business card’s been on a spin cycle at 40 degrees), and every minute’s delay gives competitors the opportunity to get their message across whilst you’re still waiting on the lead data to arrive. And don’t get us started on GDPR compliance…
There has to be a better way!
Step forward marketing automation…
Digital marketers have been using lead acquisition tactics, such as online forms, for years now. This technique can very easily be translated into the real world, and when combined with marketing automation technology, the results can be astounding.
Here’s our 4-step guide to automating your next recruitment event follow up
Step 1. the set up
Build a data capture form using your marketing automation landing page builder, and load it up on your ipad or iphone (or any mobile device you happen to have to hand at the event).
Be sure to switch off your device’s cookies so that your marketing automation software doesn’t “remember” the contact’s details, and then set up a redirect loop on your form, so that it returns you to a clean form after every submission.
Make sure to add a single opt in to the form, and instruct every consultant on site to confirm that the client/candidate is happy receiving future communication from your business. You’ll be amazed how high your sign up rates become when asking people face to face. We’ve seen event opt ins as high as 70%.
Top tip. Make sure you include a hidden field in your form that adds the contact source (in this case, the event name). This provides a GDPR safe audit trail of subscribers data, and also gives you a way of demonstrating event ROI down the line.
Step 2. the opening gambit
Create persona-lised, personalised emails that dynamically change based on the data shared with you by the client/candidate. After all, they’ve made the effort to tell you about themselves – the least you can do is make the effort to respond to them with an email that meets their needs, rather than a generic one size fits all follow up.
As an example, let’s say your firm specialises in legal, accountancy, marketing and consultancy recruitment, with a different consultant in charge of each sector. When a candidate gifts you with their details at the show, they don’t want a generic follow up. They expect a quick response from the appropriate consultant, discussing roles relevant to their sector – anything else is just bad manners.
Don’t forget to set up automated consultant alerts for high value leads, so that whoever’s manning the office phone can get straight onto the case. Check out the below 2 minute video to see this process in action, courtesy of our Commercial Manager, Andy Wright.
Step 3. The follow on
Always include a Call to Action in your introductory email to steer the client/candidate back to your website. This ensures that a cookie is dropped by your marketing automation software onto your client/candidate’s browser, which is then associated with their newly created contact record.
You can then see what roles and webpages they’ve previously checked out, and set up consultant alerts letting your team know when they come back to your site and look at future roles. This insight is invaluable when speaking to candidates. You can create coincidences at every turn – making contact at exactly the moment they’re considering new roles.
Step 4. The ongoing relationship
Your introductory email is just the start of a beautiful relationship. Use your marketing automation software to automate and personalise future communications, delivering value adding communications to the client/candidate at every touch point.
Marketing automation technology allows you to track and respond to clients/customers in real time based on their online interactions with you, so use this online body language, combined with the geo-demographic data you received at the event, to target them with hyper relevant communications.
Using this approach, we’ve seen Kulea customers scoring open rates as high as 70%!
But don’t take our word for how effective marketing automation can be for recruitment marketers. Here’s what our recruitment and staffing customers are saying…
“Kulea is adding huge value to our day to day existence.” – Gemma Sleight, Marketing Manager, FMC talent.
“What I like about Kulea is that we can do that by followers a customer’s experience from our website, through to emails, and back to personalised content on our website. Most tools miss out this last piece but website conversions are a key metric to improve for our business.” – Catherine Henderson, Marketing Director, EMR Recruitment
“A conversion rate of 31% on the landing page for our lead magnet led to 37 new leads (and basically everyone clicked through from the email to the landing page then downloaded). From the downloads, we identified a guy through behaviour tracking (constantly kept visiting a job ad I had assigned a lead score to). From there, we called him and he is now interviewing at two separate jobs we are running, which, when successful will be a £50,000 fee!!” – Zinzan Clements, Marketing Manager DMJ Recruitment
