Recruitment isn’t always an industry known for setting the pace when it comes to technology adoption, which is a shame, as when it comes to marketing automation, the benefits to consultants are clear. Recruiters live and die by the quality of the relationships they form with clients and candidates, and nothing builds relationships faster, or allows recruiters to scale those relationships more efficiently, than a high performing recruitment marketing automation platform.
Keen to hear Zinzan’s first-hand experience of Kulea marketing automation? Click above.
Yet of the recruitment firms we speak to daily, only a small percentage are taking advantage of marketing automation technology to increase their candidate and client attraction and retention rates. With that firmly at front of mind, we spoke to DMJ Recruitment Marketing Manager and proud Kulea customer, Zinzan Clements to find out a little about his own marketing automation journey, and why it is he feels that some recruitment firms are missing the boat.
Over to you Zin…
Q1. Could you please tell us a little bit about your background and the sector you work in. eg. Job description, where you work, company description, your experience of marketing automation, your personal objectives etc?
Well, I come from a land down under and like many before me, I’ve made the pilgrimage over to the motherland.
I’m a journalist by qualification, but like most journo’s who were staring down the barrel of 3 years rural placement reporting on the high number of flies in outback towns, I went into marketing.
My whole career (all of 4 years) has been in recruitment marketing.
My first job was with start-up in Australia (ping pong table, Xbox, wearing the same thing every day like Mark Zuckerberg), before working for a range of recruiters in the UK.
Currently, I’ve with the legends at DMJ who focus on company secretarial and legal recruitment.
During my career, marketing automation has been a huge part of day-to-day and long-term strategy.
Q2. It’s interesting that you were using marketing automation in your previous role. What is it about MA that makes it so compelling? Did you have any specific challenges that you were looking to overcome?
My biggest professional challenge is resources. Across all my roles I’ve been a one-man band and I need to be the guy you see on the street with drum stick on one foot, cymbals on the other, guitar in hand and harmonica in mouth.
Marketing automation gives me leverage, want to contact 500 candidates with personalised content and relevant jobs? No problem, marketing automation can help you do that.
Q3. What objectives/KPI’s did you set yourself before embarking on your marketing automation adventure?
To be honest, I haven’t been that strict with my KPIs, but the main thing we are looking at is conversion rates overall (obvious) and application rates to jobs.
If we’re talking general objectives, it’s getting the business to embrace marketing automation.
Having to explain marketing automation to the wider business can be tricky, but I’ve been lucky enough to get it implemented with most of my employers.
From there, it’s about how you roll it out and find uses for the technology.
Q4. Let’s be honest, most recruitment companies aren’t yet taking advantage of marketing automation. What do you think it is that’s holding them back?
The biggest challenge is understanding the technology and how it can be used.
Recruitment, for all its talk of being dynamic and fast-paced, when it comes to technology, can be in the Stone Age.
The attitude that the more calls you make, the more jobs you place, (while essentially correct) can be improved with the use of marketing automation.
Overall, like all things, it’s being afraid of change. If something is working, even to a moderate degree, people are very scared to change to something else (even if it might be better).
If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes at me being on my high-horse, don’t worry, I’m just as guilty!
Q5. From your own experiences, have you found these to be realistic reservations?
Not at all. You just need to be patient.
Don’t expect to purchase your marketing automation software, login and have 30% conversion rate and 50 leads a day on day one. The very first thing I did with Kulea was to send an email campaign to about 150 contacts, that’s it.
I wasn’t trying to change the game, I just started slowly and gradually increased my understanding to the point where Kulea is now a direct revenue producer for DMJ.
This took a year and we’re just getting started on delivering all the benefits marketing automation can deliver.
Q6. How quickly were you able to get up to speed with marketing automation, and how did you find the first few months?
Fairly quickly, being a ‘millennial’ I was on Facebook and taking selfies before I could walk so I was fairly comfortable with the technology.
My biggest piece of advice is to understand that technology and software is ruled by logic.
Everything happens due to something else, it’s just one big gigantic decision tree and once I understood that fundamental, it stopped me throwing my laptop out the window for the 5th time out of frustration.
Q7. Where do you personally see the greatest benefits of marketing automation?
It has to be the leverage as previously mentioned. The power to contact so many people automatically, literally while I sleep is a Godsend.
The other is the future, marketing automation is only going to become more prevalent and understanding it now gives your business huge competitive advantage.
We are nowhere near marketing automation saturation and I’m waiting for the local dogwalker, greasy pizza joint and dry cleaner to send me hyper-personalised offers and direct me to dynamic landing pages.
Q8. What are your next steps in your marketing automation journey?
Figuring out how to generate more direct ROI and use it as white label/custom solution for clients (which we are already doing).
I would like to do more personalisation and tie it more closely with our CRM.
Q9. Have you any words of advice for recruitment companies and marketers in general that are considering marketing automation?
If you haven’t got it in your business already, you need to.
There is no excuse to not have some part of your marketing automated in 2018. There are so many solutions at so many price points with so much support, you don’t have an excuse!
The other is to realise that this doesn’t take away from your traditional selling methods, it augments them.
When I worked in Australia I presented my business case to the board regarding purchasing marketing automation software for the company.
One director raised his hand and said, ‘I don’t do deals over email. I go for a steak and bottle of wine. Why do I care about this?’
I replied, ‘marketing automation will never replace your steak and booze, it just helps you find more people to have a steak and booze with.’
Who wouldn’t want that?!
