Best Practices for Targeted Email Campaigns - Part IV
This is the fourth article in a series of blog articles about the best practices for using targeted email campaign to help employers hire college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities. This series is based upon a free targeted email recruitment advertising campaign best practices white paper co-written by Jason Bakker of Campus Media Group and me.
4. Building Your Student Email List
Depending on the size of the company or school for which you are recruiting, building a list can be a tedious task. When dealing with email, you want your message to reach students who are going to be the best fit for your targeting goals and objectives. Email lists and a targeting strategy can be developed with the help of marketing companies like CollegeRecruiter.com and Campus Media Group. Your recruiting goals and budget depend on it. Targeted email campaigns provide today’s recruiters with a tool that has some of the most detailed targeting options available among media channels that exist on campus. Building a targeted email list is a very important step in building your recruiting database. These people will be the brand ambassadors for your company or school, spread the word, and hopefully be your future employees or students. Here are some targeting options that will help you narrow your search and give you the most qualified applicants:
- School name
- School enrollment
- School location (county, state, city, zip)
- School religious affiliation
- School type (4-year, Community college, grad school, Private school, etc.)
- Campus type (residential or commuter)
- Programs/majors offered
- Student profiles (race, gender, age, major, etc.)
As students begin their job/school search, it quickly becomes difficult for them to keep track of all the opportunities that exist for them and to which they’ve applied. They may send out hundreds of applications. The winners in this recruiting game are the organizations that stay in front of these students and keep their brand in front of them throughout the school year. Clearly, one email deployment is not enough to accomplish that goal. After you have established your first dialogue, check back with them in a way that they specify. Be sure your recruiting team has the tools to follow-up and communicate with students via phone, email, text messaging, instant messaging and snail mail correspondence. The key is learning how they want you to communicate with them and respecting that. This will also help reinforce how your everyday culture might easily fit into their hectic schedules as they decide to transition into your organization. Remember, students will do their own research on their own terms and timing. Be sure your Web site has all the information they need as they begin weighing the pros and cons of joining your organization.
Today’s college youth have very large extended networks. Social networking sites, instant messenger lists, blogs and other lists allow students to speak to dozens, even hundreds of their friends instantly. Utilize them to share opportunities you are offering to their friends. Encourage reposting of your opportunity, the forwarding of your email, etc. Even if your initial prospect doesn’t feel there is a fit, they may know someone who is.
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