SMS Success Stories for Recruitment Advertising Campaigns

Today, I’d like to share with you three success stories that we had with cell phone text messaging (sms) recruitment advertising campaigns.

Fortune 500 Consumer Electronics Client

The first campaign was on behalf of a Fortune 500 consumer electronics client. They wanted to hire dozens of inside sales representatives for their Texas office. On behalf of the client, we delivered a text message to the cell phones of 15,000 double opt-in candidates who resided in the metro. The targeting was a little more detailed than this, but basically we targeted college students and recent graduates who resided in the metro and had either sales or customer support experience.

The text message read, ‚Sales Careers with XYZ Client. Visit xyzclient.com/careers to apply or stop by our Open House for Sales on October 12 & 20. RSVP:careers@xyzclient.com. The maximum length for these messages is 145 characters so the client couldn’t do much more than this.

As with all SMS campaigns, we delivered 100 percent of the messages and 100 percent were opened. What we tend to see with SMS campaigns is a much higher than normal response rate to the targeted email follow-up that we deliver at no additional charge. The SMS builds the brand and therefore opens the door but the responses come from the email as it is so much easier to apply for a job using a computer than a cell phone. The response rate, predictably, was great. Industry averages for opt-in, targeted email campaigns is about five percent open (read) the email and about five percent of those click through. On a campaign to 15,000 candidates, that translates into 37.5 clicks. If 20 percent apply and 10 percent are hired, that’s one hire. We typically average 10 to 15 percent so on a campaign to 15,000 people would normally see about three to seven hires.

We generated a 19.05 percent open rate and 12.05 percent click through rate so delivered 1,033 clicks. If 20 percent applied and 10 percent were hired, that’s 21 hires. Not bad. We weren’t told by the client how many applications they received or hires they made but they did tell us that they were able to hire everyone they needed from this one recruitment advertising campaign. Definitely not bad.

Major Bank Client

More recently, we delivered a recruitment advertising SMS campaign on behalf of a major bank client. For that campaign we delivered a text message to the 60,000 college seniors and recent graduates in finance, accounting, and the client’s other desired majors and who attend the client’s core schools.

We over delivered by sending 65,475 text messages. Because we guarantee 100 percent delivered text messages and emails on our campaigns, we need to over deliver because there will inevitably be a certain percentage of people whose phones will be off for a week or who changed their numbers or email addresses or whose inboxes are full. In this case, we actually delivered 61,471 text messages so the client essentially got 1,471 cell phone text messages for free.

On the email follow-up, we had 6,626 opened, which was 10.12% and 609 clicks, which was a 9.19% click through rate.

Both the open and click rates are about double the industry average of about five percent each. Normally I wouldn’t be excited about a campaign with an average of a little under 10 percent for the opens and clicks but numbers can sometimes be deceiving. This client was one of the unusual ones in that they truly understood the difference between quantity and quality. They hired the people they wanted to from the campaign and they’ve already indicated to us that the results were so good that they want us to send another campaign out. That’s sweet music to our ears.

Large Software Company Client

Another recent campaign was for a large software company. They targeted seniors and recent graduates of software engineer programs at their core schools. In this case, we delivered about 15,000 cell phone text messages and then followed up with the targeted email campaign the next day. We had excellent 16 percent open and almost 13 percent click through rates.

Like the bank, the client was so pleased with the results that they’re planning to have us send another campaign out but the software company also told us that they are going to have us broaden the targeting so that the campaign would reach even more potential candidates.