Your Mailshots SUCK

Do Your Mailshots Suck?

Right now it’s harder than ever for recruiters to pin down new clients on the phone, so tools like mailshots are more and more important to GET RIGHT.

Think about it:

• How many responses did you get from your last mailshot?
• Did you even manage to get the mailshot sent!?

….

This doesn’t mean mailshots don’t work though – they can still be a major part of both your business development and candidate attraction strategies.

And even if what you’re selling isn’t right for the recipient right now, you can still make a connection.

Here are some key tips to keep in mind:

1. Improve your subject line – stand out. You’ve got one chance, if this isn’t good then it doesn’t matter how good the rest of the email is, it’ll never get read. Write something that will actually pop out of the screen and not just blend in with the other thousand wet flannels that are unceremoniously flopped into your reader’s inbox every day
2. Personalise your email. Yep, it’s got to happen. You can use email automation tools, or probably your CRM to do this, but if you don’t, your email will STINK like spam. And nobody likes spam.3.
3. Provide value / incentive. Why is your prospect going to actually read your email? Remember, people have no interest being sold to. What can you GIVE them? Advice? Stats? Insights? Something funny? Something interesting?Whatever you do avoid the monotony of “I saw your name on LinkedIn and thought I’d connect as I’m trying to grow my network”.
4. Timing. Yeah, it’s easy to dismiss this, but do you want to get up with everyone else getting ignored on Friday afternoon or drowned in the inbox Monday morning? Doubt it. Do you even want to get lost with the rest of the savvy mailshotters on Tuesdays and Wednesdays?Let’s go mental. Try Thursday. Experiment. See what happens.
5. Content. Okay, so you’ve got someone’s attention with the subject and the personalisation, but unless your email is well written, engaging and interesting you’re still not going to achieve a thing. You have 6 seconds of people’s attention MAX once they open the email.If you’re going to the effort of sending out a mailshot, may as well make a decent job of it, eh? Like my Primary school teacher used to say. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
6. Call to action. What do you want your reader to do? Get in touch? Refer a friend? Send a CV? Make sure there is a clear call to action, otherwise you’re email – however good, engaging, interesting, funny it’s been won’t actually be doing it’s job.
7. Short and sweet. Remember that attention is the currency of the world right now, assuming you’ve got your reader’s attention past those first few seconds, how far can you push it? I’ll tell you. Not that far.Even if Shakespeare himself was sending out mail shots now no-one would read them if he wrote more than a paragraph or two. (Keep it cheery Will; no “Now is the winter of our discontent” etc.
8. Make sure your email is mobile friendly. Most people, even if they’re locked down at home(!) will see emails on their phones, so make damn sure that they don’t look shite on the small screen!

If you don’t have time or ideas to make your mail shots work, then why not drop us a line? We can parachute in to support you with all your recruitment marketing needs – even if it’s just as simple as “oi, lads, can you write me a mail shot?”

>>>> Send us a note here <<<<

Good luck out there!