7 ways to use a targeted recruiting email to reach job seekers

If you’re trying to find great job seekers, a recruiting email can be a great way to get a huge response. Whether it’s an email to a candidate for interview, or targeting potential candidates en-masse with a marketing email, there are few ways as effective at reaching potential candidates and then managing them through the recruitment process.

Before you even send your first hiring email, you can use email as part of your strategy to market vacancies to new audiences. Whether you’re using your own database to send recruiter emails to candidates, or a third party company like Aviation Job Search to send your vacancies to their subscribers, targeted email campaigns are an important tool in your arsenal to target the largest number of potential candidates, both passive and active.

‍Choose your audience

Sometimes less is more - it’s normally better to send your email to a focused audience who are likely to engage with it. If you need a mechanic in Munich, there’s no need to email cabin crew in Peru, however exciting that role is. 

But sometimes more is more, too, and it’s important to find as many relevant people to email as possible. You only have a finite number of people subscribed, so consider casting the net further by taking advantage of targeted email products from job boards like Aviation Job Search.

Many will have a huge database of active and passive job seekers who you can target by role, location and more, meaning your vacancies can reach more people who might normally be outside your sphere of influence.

Choose your time

Your email arriving when the user is active is the difference between an open or getting lost in the annals of their inbox, never to be seen again. 

Many people will say that 9am to 12pm on a Tuesday is the perfect send time, but within aviation, the reality is very different. While this might be the perfect time for those who work a 9 to 5 desk job, in aviation, many potential candidates work shifts, during weekends and throughout the night. 

One way to overcome this is to target individual users by the time they’re most likely to open their email. We use AI to achieve this and know on a per-user basis what day and time they’re most likely to engage with the emails we send. 

Stay ahead of email restrictions

Email clients are increasingly gatekeeping the emails that their users receive - sending emails is pointless if people aren’t receiving them. Things like sender reputation, email size and content and the tools you use to email people have a huge impact on deliverability. 

In February 2024 both Gmail and Yahoo will be adding further verification restrictions requiring senders to have SPF, DKIM and DMARC. If you’re like most people and this means nothing to you, don’t worry, we have it covered. If you deal with a third party emailer, make sure they do too.

Choose engaging subject lines

OK, so you made it into their inbox, what next? A short, descriptive and distinctive subject line will make sure your recipients open your email. Things like numbers work well, so a subject line such as ‘5 reasons why…’ type messaging is likely to improve open rates. 

Emojis help you stand out, but don’t rely on them. Also, make sure the most important words appear towards the beginning of the subject line in case they’re truncated. 

We do a lot of keyword research and apply this to the emails we send so that our open rates remain above the industry average. We can also use split-testing to try two different subject lines for a small proportion of sends, before sending the rest using the winning subject line.

Keep it short

Now they’ve opened your email, you want them to click. Remember your email will likely be interrupting them, so keep it short and resist the temptation to include too much information. 

Think of email as the shop window, not the shop. Too much content affects deliverability and is likely to mean fewer clicks, not more. You want to give just enough information to draw people in and to click the link to find out more. 

Aim for no more than 150 words and focus on things likely to attract the kind of candidate you want to recruit such as job title, salary and anything to distinguish you from other recruiters looking for the same kind of person and leave technical information for the job description you’re linking to.

Measure response

Time to relax, right? Not so fast. After we’ve sent a targeted email, we’ll monitor the results and use any learnings to understand response and improve future emails. Make sure you do the same.

The most important metrics are open rates and click through rates, but combine the two and you have a click-to-open (CTO) rate. We’re not happy if ours is under 20%. If yours is, then consider the above tips - the timing, the audience and the content - and consider how you can improve these in the future.

Use a job board to email candidates

If this sounds like a lot of work - it is. But many job boards, such as Aviation Job Search, can do the hard work for you. We have hundreds of thousands of aviation job seekers registered, and they want to hear about vacancies like yours. There’s often two ways to get in touch with them; firstly through tools such as CV or resume databases where you can headhunt and get in touch with candidates that look like a good fit.

But the fastest and most powerful way is often through targeted email. With this, we let customers choose their audience, send time and content. We’ll look after the rest saving you time, giving you access to a huge audience of job seekers you would not otherwise have been able to reach and the peace of mind knowing that the right people are seeing the right roles.

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