Recruiters, how to write impactful emails to candidates?

Email communication is an art & science that every professional has to develop. If one master the art of writing emails; that get responses, it saves significant time and cost; because emails are literally free and super fast!

Yet I see many recruiters struggling with writing good emails and many complain that they do not get responses. Baring a few, many don’t even make any attempt to research and training on how to write impactful emails. There are 1000s of blogs and training available on Google/Youtube.

Let me share my experience of writing two of the most widely written emails by Recruiters to Candidates:

Mass Emails:

Mass emails are like promotional emails sent to many people at one time. The most important factor on the success of such emails is the ‘open rate’ and subsequently ‘response rate’ and even further the ‘relevant responses’ (conversion rate). The only way you can get your emails to be opened is by having an impactful subject line.

When writing a mass email, first craft the subject line. You will need to think hard as to why should candidates open my email? Put yourself in their shoes and think what kind of email I would open if I were looking for good job opportunities?

Hence subject lines for mass emails have to intriguing enough…for example, if I were to send a mass email for Python programmer….I would write something like “Python skills are most in demand, find out where..”….or for a Sales Executive role “Sales roles have changed to advising roles…we are offering one”…or try something witty at times (just for fun) “Our Annual Bonus – Vacation on Mars… interested?!” etc. After you have figured a great subject line, build your opening line with the subject line and gradually get into the main context of the email.

One-on-one (OOO) Emails:

OOO emails, also get opened based on the subject line. In case of OOO emails, you have to first write the email body and then build a subject line later (reverse of what you did for Mass emails). When you write the body of the OOO email, make sure it is genuine, conversational, as if you were speaking with the candidate on the phone. Don’t use heavy words or standard jargons or acronyms. Keep it simple.

Once you have conveyed your message in the body, now look for an interesting context in the body of the email that you can use as a subject line… for example, if I were writing an email to confirm if the candidate is coming for the interview or not; your subject line can be “Will I see you today?”…or if you are writing an email to get the latest copy of the CV from the candidate, the subject line could be “Haven’t seen your latest”….As you can see the subject lines of OOO emails are also attention-grabbing and makes the person open it immediately.

If you are a Reckrut.com user, then we have made all the efforts to build very personalized attention-grabbing SMS content and Emails (with awesome subject lines of course), so that you get optimum responses to your reach-out; without having to do anything (no call, no SMS, no emails).

Write an email to me requesting a demo…Let me see what subject lines you come up with!!!

Chetan Indap

(chetan.indap@gmail.com)