As a recruiter, you send a lot of emails. You’re constantly reaching out to clients and candidates. You need to make sure your emails get to where they’re intended to go and stay out of the spam folder.
Learn about sending mass emails and how to prevent your emails from being marked as spam or ignored.
What is mass mailing in recruitment?
Mass mailing is the act of sending the same email to a large group of people at one time. As a recruiter, you might send mass emails in several situations:
- To entice passive candidates
- To give mass rejections
- To explain the recruitment process
- To share status of the process
- To advertise open positions
- To market to potential clients
In any of these situations, you are at risk of being filtered out as spam. Even if you do get into someone’s inbox, your email might be ignored. You need to be strategic with your mass emails.
How to send mass emails
When sending mass emails, you must avoid looking like spam. There’s one basic way to get marked as spam: send unsolicited emails in bulk. You might do this if you’re sending an email to a large list of passive candidates you have no relationship with.
When sending mass emails, it’s best to send them to people who have already given you permission to email them. For example, people who subscribe to job opening updates have given you permission to email them.
If you have permission to send emails, it is more acceptable to send them en masse. People are less likely to flag you as spam if they want your emails.
If you have a subscriber list, make sure you give them an option to unsubscribe. The unsubscribe link is generally at the end of emails.
If the email recipients haven’t given you permission, you should be more cautious about mass emailing. When your emails are unwelcome, recipients are more likely to mark you as spam.
Be thoughtful about who you send mass, unsolicited emails to. Do your research on each person on the email list. For example, if you’re recruiting passive candidates, look each of them up in your database or LinkedIn. Make sure they fit the job you’re sending them and that they’ll be receptive to it. If you send an IT job opportunity to a bunch of nurses, you’ll likely be marked as spam.
Scrub your email lists so only the most qualified people receive your mass email. Your email is more likely to stay out of the spam folder when it’s relevant to the recipients.
Tips to stay out of the spam folder
Try the following tips to help your emails stay out of the spam folder.
Be careful with your subject lines and message body. Leave out spammy words and phrases, such as:
- Opportunity
- Make money
- Work from home
- Success
- Open
- Click here
- 100% satisfied
- Apply online
- Urgent
This isn’t an exhaustive list. Basically, avoid any words that sound like you’re being pushy or making a sale. If you’ve ever seen a particular word or phrase in a spam email, you should probably avoid it.
Do not use a lot of punctuation marks in recruiting email subject lines or the message body. The same goes for using all caps. WOULD YOU WANT TO READ AN EMAIL LIKE THIS????
Don’t use several font colors throughout the email. Stick with a standard font color, like black.
Never buy a contact list and email the addresses on it. This is a surefire way to be marked as spam. The people on the list do not want to hear from you, and your emails will be flagged.
Additional mass mailing tips
When mass mailing, your only goal shouldn’t be to avoid the spam folder. You should also make it a goal to receive responses.
Personalize your emails. You can personalize mass mailings by using custom fields. For example, you can add a field that will enter the first name of the recipient. Of course, you will need this information before you send the email. You can pull information from your recruiting CRM for the custom fields.
You can create templates for common mass emails you send. For example, if you frequently send mass job rejection emails, you can make a rejection template. Store the templates in your recruiting software. When you need to send a common email, pull up the template and add your recipients.
Try not to annoy your recipients by following up too soon. For example, if you market your services to potential clients, don’t check in on them the next day. Give people time to look at your emails.
When you send mass cold emails, don’t apologize for sending the emails. Apologizing only wastes words and loses the reader’s attention. Prove that your email is worth the time to read. Keep your emails brief by saying exactly what you need to say, nothing more. Don’t give too much information because it might overwhelm the recipient. If they are interested, they can reach out for more information.
Most importantly, do not expose people’s emails to other recipients. This only gives you angry recipients who probably won’t work with you in the future. You should always use a BCC option when sending mass emails.