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Before we dive into how SMS from Salesforce can drive hiring, let us understand how SMS works and what can do it to engage prospects and customers.
What is SMS marketing?
In general, SMS marketing or text marketing, implies an opt-in stage for customers to choose how they wish to be contacted. This is where users either leave their phone number on a web form to choose how they wish to be contacted or send an SMS message or short text to an automated system to receive future updates, discount coupons, or any other information they have chosen to receive directly on their mobile device. When the customer leaves a phone number or sends the initial message, an automated marketing software solution saves the customer’s phone number in a database. Marketers use an automated SMS marketing system to send relevant marketing information to these users as and when they choose. Users of course retain the right to opt out of these marketing messages at any time.
What benefits does SMS marketing offer?
One of the biggest benefits of SMS marketing is that people are more willing to trust text over any other type of marketing channel. SMS or text messages are non-intrusive and do not pose any security threat. SMS marketing messages have a very high open rate when compared to email marketing making it one of the most effective marketing methods available.
Another key advantage of SMS marketing is that it enables you to engage with prospects or customers quickly. Response times to SMS messages can be less than a few minutes, compared to several hours or even days that it takes in the case of email. Industry research suggests that people have their phones with them most of the day, which means it is very likely they will see a text message within a few minutes of receiving it.
How can businesses utilize SMS marketing?
SMS marketing is not just about sending text messages. It can be interactive in nature and if you want to tap into new prospects or upsell to existing customers, there are some best practices that you can follow.
Deliver value
Text messaging is non-intrusive and personal. Generally speaking, most people exchange text messages with friends, colleagues and relatives. So, if they have chosen you to be a part of that circle, then you need to make your interaction with them worthy of that invitation. Segment your audience based on relevant parameters such as prospects or customers, geography and age groups, build your messaging content and send only relevant messages. When your audience sees a text from you, they will be inclined to open it.
Similarly, deliver exclusive messaging content for the deals and information you provide. If your audience gets the same messaging content in your emails, ads, or your website, the text messages lose their value. Ensure that opting in makes sense to your audience.
Pay attention to timing
When is the best time to reach out to your prospects and customers? Probably not during regular working hours, especially if your business isn’t even operational during those times. And you are not operational on weekends, then the same rule applies for those off days. Track the periods when your users are most active on your mobile app or site to establish the ideal times to send messages for pushing promotions and other information. Moreover, ensure that when users opt in for your text alerts and notifications, your system sends an immediate acknowledgement. If customers opt in and but don’t hear from you for long periods, they are more likely to lose interest.
Track results and act upon them
If you want your SMS marketing campaigns to be effective, you need to keep track of how it’s doing. Track how many customers opt-out with every incoming message and use that to ascertain what type of content generates the best results.
Applying SMS Marketing in Salesforce to hiring
On many occasions, manpower requirements in organizations are sporadic and immediate. Hiring of a qualified workforce in a brief period of time is one of the most challenging tasks that HR managers have to deal with. To fulfil these imminent requirements, organizations and recruitment firms need to have a quick and effective recruitment process in place to close job openings within a fixed period. This is where SMS Salesforce for recruitment can be a game-changer and transform the entire recruitment process. Here’s how businesses and recruitment firms can incorporate SMS messaging in their recruitment process and fast track it.
SMS Salesforce for recruitment
Check Job Status of Prospective Candidates with SMS Salesforce for recruitment
Before reaching out to any prospective candidate, it’s important to be aware of their job status. This would help prevent unnecessary expenses incurred in reaching out to irrelevant candidates. With bulk SMS messaging, organizations can send text messages to millions in one go and check if a prospective candidate is looking for a job or job change. This is just one of the ways to use SMS Salesforce for recruitments at scale.
Run Surveys to Deliver Relevant Job Postings to Prospects
The more you know about your prospective candidates, the more effective your outbound campaigns would be to hire the relevant candidates. It allows you to send relevant job openings to your prospects. With SMS Salesforce you can run an automated campaign of a series of text messages to run surveys and automate the process of candidate profiling. Moreover, you can segment prospective candidates based on parameters such as years of experience, annual remuneration, work profile and location and create targeted lists. And you can send the most relevant job openings to the candidates on these lists.
Schedule Interviews with URLs
Once candidates evince interest in the job openings, you can request for their resumes for screening. Following that, using automated SMS messaging from Salesforce, you can send regular status updates about their job application. And to add to this outbound messaging, you can send a web URL to schedule interviews.
Send Confirmation Texts
By sending URLs in your SMS messages for scheduling calls or interviews, you give the necessary convenience to your candidates to apply at their convenience and trim the time and effort associated with repetitive manual calling. Once a prospect provides a convenient date and time, you can automatically send a confirmation message and avoid any confusion later.
Send Reminders and cut down on No-Shows
No-shows for scheduled interviews lead to wastage of time and effort of HR managers, recruitment firms and interviewers. Salesforce SMS APP for recruitment can help in reducing candidate no-shows. Automated reminder text messages can be sent to remind candidates of their upcoming interviews.
Share Results of Interviews
Once an interview is over, candidates are eager to know the result. Recruiters and managers are inundated with calls and messages from candidates to share results. SMS from Salesforce allows recruiters to trigger SMS texts to send out the results automatically as the status of candidates changes from interviewed to selected. This saves a significant amount of manual work and time for recruiters.
Collect Documentation for Onboarding
Not only SMS, but now even WhatsApp has also become an important channel for effective communication. Now recruiters can collect all relevant documents through WhatsApp. This allows them to simplify the process of document collection and complete the onboarding.
Accelerate your hiring process and close job openings with SMS from Saslesforce
Recruitment is a time bound activity. And needs a fast and efficient process for being effective. SMS Salesforce for recruitment empowers recruiters to connect with candidates faster at every stage of the hiring process. They also cut back on calls and emails normally associated with the recruitment process. Moreover, it allows recruitment firms to close the open job openings within specified timelines.
To know more about how Girikon can utilise the power of SMS Salesforce to accelerate your recruitments, talk to one of our experts today.