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Playbook: Loyalty Marketing for Recruitment Agencies
Loyalty marketing, when implemented properly, can transform your recruitment agency and boost profits without draining your resources.
We surveyed agency leaders at the end of 2023 and a clear trend emerged – a growing number of agencies are focussing on organic sourcing and nurturing techniques to attract and keep candidates. With the cost of using job boards steadily increasing, more and more agencies are recognising the value of the candidates in their database and are focussing their marketing efforts on nurturing them to maximise the data they've already captured.
In this article, we examine why loyalty marketing will benefit your agency, look at some real-world examples from Firefish clients, and outline 5 steps to implement a successful loyalty marketing strategy that works.
Explore real-world recruitment examples
Understand loyalty marketing and its benefits
Implement a successful loyalty marketing strategy
What is loyalty marketing?
Loyalty marketing is a strategy that focuses on maximising the return on investment from your existing candidate database. Instead of spending time and money acquiring new candidates for every job, loyalty marketing focusses on nurturing high-value candidates so that they think of your agency first when they are in market to change role. At any given time only 25% of the workforce are active candidates. Loyalty marketing is the strategy that makes sure the 75% come to you when they are ready to change role.
The potential savings that can be made by increasing the output of your recruitment CRM and reducing your reliance on external marketing are huge. In 2023 job board costs increased by 30-40% for some agencies, driving the cost to acquire candidates up dramatically.
In 2023 over one-third (35%) of applications sent to recruitment agencies using the Firefish CRM came from nurtured candidates who were already in the CRM. Loyalty marketing seeks to take the high-value candidates in your database and transform them into hot candidates ready to place.
Making sure that your candidates feel valued not only when you need them but on a daily basis establishes loyalty.
One agency that understands this is Wote Street People, who send personalised texts, emails, and even cards in the post for their candidates birthdays, Christmas, or other celebrations. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to set these up as personalised automations within your CRM, but it has a huge impact on the long-term relationships you can build.
“We use SMS a lot – because people actually respond to it.We make sure to send something for birthdays, for example. We send them a card as well, but we get far more thank yous for the text. It ensures loyalty, and we all know there’s not a lot of it at the moment.”
Maxine Hart
Managing Director
Wote Street People
It's not all about work
Giving something for free – especially something that deomstrates your expertise in the field – is a great way to welcome a new candidate.
One agency that knows the value of a warm welcome is IntaPeople, who make sure each new potential candidate within their database is sent a personalised and valuable sequence of nurturing communications that vary from CV writing tips to interviewing advice.
"If candidates regularly see our name and branding it keeps us at the back of their mind at all times. So when it comes to looking for their next job, candidates tend to come to us and say ‘I have received this email’, or ‘thanks for the CV tips/interview advice’, here's my up-to-date CV. The value that we add to the candidate’s experience make such a difference and helps us build long term relationships.”
Rob Samuel
IT Manager
IntaPeople
A warm welcome
Recruitment demands more than transactional interactions —it requires an in-depth understanding of candidate profiles.
Loyalty marketing stands as the foundation of your engagement strategy, using the data in your CRM to equip recruiters with the information to build lasting connections, accelerate agency growth, and win faster in a competitive market.
The 5 benefits of loyalty marketing
Reduce marketing costs
Agency differentiation
Data-driven insights
Word of mouth
Repeat business
But what's in it for your agency? Hover over a tile to learn more...
5 steps to successfully implement loyalty marketing
Click to continue
Understanding candidate profiles
Nailing your personalisation
Generating social proof content
Going the extra mile
Investing in long-term success
Loyalty marketing requires putting more effort into each candidate, nurturing them to secure a faster placement when they do come onto the market. For your agency to win faster, recruiters must be proactively qualifying leads, maximising their time spent on the right candidates.
Winning faster requires an understanding of:
- Candidates your agency places
- The qualifications and skillsets they have
- The candidate data quality in your CRM
How to build an understanding:
- Analyse the roles with the best time to fill and find trends amongst the candidates – what did they all have in common?
- Look at your failed placements – what traits did these candidates all have in common?
Once you have a clear understanding of these areas, filtering candidates into active talent pools enables recruiters to prioritise and personalise communications.
This strategic approach not only enhances the efficiency of your outreach efforts but also ensures that the services you offer align seamlessly with the expectations of your audience. What you want to avoid is sending roles that have nothing to do with your candidate’s skillset or sending generalised communications that scream “I don’t know who you are!”.
Candidate Profiles: Implement a data-driven approach
Communication: Master personalistion
When it comes to marketing on any level, relevancy is key. The second you send communications about non-relevant roles or topics is the second you lose your candidate's loyalty. Why should they trust you with their next career move if you can’t be trusted to send them relevant information?
Personalisation is powerful, but it’s about more than just adding a first name to the start of an email; it is about utilising the data in your CRM to understand what candidates are looking for and nurturing them along this journey. This is where your talent pools come into their own. By consolidating groups of candidates, you can establish a clear marketing message for each pool so that you can keep communications relevant.
Personalisation doesn’t have to be complex, and the goal is to make candidates feel like part of the family. When crafting your communications, consider if it delivers on most of these points:
- We know all about you.
- We understand your preferences.
- We have invested time in you.
- We know and praise your accomplishments.
- We can learn from one another.
- Our quick response shows that you are important.
Content: Shout your (relevant) successes
As a recruiter, you are asking candidates to trust you to help them make a potentially life-changing step in their career. To build this level of trust there is no more powerful tool than shouting about your successes. If you demonstrate to new candidates that you have successfully supported a candidate like them into a role it will increase the credibility of both personal and business brands.
Social proof is one of the most powerful marketing tools that can be used to maximise your success however to achieve success, you must have a bank of available testimonials and case studies.
Try the following to begin building a social proof content library:
- Request testimonials from newly placed candidates in an automated placement email
- Find and use what people say about you on social media and review sites
- Ask in person
- Use quotes from client feedback on candidates
- Ask candidates to swap testimonials
Imagine how much more powerful a communication about a role is when accompanied by a story about how a similar candidate loved working with your agency and loves their new role.
Added value: Going the extra mile
Further down the funnel, the success of your strategy relies on candidates trusting your expertise and viewing your recruiters as experts. A great way to cement thought leadership is by offering added value insight that demonstrates value.
All content should focus on a niche, remember it’s better to engage 10 right-fit candidates than communicate to 10,000 wrong-fit candidates.
Some thought leadership ideas for recruiters:
- Blogs focussing on CV writing tips for specific candidate profiles
- LinkedIn posts offering insights on role-specific interview questions
- Salary survey insights for candidates in a certain information
- Industry-specific hiring trends
- Sector performance insights
Your CRM can tell you the common skills and qualifications that lead to a successful placement in your target market; so take this information and craft your content around the data, empowering candidates to achieve their goals and elevating your brand.
Building advocacy: Invest in the long-term
Loyalty marketing has a long-lasting lifespan if you take the final steps to maintain it. As recruiters it’s common to put a candidate on the backburner once placement is confirmed. After that point they have no tangible value, but the reality is the candidates you have already placed are potentially the most valuable asset in your loyalty marketing pipeline because they will be advocates for your agency.
Word-of-mouth marketing remains the most powerful type of marketing for a recruitment agency, so it is worth investing a final contact with candidates you have placed. Thanking a candidate for using your agency and wishing them the best for their future solidifies all of the great work you have done up to this point and unlocks two huge benefits:
- They will remember you should they ever re-enter the job market.
- This is an advocate placed directly in your target market and they are perfectly placed to recommend you (or not) to their former colleagues, colleagues, friends, and family.
A good experience at this final hurdle can offer countless new hot candidates to replenish your talent pools. Consider the following when building this step:
- Do you have a workflow or automation to trigger a thank you post-placement?
- Do you have a candidate referral programme to make the candidate aware of?
- Is there a good luck gesture that could be sent? This will help you to harness the power of social referrals if they post it on their LinkedIn.
- Do you have a check-in trigger setup?