Best Practices for Using Cell Phone Text Messaging to Recruit College Students - Blog Webinar Coverage
Webinar presented by:
Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of College Recruiter
Webinar is being recorded and will be posted on the college recruiter website next week.
What is text messaging ? (SMS)
- SMS stands for Short Message Service
- Fairly short, about 2 sentences - 160 Characters / 140 with mandatory opt-out message. Character limits imposed by cell carriers.
- No graphics (logo or photo) or custom fonts can be used
- You can include web page URL link for for those with web enabled phones (WAP)
- SMS is a Moving target, U.S mobile advertising spending has gone from nothing a few years ago to a projected 6.5 Billion dollars (WOW)
- 75% of today's college students and recent grads are carrying phones that are web enabled so it is important to include your web address.
- short code is an email address for your cell phone "44646" or you can choose a vanity code like "Dell" (much more expensive)
Who's getting texts?
- 80% of US adults have cell phones
- 25% of adults (including Steve's parents) are interested in receiving SMS ads
- Half text message weekly
- 78 million ads received in 2007
- 58 million in last 30 days
___________________Break for Q&A____________________
Q - How do we get lists of cell phone numbers to text and is it costly?
A - Will covered later in webinar, "costly" depends on your return on investment. If you're trying to fill a few positions, texting may not be the best route. SMS campaigns make more sense if your hiring needs are larger. Work to build your own list, when candidates come to your website, ask them for their cell number.
Q - Who regulates the short codes?
A - short code administration - not a lawless industry - cell phone carriers do a good job at preventing spam. They have prevented organizations sending out messages to people who don't want them. Carriers are very sensitive because they know that their customers pay for a lot of the messages they receive.
Why Use SMS Marketing?
- The nature of the media forces the prospects to seek out the message. Because of this they are a lot more interested/ message goes to the prospect rather the other way around.
- A cell phone is the only device nearly all people carry. College students especially are more attached and engaged with their cell phone then a typical person. They rely on their cell phones heavily. They text more then call or email.
- Brand recall 20x higher then on the web.
- 10x more effective then direct mail.
- This all leads up to fast growth - SMS ads = $6.5 billion by 2011
How are organizations using SMS?
- 89% of organizations will use SMS in 2008 and 1/3 will spend 10% + ad budget on SMS (more so in the product and services area rather employment)
- Increase brand awareness and sales (coupons events, job fairs, invites to visit location, new products)
- Increase the size of their opt-in database (website traffic, register for contest, talent pipeline)
- Engage prospects in brand
How does SMS keyword advertising Work?
1. In your ad, you would ask people to text a unique keyword to a 5 digit short code - example: text "college" to (95495)
2. You as the marketer would receive a lead in your email and an automated text response is then send back to the candidate.
Service costs typically per lead with monthly minimum
- $50 month plus 500.00 for 500 leads
- $50 month plus 4,000 for 9,999 leads
Best practice for SMS (Hints and Tips)
- Use carrier approved aggregators - carriers like T-Mobile know who is doing the sending. Before you are approved to send SMS messages you have to go through a registration process, they check into your organization, wanting to feel comfortable that you wont send out spam to their customers. They check and approve each and every message being sent out.
- Set urgency with ad by setting message to expire. If hiring tell people you need to receive resumes by a set date.
- Let your vendor know when you want your campaign to go out. Send your message at a day and time best for your prospects, Saturday or Sunday is a good time to send, but not at 2am.
- If you're renting a list make sure its current and opt-in, better yet, double opt-in. Be sure to de-dupe your lists. (remove duplicates) You don't want the same person getting double messages, it makes you look stupid and its annoying.
- Message people infrequently. You don't want to be perceived as a stalker. No more then 1 message per person per week (college recruiters strategy) best bet 1 message a month.
- Do not use no spammy words "opportunity" "money" can be hard because we use those in the employment business. Phone carriers may flag these terms as "spam" likely your message will be delayed or not delivered at all.
- The first word in your message should be your brand, this helps with brand recognition and the recipient knows who's texting them.
___________________Break for Q&A____________________
Q - What is your opinion on services that send blog updates to your mobile phone?
A - Sending out text alerts to subscribers is great as long as it is permission based.
Q - Do u have any ROI stats for company's that have used SMS for recruiting.
A - Yes, we're going to talk about success stories next.
Success Stories
UPS - shaker advertising ran campaign
- Goal - hire thousands of IT professionals
- Current media used - job fairs, print, radio, direct mail, transit, movie cinema advertising
- Response options included SMS in 7 cities
- Keywords to track by campaign and city
- One city tested SMS push to previous applicants
RESULTS
- Attendance at job fairs were up,
- ROI was measured by medium and market in order to gage the effectiveness of each advertising vehicle.
- Enhanced opt-in database for future pushes.
- Campaing was successful as UPS plans to continue SMS marketing.
More Success Stories
- Fortune 500 consumer electronics hiring dozens of inside sales. They pushed to 45k and hired all that were needed
- Bank hiring finance and accounting at core schools. Push was to 60k. hired all needed, planning another campaign.
- Software company hiring seniors and grads of software engineer programs at core schools. pushed to 15k, planning a larger campaign.
About the College Recruiter List
- 10 million students, grads and alumni (SMS = 6million)
- All double opt-in with easy opt-out
- Maximum four SMS per month/per person
I wanna play, how much does it cost?
