Our February 2020 Release adds an ability for recruiters to compose and send SMS messages in CRM to multiple candidates at once.
SMS Campaigns in CRM
What’s New:
Recruiters in CRM can now have the ability to send Bulk SMS to people within a Folder.
Sourcers and Recruiters need effective communication methods to reach out to the talent and convey their employer brand value promise and/or job opportunities. Sending SMS has become one of the most effective marketing platforms due to the high open rates of a text message. The interaction with these texts is also significantly higher than other marketing tools.
SMS marketing can also help increase interaction with other communication channels such as email, website, and microsites. Using a shortened hyperlink is a great way to direct users to the website or a microsite. A simple SMS reminder asking to check email for any important information can also boost email open rates which are significantly lower than the SMS open rates.
Bulk SMS Campaigns can be sent to up to 10,000 people at once. To initiate sending a new SMS Campaign in CRM, visit a folder of your choice and make a selection of desired contacts. You can use the ‘Select All’ option to send this campaign to all people who are associated with this folder. Click on ‘Create Campaign’ and then select ‘SMS Campaign’ option.
You will be able to define communication and set the schedule. In the Message body copy, you can add merge codes like First Name, Last Name, Area of Interest, Middle Name, User Name to personalize the message by using the personalize button’. If the message is addressed to Simon and the candidate’s first name is added as a merge code in the message text, then on Simon’s end when a message is received, he will be able to see his first name in this personalized message. This way on receiving end, it is not only a bulk campaign in effect but this simple text becomes a personalized message for Simon. URLs included in the body copy will automatically be converted to short bitly links before sending out to contacts.
The preview of how SMS will look like to the recipient end can be seen on the right.
On sending the message, this campaign will get activated. There is an option to pause or delete this campaign if it is not sent out already and SMS’s have not gone out. If you want to edit any details in the campaign then please make sure to pause the activated campaign first and then re-activate the campaign once all details are confirmed. Use 'Edit Details' on the campaign preview to modify any details. Edits are disabled once SMS has gone out. One can add series (another set of SMS to the same audience) to set up a cascaded communication. SMS recipients cannot reply to these messages sent in a campaign.
While sending the SMS out, the system checks a) if the number is a valid phone number and b) if the contact has Opted-In to SMS communication. The opt-in can happen at the time of joining the talent community (the Join Lead Captures needs to have SMS opt-in enabled), or later through the candidate experience while they are logged in to the talent community profile.
It is important to measure the efficacy of SMS campaigns and it can be tracked through Analytics in CRM. Visit your folder to view the associated campaigns and view the status - Activated / Paused / Complete, and a number of SMS series fired till now (1/2 sent). To monitor the performance of SMS campaigns, go to Campaign Details report in Analytics. As shown below, you can filter by ‘SMS‘ medium, to exclusively view SMS campaigns. This report only shows Bulk SMS data, not one-on-one SMS numbers. Currently, SMS Sent, Delivered, Opened, Clicked numbers will appear in this report, and the build for Apply/Hire numbers is planned for a later release.
Please reach out to us to learn more about SMS campaigns and set up this feature into your CRM.