Cold outreach is essential for recruiters, but in an era where inboxes are inundated, standing out and avoiding the spam folder is crucial.
Here's a guide tailored for recruiters to craft cold outreach messages to engage potential candidates:
1. Craft a clear and relevant subject line
Use personalization: Try subjects like "Role for [top matching skills]" or "[first name] have this role for you"
Prevent spam triggers: Avoid using all caps, excessive punctuation, and words like "urgent", "spam" or "exclusive" that can trigger spam filters.
2. Offer clear value
Unique role aspects: Share what makes the position and your company stand out.
Career progression: Emphasize growth, learning opportunities and differentiating factors of your offer.
3. Maintain transparency
Role specifics: Give a clear outline of the position, responsibilities, and potential compensation.
Company insight: Share a little about your company culture and values.
4. Concise and scannable content
Straight to the point: Be succinct and clear. Avoid message content longer than 150 words in any message that is not replied to yet.
Use bullet points or oneliners: These make the message content easier to process and scan.
5. Don't include too many links
Links can add value but too many links will not leave a good impression on the candidate contribute to being marked as spam. Limit the amount of links to 2 at a maximum for your initial outreach message (replies can include more if value adding).
6. Include a direct call to action (CTA)
Specific next steps: Clearly state what you'd like them to do next.
Time slots: Suggest potential times for a chat.
7. Professional yet warm signature
Easy contact: Add your direct phone number or email address and maybe LinkedIn link, but don't overdo it since too many links in your messages can contribute to being marked as spam as mentioned earlier.
Company showcase: Including a logo or brief company highlight can add authenticity.
Avoiding spam filters
With any email service, it's important to maintain a good sender reputation to not land in spam. Here are some good practices you can use:
Avoid attachments: Instead of sending attachments, consider providing links.
Avoid too many links: Too many links are associated with spam.
Avoid codes or unreadable text: Any text that is not readable increases your chances of being flagged as spam.
Avoid excessive language: Because spam rating systems are based on AI it looks at emails that have been rated as spam previously, this means that you should not use the excessive language spammers use in your own emails, words like "Promotion" or "Offer!!!" will increase the chances you'll be flagged as spam.
Include an unsubscribe link: receivers should be able to stop receiving your emails without having to block you, Uwi includes unsubscribe links by default under all sent emails
Check your email domain's spam rating: On the email service provider's website you can measure the spam rating for your company's email domain. For example, here you can check the Google Postmaster tool to check spam rating.
Preferably use a warmed up email domain and email account: Preferably use an email account that already exists for over 6 months and that has been used to send and receive emails already, if you're using a brand new email domain and new email account, then you can use email warm up services that you can find online for free.
Check with your team: your team's activities have impact on your spam rating if they are using the same company domain (eg @company.com behind their email).