As a recruitment firm, you know that the success of your business depends on having a steady stream of clients and candidates. Lead automation plays a key role in achieving this.
Lead automation helps you identify prospects, track their progress through the sales process and nurture them until they convert into a client. Using technology to automate the process enables you to assess where your pipeline needs work, which leads are the hottest prospects and to tailor your strategy to maximise success.
What is lead automation in recruitment?
Lead automation is the process of taking someone who doesn’t know much about your business on a journey to the point when they’re ready to sign a contract. Naturally in recruitment there is a huge amount of influence from the recruiter during the sales process, lead automation supports the process by telling you who could be ready to hire or switch supplier, so they don’t waste their time with cold prospects.
Why other B2B sectors use lead automation and recruitment should too
Lead automation is popular across all B2B sectors, as it helps companies to effectively target and nurture leads. As a recruiter, you can apply the same principles by using lead automation to identify potential clients.
Imagine someone comes to your website to download a report you’ve written, what happens to them then? Just because they downloaded a report, it doesn’t mean that they want to get phone calls from a recruiter straight away.
Instead, you can set up automated email workflows that nurture contacts gradually, giving more value on related topics so that trust between the prospect and your company grows. When they’re ready to hire, you’ll be front of mind, and you’ll know they’re ready based on their engagement score. Win win.
This is where lead scoring comes in. Where each interaction with you achieves a positive or negative score, for example:
- Subscribes to your newsletter = +1
- Unsubscribes from your newsletter = -10
- Opens an email from you = +1
- Reads a blog you’ve written = +1
- Downloads a white paper on diversity = +4
- Downloads a white paper on how to build a team quickly = +10
- Requests a call back = +10
Here you can see how a contact could then be differentiated into categories of how ready they are to buy from you.
How you score and categorise them is up to you, every business does this slightly differently.
Factors driving adoption
Aside from the most obvious benefit of saving time, there are a number of other factors driving lead automation in recruitment.
These include:
Improved data accuracy and insights
Automation ensures that data is accurate and up-to-date, providing recruiters with more comprehensive insights into the sales pipeline.
Reduced resource burden
Lead automation takes over many manual processes, freeing up recruiters’ time to focus on more strategic tasks.
Enhanced candidate experience
Automation helps recruiters stay on top of their recruitment processes, resulting in a better experience for candidates.
Improved communication
Automated emails and reminders enable recruiters to communicate with leads quickly and efficiently.
Examples of lead automation
Lead automation relies on the use of a variety of different tools and technologies. Finding the right tech stack for your recruitment business will depend on the size of your operation and your budget.
Some popular lead automation tools for recruiters include:
- Social media tools like Dripify that automate LinkedIn outreach
- CRM platforms like Hubspot or Zoho that have lead scoring functionality that links marketing activity with the sales CRM
- CRM software like Bullhorn and Vincere to manage client relationships
- AI-powered chatbots to respond to leads quickly
Lead automation not only helps recruiters, it helps to align marketing activity with the sales teams.
What to look for?
The right technology stack should be able to integrate with your existing systems, improve communication between teams, and provide accurate data on sales processes. Some areas to keep an eye on include:
Integration with existing systems
Automation tools should be able to connect with your existing CRM, ATS, and content marketing software.
Real-time analytics & reporting
Tools that provide instant insights into the sales process can help you to optimise your campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
Predictive analytics
Automated systems should be able to detect client patterns and help you identify leads with the highest likelihood of success.
Big data analytics
By leveraging large datasets from multiple sources, recruitment firms can gain deeper insights into their customers and optimise campaigns accordingly.
Ready to automate your lead nurture process?
Automating the lead generation strategy is the first step towards a streamlined and efficient sales process.
At theLEAP, we help recruitment and rectech firms automate their nurture process so they can focus on relationships. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help take lead gen to the next level.
