How HR Consultants Can Leverage Email Marketing

The human resource consulting profession has grown considerably in recent years. We now see more professionals than ever offering their services as independent contractors and consultants.

As is true with most businesses, HR professionals have competitors that are going after the same clients and contracts. If you want to stand out and reach more of these clients with your message, you need to find ways to market your services.

For HR professionals, email can be one of the most effective marketing tools available. But, it’s important to follow email best practices when sending messages. This includes using an email verifier tool and personalizing subject lines. Follow these tips to make your email efforts as successful as possible.

1. Only send emails with a purpose

Email has already proven to be an effective method for marketing a business, but that doesn’t mean that you want to send them just for the sake of it. If you are sending messages that have no clear purpose, it is unlikely you’ll have an impact on your audience. Additionally, sending too many emails can be bad for your email marketing strategy.

According to research from MarketingSherpa, 86% of consumers would like to receive marketing emails monthly while over 60% say they’d like to receive emails at least weekly. However, the numbers drop off significantly from there. You should absolutely develop an email schedule that keeps your HR consulting practice in the mind of potential clients. However, you want to be careful not to send so much content that you irritate your subscribers.

2. Get your emails to the inbox

Many businesses send emails that get flagged as spam without even realizing it. Numbers from Return Path show that about 21% of legitimate marketing emails don’t make it to the recipient’s inbox. If your emails are not landing in the inbox, there is no way for your email marketing to be successful.

One way to avoid the spam filter is to build your own email list through an opt-in form. Purchased lists can be attractive, but they are much more likely to get you marked as a spam sender. You should also verify email accounts, clean your list regularly, and add an obvious unsubscribe link in every email. That way, you can make sure your messages are being sent to the people who want to see them.

3. Use a friendly tone

You don’t want to come across as too rigid or formal in your email communications. Email is a means of communicating from one person to another, so you should aim to strike a friendly tone. If you have the recipient’s name, you should also use it in the email to make the message more personalized. With emails that are friendly and professional, you’ll find it much easier to build relationships with your subscribers.

4. Create scannable content

Don’t send emails that are a solid wall of text. Your clients are busy and they are unlikely to have the time to read a long email. In fact, only about 16% of people read content they encounter online word-by-word.

If you want to make sure you get your message across, you need to help readers by making the content easy to scan. Write short paragraphs that are easy to follow and include subheadings that can help readers quickly navigate the content. You can also consider using bullet points to organize the information and add images to convey ideas visually.

5. Check your work before sending

Your emails are going to reflect on you as a professional. If they have poor grammar or spelling, they’ll fail to make a good impression on potential clients. Before you hit the send button, you need to review the content to remove any errors that may exist and make sure it reads well. If possible, get a friend or colleague to read the emails. A second set of eyes will be more effective at catching mistakes and issues with clarity or wording.

Author: Rae is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing, of course.