Narrowcasting Using Gmail Ads – An Email Inbox Back Door

  

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Good recruiters have a lot of neat tricks up their sleeves to get into a candidate’s email inbox.  We’ve created an entire industry around Boolean search strings, deep web searches and cobbling together any type of public information to maybe, just maybe, land an email in the inbox of a highly desired candidate.

As another tool to add to your toolbox, using pay-per-click Gmail ads is a great way to open up the “backdoor” of a candidate’s inbox. Gmail ads are simply contextual display ads that display on the sides or top of a webpage while a user reads their email.  They populate based on a matching of words in the candidate’s inbox and the keywords an advertiser selects.  For example, a person getting a lot of emails about fishing will see a lot of ads for boats, tackle and rods.

For recruiters, this presents a way to target candidates without having their email address. With fairly high accuracy, you can bet that nurses get emails about nursing and physicists get emails about physics. So, setting up ad campaigns with relevant keywords like “C#,” “VB.NET,” or “Visual Studio,” you have a pretty high likelihood of finding a software developer.

If a candidate applies to a competitor or similar position, the “Thank you for applying for our Director of Oncology” auto-response is a great keyword match, as well. I always recommend the verbatim job title keyword for just this reason. People also often keep a copy of their resume or cover letter in their email box.  This contains just the keywords that will help you make a good match.

One advantage over deep web searches, is that they mostly find company email addresses. I submit to you that a candidate is more likely to respond to a recruiter’s email from her personal email than the one the company can monitor.

When talking about pay-per-click ads, the question always arises, “Does anyone actually click on these?” They do, although the response rates are low. But, Google has exceptional tracking tools that help keep your click and conversion data to measure campaign performance.

Here’s how it works:

1. Set up a Google Adwords Account
2. Set up a Campaign and Adgroup
3. In your Campaign, under Managed placements, select Add placement and type in gmail.com

Of course, there are lots of nuances to creating effective online ads. Here are a few things to remember:

1. Always get the user directly to the content you want them to see in one click
2. Make your ad copy compelling and short
3. Choose your keywords carefully to ensure you’re hitting the right audience

Gmail ad campaigns are an interesting way to get into the inbox of difficult to find candidates. By using a specific set of keywords, you can advertise directly to the folks you want to talk to without having to worry about those you don’t. A good recruiter’s toolbox can’t have enough good tools, and for certain positions, Gmail ads can be just the right one.

Post contributed by Adam Godson
Follow me on Twitter @adamgodson or connect with me on LinkedIn