May I Have Your Permission, Please?

I’ve blogged about permission marketing in the past, and in particular have linked its virtues to sourcing and recruiting candidates, making strategic use of the Bullhorn CRM. Bullhorn continues to do some very exciting things in permission marketing. If you don’t know what permission marketing is, it is simply building a relationship with your prospect by gaining their permission to market to them through the exchange of valuable information. For example, if one wanted to market to or recruit Joe Cordo, VP of Marketing at Bullhorn, a firm might use permission marketing through the use of email or newsletters as one of their vehicles to build a relationship. In fact, I often provide advice to several Bullhorn customers, who regularly leverage permission marketing to source or recruit candidates. In Bullhorn’s case, we use our own sponsored, industry research reports and interviews with industry luminaries to provide valuable information to the industry and maintain relationships with suspects and prospects. The results have been fantastic. Our permission marketing list has grown to over 50,000 staffing and recruiting professionals in North America, and we believe the list will exceed 70,000 this year. It is a strategic asset of the company’s, just like your candidate data is.

I just returned from a trip to Ft. Worth (a much better town than you might imagine, especially when you are leaving Boston in February), where our marketing services and permission marketing partner, Starr Tincup, resides. We’ve always eaten our own dog food when it comes to the Bullhorn CRM, but this year, we’ll be taking permission marketing to far more sophisticated levels, including segmentation, personalization, clustering and opportunity optimization. These are strategies and techniques designed to increase our prospect yield and conversions and improve our close rate. They’re all principles that are applicable to sourcing and recruiting candidates. In fact, one of our clients, which will remain nameless to protect their competitive advantage, is already crossing the threshold of sophisticated permission marketing. As Al Pacino said in the Godfather, “It’s the smart move.” Permission marketing will help you place more and better candidates in a shorter timeframe, and if you’re looking to grow the client side of your business, it applies to that too. What better weapon to have than a strategy and tactic that directly impacts the revenue side of your business, while improving recruiter and sales productivity? And the great thing for our clients is that their permission marketing effort can be executed right through Bullhorn.