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Oh the $1M question! 

The Marketing Advisors at Haley get asked this question a lot!  Here is why it’s such a hard question to answer…

Tuesday Afternoon
Recently I attended an educational webinar on email marketing.  One of the points that the presenter mentioned over and over again is that “Tuesday afternoons from 10am-2pm is the single best time to send email.”  I was surprised at his concrete answer to a question that is based on trends, lists, industry, and numerous other factors.

Take a look at these two recent reports:

1. “Wednesday Hump Applies to Emails Too!”
   This is a headline of one of the articles that I received from one of my email marketing newsletters last week from MarketingCharts.com.  The article goes on to say, “Wednesdays had the highest read and click rates in the second quarter, followed by Thursdays and Mondays, according to an eROI analysis of email marketing statistics. Read rates on Wednesdays were, on average, 27%, compared with 26% for Thursdays and Mondays, whereas click rates were 5% on Wednesdays and Thursdays.”
2. Another attention grabbing study by MarketingVox.com concluded that “B2B email recipients prefer to receive messages on Tuesday (36 percent) and Monday (33 percent); B2C email recipients prefer Friday (31 percent) and Wednesday (26 percent)” in a Q2 study.

With all these conflicting messages, who do you believe?

My Marketing Advisor Advice
Since trends often vary, here are a few general rules regarding send days for staffing firms:

• Don’t send first thing Monday morning.  This way your email doesn’t get trashed with the weekend’s junk, overlooked or ignored.
• Don’t send Friday afternoon (unless you are sending to candidates).  Common sense would tell you that your clients/prospects are wrapping up their weekly work and looking forward to heading out the door for the weekend and not opening new emails.  However, candidate mailings may be more successful on Fridays since many cannot check personal email at work and save job search efforts and email checking for the weekend.
• Test and review.  Test different days/times of the week and then look at your own reporting.  If you’re using HaleyMail, check out your reports and see if you can identify higher open rates on particular days.  Google Analytics can also show you spikes that correlate with any email that you’ve sent out.  
• Don’t get TOO hung up on day/send time.  Although it is one factor in getting people to open and respond to your emails, it’s not the only factor.  Subject lines, personalization, clean data, content and other factors all play a significant role to make your email campaigns successful.

For more advice on the best day to send email, check out this past Ask Haley Q&A.

Many of my clients ask me the average views (open rate) and clicks (click through rate) they should expect when sending a newsletter or other mailing. 

I recently came across the Epsilon’s quarterly US email benchmark report for Q209.  This study compiled 6.5 billion emails sent across multiple industries and 200 clients.  Findings concluded that the average second-quarter email open rate across 16 industries now stands at 22.2%, and has increased for the fourth quarter in a row.

Kevin Mabley, SVP of strategic & analytic consulting, Epsilon commented, “Our research has shown that while email marketing volumes have increased substantially, email remains a highly-effective channel for communication.”

Think your interview skills are top notch?  Do you find the best of the best–the perfect fit–every time?  Bet you have some tough questions in your arsenal….

Just for fun, here’s a collection of

15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid.

Go ahead, give them a try….

How did you do? Considering some of these questions for your next interview?

Maybe a better question is “Does it work?” Apparently, after years of honing the interview process, Google has discovered that its hiring practice is flawed. According to Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research:

“…one of the best indicators of success within the company was getting the worst possible score on one of your interviews.”   Read more…

Oops!  Maybe it’s time to review your hiring process.  Is it working for you?  Does it really matter if you new hire can tell you why manhole covers are round?  

From our library of articles:
How to Interview and Hire Top People Each and Every Time

No worries! At least now you know how many golf balls can fit in a school bus!

Q: I enjoy your newsletters and respect the way you have really “entrenched” yourself in our industry. I am giving a seminar today on motivating and refocusing salespeople and recruiters as many feel beaten down. Could you shoot me a couple of your thoughts, suggestions or anything else you have heard from other people in our industry that can help me with my seminar?

A: Glad to help.

In terms of refocusing sales people and recruiters, here are a few ideas:

1. Break the monotony. Constant pressure to call, call, call is stressful and de-motivating. Have the sales team take a day off, and schedule a creative brainstorming session to address the following questions:
   • Why don’t people perceive a need for staffing services?
   • What issues (in their business) would create a need to hire–not a need for staffing, just a need for people?
   • What are the top three challenges our clients are facing right now?
   • What could we do to offer solutions to these problems?
2. Stop selling and start educating!  Right now people perceive they don’t need your services, so now is the time for educational selling to raise awareness of the ways in which staffing and recruiting can be more strategic. Teach people why, when and how to plan a staffing strategy and work with a staffing vendor. Make the sales team’s focus to become evangelists for strategic staffing.
3. Spend more time training sales reps and recruiters to be talent consultants. Redefine their role from selling to finding solutions to human capital challenges. 
4. Hold a sales team bitch session. Give everyone an opportunity to air all their frustrations with the market, and once the bitching stops, brainstorm answers to the question, “so what can we do about it?”
5. Find creative ways to add fun to each day. Hold small daily sales contests for most calls attempted, most contacts made,or even the best rejection of the day. 
6. Provide plenty of recognition for success, even small successes. To battle the constant rejection, create an overly positive atmosphere for every little win–whether it’s an actual sale, breaking into a new prospect, or just successfully advancing the sales process.
7. Conduct market research. Rather than trying to connect with decision makers to sell staffing, try to meet with them to learn more about what is really going on in the market. Develop a survey to determine the biggest challenges and concerns your clients are facing, how they are planning to deal with the changes in the economy, and their perception of the value and role staffing companies should be playing.
8. Create a compelling presentation. Based on your research, develop a seminar, webinar or whitepaper that offers great solutions and relevant information to address the biggest challenges your clients are having. Use the presentation as the basis for scheduling appointments.
9. Go social. Do more with social media to network and build relationships with decision makers and decision influencers in your community. LinkedIn and to a lesser extent Facebook, can be great tools for strengthening your professional network and positioning your firm as a thought leader.
10. Become a beacon of hope. People gravitate towards positive people. When your sales people are feeling beaten up by the market, it can be hard for them to remain positive and optimistic.  Challenge your team to find “good news” stories about the local business community and then share those stories with clients and prospects.  The more you can spread optimism (and good ideas), the more people will want to work with you.

I hope you find these ideas helpful. It’s not an exhaustive list of everything you can do to re-engage your sales team, but it should be plenty to get you going. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at 888.696.2900.

David

Finally some good news for the Staffing Industry!  How good?  How about this prediction…

“The Bureau of Labor statistics predicts more blistering growth ahead. The temp industry is projected to be among the fastest growing in the country, expected to add 691,500 jobs by 2016, rising to a level of 4.3 million that year — an average annual growth rate of 1.7%.”

The website Daily Finance recently wrote an article that finally contains some great news for everyone involved in the staffing industry.  Click here to read more.

My family and I are big fans of the show Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and this week, the cast and crew are in my hometown of Buffalo, New York.  Ty Pennington and the design team have tackled a tough project – a run down house in a part of the city that most Western New Yorkers typically avoid (this is not a nice area of town).
 
But this article is not about the revitalization of a distressed neighborhood or the amazing people who are finding ways to survive despite very tough odds.  This article is about “temporary staffing,” and I am very proud to report that my home town has set a record for volunteerism with more than 4,500 people offering to help the Extreme Makeover Home Edition team (including my wife and partner at Haley Marketing, Victoria Kenward).
 
Now here’s the lesson for staffing firms…
 
In less than one week, the Extreme Makeover team and volunteers are going to completely rebuild one house and help refurbish more than 30 others–yes, that’s all in one week!  This is the ultimate in project staffing.  4,500 people. A mix of highly skilled experts, managers, and lay people filling in as laborers. All coordinated by one central group – the general contractor – to facilitate an amazing goal.
 
Think about the implications for your temporary staffing firm! 
 
Could you put together dynamic project teams to help your clients tackle specific types of projects? How about an extreme business development team? Or an extreme systems integration team? Or even an extreme office clean-up team?

Rather than wait for your clients to have a need for temporary staffing, you could create demand for staffing by providing rapid response solutions to specific types of business problems. Think about it.  You could have a rapid response team to tackle virtually any type of project – sales, marketing, accounting, finance, legal, HR, whatever your clients’ need. 

If you can develop expertise in different types of Extreme Business Makeovers, you could then sell local employers on your ability to assemble the right teams, execute the projects, and deliver exceptional results.  In fact, this model is essentially the one the movie industry uses to rapidly assemble complex, diverse teams to film.

Why not apply the same model to your clients? And give your business an extreme makeover in the process!

Congratulations to Sam Miller for being selected as the Volunteer Firefighter of the Year in Lancaster, NY.

Sam is one of the newest additions to the Haley Marketing team. He serves as a Director of Marketing Education, helping to teach our clients more about how marketing can be used to improve sales productivity and reduce recruiting costs. 

Prior to joining Haley Marketing, Sam spent 20 years in the staffing industry, working in Southern California and Upstate New York.  He has had a highly successful career as an Account Executive, Recruiter and Branch Manager.  Sam is also a former Chairman’s award winner with Robert Half.

Way to go Sam, we are very proud of you!

It is no secret that social media is a hot topic right now. From a business standpoint, you know that social media can be a powerful tool for marketing and recruiting.

But what about your candidates? Do they realize the effect that  social media is having on their job search efforts?

Most employers will at least do a Google search of anyone they are interested in hiring. What they find can be damaging to a job search and a career.

Make sure that you are conducting these same search before sending a candidate out on an interview. Remember, they are representing your firm and this is just another way to manage your brand online.

The following article has some great tips for how employers are using social media, and how to clean-up any “digital dirt” that you may have.

Digital “dirt” can haunt your job search

It’s one of my favorite activities of the fall. Carving pumpkins! It is always fun to turn an ordinary pumpkin into a work of art. Here are a few of my favorite websites I go to for inspiration before I start carving!

• Pumpkin Way
  
• Martha Stewart Pumpkin Ideas
  
• Pumpkin Carving Patterns
  
• Pumpkin Lady
  

I hope you have a great Halloween! Enjoy!

Recently I read a great article in the “Get to the Point” Email Marketing newsletter from Marketing Profs about what people consider spam.  A recent Epsilon survey asked 4,000 consumers to identify what types of messages they would label as spam. 

According to the survey, some people think an email is spam if it’s:

• Unwanted for any reason, regardless of subscriptions. 
• Comes from companies with which the recipient has done business, but arrives too frequently.
• Tries to sell a product or service even when the recipient knows the company.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

As a conclusion, regardless of what you define as spam, it matters what your subscribers consider as spam.  Just beware that a subscriber may report your emails as spam even if your practices meet the CAN-SPAM requirements.  However, if you abide by and practice sending clean emails that abide by the CAN-SPAM Act, you’ll be better prepared to prove any case against you.

For your reference, here is a list of CAN-SPAM’s requirements:

• Practice permission based marketing.  Never send to someone who has not opted onto your list.
• Don’t use false or misleading header information.
• Don’t use deceptive subject lines.
• You must disclose and identify a message as an ad, if it is one.
• You must include physical address information.
• You must be clear about how a user can opt-out or future mailings.
• You must honor all opt-out requests within 30 days.
• You should communicate with any third party email sender.  Even if you hire a company to handle your email marketing, you are still legally responsible to comply with the law.  (That being said, Haley Marketing complies with all CAN-SPAM regulations and monitors opt-outs for our HaleyMail customers.)

For more information on CAN-SPAM Act regulations check out The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business.