The Client: pfj

Established in 1992, pfj is one of the UK’s leading specialist recruitment companies employing over 90 staff with offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester. pfj places candidates in a range of sectors including new media, media agencies, editorial, intellectual property, training, conferences, events, exhibitions, information, research, knowledge management and recruitment. pfj also has a fast-growing graduate recruitment division, the Graduate Recruitment Company (grc) and is one of the very few recruitment organisations that has won the coveted international quality accreditation, ISO 9001.

pfj has been a winner at the 2005 & 2004 Recruiter Awards for Excellence and is currently a Sunday Times Top 100 rated company to work for.

We spoke with Paul Farrer, CEO of pfj and discussed his experience with Rocketseed:

Cross-selling and Promoting Brand Values via Business Email

pfj has two main audiences – its clients (recruiting companies) and candidates for new job placements. Business objectives are simple; to generate candidate and client referrals by keeping the pfj brand in the forefront of the minds of their clients and candidates, and also to cross-sell the fast-growing graduate recruitment division, known as grc, to existing and new clients.

We were looking at different e-marketing tools to help us achieve these objectives. There are plenty of good e-newsletter products out there but Rocketseed stood out because as well as enabling us to send out tailored and personalised bulk mails, it showed us how we could use our every day business email to promote our brand and services in a unique and professional way.

We particularly liked the ease with which Rocketseed templates can be set up and messaging and email banners tailored according to the recipients of our emails. We felt that it would make our business stand out and enhance our image as a professional and high quality brand as this is what we rely on for clients and candidates to refer us to their friends and colleagues.

Within 2 months of seeing a Rocketseed presentation, pfj started using it for all its business emails as well as for occasional bulk mails.

The implementation of Rocketseed was very quick and easy. The agreed deadline was met and we had no technical issues whatsoever.

pfj’s first use of Rocketseed was to run two campaigns simultaneously, with different messaging and email banners delivered depending on whether emails were being sent to clients or candidates. For pfj’s candidates, the company’s emails promoted a referral campaign using an iPod competition incentive and contained an animated banner which linked directly to a custom landing page on the website.

Good people know good people. We offered an incentive for our candidates to provide us with details of other potential candidates and set up a page on our website for them to register their referrals.

Over the period of one month, more than 7200 emails were sent out to candidates, all of them via Rocketseed. With a click-through rate of over 6%, the campaign enabled us to maintain the relationship with existing candidates and along with other communications, resulted in an increase in traffic to our website. In parallel to this, pfj began sending emails to its client base that featured the grc brand, which linked through to the website of its graduate recruitment division.Over the period of 1 month, more than 11000 emails were sent with 20% of all clients click throughs indicating an interest in grc, thus increasing the awareness of the Graduate Recruitment Company as its own brand. Following the success of its first campaigns, pfj then changed its banner on client-facing emails to promote a seminar that pfj were hosting to inform clients on new laws on ageism. It was pfj’s first in-house designed template and had an immediate click through rate of 5% on the bulk mail and 6% click though on daily emails sent out over the following month.

I am delighted with the response rates we have had. Our emails are going to the same people continually so to get click through rates of between 3% – 6% consistently is really high, and the business results speak for themselves.

Positive Feedback, Positive Results

There was some concern initially within pfj that the people receiving their branded, interactive emails might not like them, but in fact the company had very positive feedback.

A major advantage of Rocketseed is that it enables us to provide our customers and candidates with more information, but only if they want to go and look at it and without us selling to them all the time. As a result, we haven’t received any objections – on the contrary, lots of customers have in fact commented that our email banners are interesting and unusual.

The reporting and analytics are also providing insight into the behaviour of both senders and receivers of the company’s emails.

We get great information on the volume of our email by sender and the results they generate. It’s also hugely valuable to be able to see what people receiving the emails are clicking through on. For example, if a PFJ client looks at our GRC website it gives us a great opportunity to talk to them about the services of our other company.

Being in the recruitment business makes pfj appreciative of good people, and Rocketseed also stands out in this respect.

The people at Rocketseed are terrific to work with. Unlike some companies, it’s not just about making a sale – their after-sales service is also excellent and they take on board our requests and feedback. We recently brought in a new marketing manager and Rocketseed also spent time with him bringing him up to speed on campaigns and explaining how Rocketseed could be used in marketing campaigns.

New Messages for the Future

Going forward, pfj is keen to ensure that it changes email banners regularly and also monitors what works well, or less well, with their clients and candidates in order to optimise future campaigns.

It’s an interactive tool so we have to make sure we keep it fresh and interesting. Because the templates are so easy to set up, we plan to change them at least once a month to keep the messaging new and maintain the high levels of interaction.

pfj will be using the click-through rates achieved so far to set targets for future campaigns, both in terms of click-through and business results.

The business has grown considerably over the same period that we have been using Rocketseed. It is impossible to say that this is purely down to Rocketseed because so many other factors come into play, but there’s no doubt that the success of our campaigns using Rocketseed have played a major role in helping us achieve this growth.