Did you have a chance to attend our recent webinar, Drip Campaigns: Skyrocket Your Hires on Autopilot? We received more questions than we had time to answer in the allotted time, so our presenters, Wendy Bartz, VP of Customer Experience, and Wyatt Berry, Recruiting and Compliance Strategist, answered them below in this Q&A-style blog post.
If you weren’t able to join the webinar live, don’t worry – you can watch it on-demand anytime!
Question: What has been your favorite drip campaign that you’ve used thus far?
Answers:
Wendy: One of my favorites is partial applications to complete applications. We all know the challenge of getting a full application, but you can put them in a campaign that keeps them engaged— sending text messages and emails and encouraging them to complete the application with different messaging. But exit criteria is about the entire application for us, the recruiter.
But then the back end of that helps your recruiters stay on the more priority drivers, too. So if they're going in and out of the application and filling out more information on the application, your recruiters can now prioritize some of those leads. It helps them see what gets the applicant moving and which are genuinely interested.
Wyatt: I had an applicant stage that was “no current interest” for equipment. The fleet was 100% automatic, and every once in a while, I’d get someone who only wanted to drive manual and would say it was a dealbreaker for them. But the campaign I ran touched on every other thing we offered, every highpoint of the company. And then, at the end, I gave a 3D walkthrough video of the interior of one of our trucks (because we had made sure to upgrade everything that we could in those trucks.) That campaign brought in a lot of those drivers that initially said they wouldn’t drive automatic because all of the other information they were served through that campaign helped change their minds. Even if they had to drive an automatic, they knew they were getting great pay, excellent home time, and all these other benefits.
Question: Do you run background checks prior to making an offer?
Answers:
Wendy: Every carrier does look at this a little bit differently, but in my experience, it was always good practice to run initial background checks first before you make a conditional offer to a driver at least get an MVR, a PSP, maybe a DAC, depending on what’s in the system you’re using for background checks. Getting some of those consumer reports can help you make good decisions before you make a conditional offer with them.
Wyatt: I would wholeheartedly agree. There were a couple of times when I made conditional offers before we got all of the reports back, but I ran those on a case-by-case basis. If I felt like that driver was being honest and that I wasn’t going to find any surprises on those reports, then I would extend a conditional offer (and let them know that if I found anything to the contrary, we wouldn’t be moving forward.)
Question: How can different stages be added without messing up previous contacts in the system?
Answers:
Wyatt: In general, no. If you add a new stage, it won’t mess with any of your previous contacts because they’ll stay in that old stage, and you can build a new campaign around the new one.
The only thing I would worry about is if you remove one of the stages; obviously that drip campaign will not be functional. So you'll want to go back through that to make sure that you reroute those applicants that were in that stage to a new drip campaign.
And that also lends itself to another point: when you build out complex drip campaigns, you will need to stay up to date on all the information you have included in there. So, for example, if you have a lot of messaging around your pay but then create a pay raise, you'll absolutely need to go back in there quickly and change all of those pay rates to reflect your current rates.
Wendy: There are many different systems in the industry that you can use to create drip campaigns. But really, want to get to know the system you're using and understand the different stages, options, and functionality that goes with it.
DriverReach is constantly changing and looking at just drip campaigns and the technology itself to improve that experience by keeping up with industry needs because we do see a lot of value in campaigns. But at the end of the day it's simply continuing to utilize the technology and the different options you have to your benefit.
Question: How do you find balance between personalized messaging and reusable messaging?
Answers:
Wendy: The more you add that personal touch, the more powerful is what we see and find. Put yourself in the driver's shoes: you don't want them to feel like it's spam or robot. So, try to use their name and use little details to show you’re real.
Wyatt: I can't speak too much to other systems, but specifically in Cadence, we have dynamic fields that you can insert driver's first name, their last name, their location and the position that they were applying for (to name a few) so that you can personalize each message in a way that you can reuse it over and over again without having to worry too much about personalization and reusability.
I would also add to make sure you include the recruiter’s name in every message because it helps to humanize the message a bit so they know it’s not a robot. So it kind of blends both automation and authenticity together to create less work for you while keeping that personal touch.
Question: Are all of the drip campaigns handled through text message or can email address be used also? If by text, are there any charges other than for the text messages?
Answers:
Wyatt: I can’t speak too much to other systems, but on DriverReach, you can specify whether you want one touch of the drip campaign to be an email or a text message.
Ideally, you would want a mix of both in each of your campaigns to reach the driver where they are most. Some drivers never look at their emails, so you’ll want to send a text and vice versa. So adding a good mix in there is essential, and with DriverReach, you can absolutely do both.
And as long as you’re on one of the DriverReach plans that include drip campaigns, there are no additional charges other than the text messages.
Question: Is there a way for a driver to opt-out of messages?
Answers:
Wendy: Yes, drivers will be able to opt-out at any time from the messages - text and email.
Question: Are administrative rights required for setting up Drip Campaigns?
Answers:
Wendy: On most systems, that will be a requirement, and it’s the same for DriverReach.You want it that way because if your whole team is in there, you’ll want to make sure everyone is adequately trained on the criteria of those drip campaigns, so they know what they’re doing (and avoid sending out thousands of emails by mistake!)
Question: I'm concerned about running background checks prior to offer. My employer's legal team has advised that doing so is not appropriate. Do you have the candidate sign a consent form?
Answers:
Wendy: My advice to this one is to keep everything conditional. In my experience, we would send the driver a conditional offer letter once we had enough information to make a good quality decision. Then, we would talk to the driver and tell them, hey, we don't have your criminal background check; you still have to do a drug screen, you still have to do a physical, etc. Let them know about other pieces of criteria that could disqualify them. And reassure them that as long as they're being truthful and honest with everything they've shared, there shouldn’t be a problem. In my experience, if they have something in their background they're worried about, they'll tell you. Eventually, it comes out.
Question: Can you please explain the 'exit criteria' for us?
Answers:
Wyatt: Exit criteria is the opposite of a trigger which is what sets off a drip campaign or an autoresponder. For example, a trigger would be” getting a new lead” or “changing a stage.” Exit criteria are similar. If you set your exit criteria up on a drip campaign that is only looking at active prospects, you would want your exit criteria to be if their stage is changed to a “no current interest,” or a “disqualified,” or “hired,” or “terminated.”
There are also other exit criteria that aren't related to stages, such as a full application being submitted for those drip campaigns that are centered around a lead or a partial application being completed.
So it’s just the final action that will take them out of that campaign and what you’re hoping for to make your drip campaign successful.
Question: How do you know if the candidate was part of a specific drip campaign?
Answers:
Wyatt: In DriverReach drip campaigns, if you click into a specific drip campaign, you can scroll down a bit, and there is a tab called “recipients.” In there, you can see everybody that is currently engaged in that drip campaign and everybody that has exited the drip campaign prior to that.
If you want to see precisely what a driver has seen, and what has been sent to them, you can click into that driver's profile and scroll down to the activity timeline to see all of the emails and text messages that have gone out over time.
Bonus Thoughts:
Wyatt: It’s really hard to understate the value of re-nurturing drivers that fell off. You're paying for every one of those drivers in one way or another; make sure that every single driver is maximized to convert. If you take advantage of drip campaigns, you’ll see a higher ROI. You’ll have to spend less because you don't need as many leads to convert. Your recruiters are going to be more engaged with the priority drivers. All the while, your drip campaigns are re nurturing the lower priority applicants until they're ready to bump up to that higher priority status.
Wendy: The last thing I'd like to leave everybody with is to think creatively about drip campaigns: Re-nurturing leads, rehires, and driving a referral process. All these things can utilize drip campaigns to engage drivers in different categories or types within your system. All of those ideas are out there and can be used, so be creative.
That's what sets you apart outside of the industry is just being different than what other people or other carriers tackle on a regular basis.
