Recruitment and Retention Tactics: How Brokerages and Teams Can Leverage Constant Contact

In a recent survey conducted by Inman News, 28% of brokerage leaders stated that recruiting and retaining talent will be their most challenging responsibility one year from now. As someone who works with brokerages and teams across the country on creating, executing and analyzing comprehensive recruitment and retention campaigns, I see this as an opportunity to be proactive and get ahead of the competition in terms of brand positioning, meaningful story-telling, and building a strong recruitment pipeline. That means that organizations should start NOW in terms of budgeting, evaluating needed technology, and developing marketing strategies that will resonate with key prospects.

Knowing that many brokerages and teams don't necessarily have dedicated resources for recruitment and retention marketing, I'm always seeking solutions that will help streamline and/or consolidate multiple marketing channels into one snapshot, be intuitive and easy to implement, provide valuable feedback as to who is engaging and with what content, and allow custom, targeted communication based on user behavior. Oh yeah, and be affordable so as to not tax already constrained budgets!

When I was asked to evaluate Constant Contact for recruitment and retention, I was initially hesitant because I had toured the solution years ago and found it to be limiting in terms of what I wanted to help my clients accomplish. So, imagine my (pleasant) surprise over the past few months that I've spent playing with and testing the platform. The team at Constant Contact has invested heavily in expanding and enhancing their platform to offer an incredibly robust marketing solution that far exceeds just email, and it really shows. Following are my favorite features within Constant Contact and why I like them for busy brokerages, team leaders and organizations seeking cost-effective, efficient marketing solutions for their companies.

One Feature-rich Solution

What started as an email platform now offers fully integrated social media advertising, SMS marketing, an enhanced AI assistant, CRM, landing pages, event marketing, ecommerce and more. Also, I was assigned a dedicated onboarding specialist who was legitimately a REAL human being (Hi, Jeff!).

Why this matters: Recruiters many times have to use a variety of products and services to accomplish their outreach goals, leading to disjointed communication workflows, lack of comprehensive tracking and reporting, and higher costs. You know the story: your CRM doesn't connect to all of your marketing channels, you're running recruitment events off of a platform that doesn't report conversions back to your email invitation campaign, etc.

When ALL of your marketing outreach lives under one roof, it not only saves time and money, but it provides the opportunity to build intelligent communication workflows and gain insight into every part of your prospect's user journey. WIN!

Targeted Communications

Too many organizations take a "shot-gun" approach to delivering recruitment messaging, which is not an effective way to initiate what should be a personalized conversation. Constant Contact allows users to create personalized communication workflows based on user behavior and engagement. This ensures that prospects receive relevant, timely content that fosters a sense of belonging and enhances their personal exploration journey.

Real life example: In Q1, I was helping a client deliver an annual business planning guide to a mixed audience: entry-level agents, seasoned professionals, team leads, and active agents. Although this resource provided value to each audience, we wanted to ensure that we were speaking in different "voices" to each recipient, as well as automatically move recipients to different communication channels with appropriate follow-up activities based on their engagement (or lack thereof) with the guide. Constant Contact's custom automation paths made it very easy for me to build workflows for each unique audience, providing a user experience that felt authentic and personal. WIN!

AI Assistance

Let's face it, recruitment and retention is only ONE of the hats that busy brokers and team leaders must wear. And, developing meaningful marketing communication is most likely not the personal passion that entices you out of bed each morning. What other tasks could you focus on if you could free up an hour or two a week with the help of a marketing assistant? Wait, an assistant isn't in your budget? Think again.

I've seen a lot of AI technology inside of marketing tech stacks and honestly, I've been underwhelmed. So much AI integration seems to be more about rushing to include the "latest shiny tech tool" instead of really thinking about where, how and why users would leverage the technology. I was pretty impressed with Constant Contacts' approach to leveraging the power of AI. They've found ways to integrate AI across their entire platform, allowing users to conceptualize and customize their communication, as well as use it for grammar and sentence structure, and tone checking (A very cool feature! Think professional, humorous, persuasive tones to match your audience, your brand and your desired voice).

What this means: For those that don't feel that marketing is your key strength and don't have the budget to hire a professional marketer, you can lean into technology that will inspire your creativity and do 80% of the work. Even better, Constant Contact's AI is built into their platform at no additional cost for unlimited usage. Yes, you still should proof-read and edit what's been generated, but below is a legitimate example of me asking their bot to develop five email subject lines for an upcoming recruitment webinar (with no editing on my part):

PROMPT:

Write 5 email subject lines inviting real estate agents to a recruitment webinar where I will demonstrate the key benefits of joining my brokerage, using a professional tone.

OUTCOME:

1. "Unlock Growth Potential When You Join Our Brokerage - Webinar Invitation"
2. "Elevate Your Career: Invitation to Explore Opportunities at Our Brokerage"
3. "Discover Your Next Career Move: Join Our Brokerage Recruitment Webinar"
4. "Maximize Your Success: Explore Benefits of Partnering with Our Brokerage"
5. "Your Next Career Leap Awaits: Join Our Recruitment Webinar for Real Estate Agents"

Not too bad! Now, all you need to do is tweak and customize. For example, I'd revamp #4 to read something along the lines of Your Next Career Leap Awaits: Explore The Benefits of Joining [Name of Brokerage]. WIN!

Event Management

I've spent tons of money inside of event platforms and when I found out that Constant Contact ALSO has an events tool that's included in the subscription, I was elated! This tool allows for webinar registration and follow-up campaigns (with surveys), which can be built into your communication workflow so that you can easily move webinar registrants into a new communication channel.

Why I love this: First of all, say goodbye to additional costs with another third-party solution, and second, no more dripping on people to register for an upcoming webinar that they've already registered for, but you didn't know this because you were using two different platforms and now you seem like a dum-dum for not knowing! WIN!

The Power of SMS

Although SMS should NEVER be used for cold outreach, I'm a huge fan of the instant gratification it can lend to connecting with an engaged prospect to continue the momentum of the conversation. You know the "five minute rule" for engaging a consumer prospect? Constant Contacts' SMS marketing tool makes this super easy to integrate into your personalized workflows (see "Targeted Communications" above), allowing you to be responsive and timely even if you aren't readily available.

Ideas for Usage: When a recruitment prospect "raises their hand" through your website or downloads one of your resources, you can send both an email and text as follow-up and to support next steps (i.e., a link to your scheduling calendar). Or, use text to send timed reminders for that upcoming recruitment webinar you are offering, as well as provide a link post-webinar to your follow-up survey. WIN!

Data-driven Decision Making and Prioritization

Recruitment marketing should not be a dark hole where you don't understand what's working and what's not. I'm a big fan of the saying, "You can't manage what you can't measure," so tracking, reporting and transparency is important to marketing success. Constant Contact empowers your recruitment and retention efforts with KPIs (key performance indicators) such as email open rates, survey responses, and engagement levels.

Why this matters: Recruiters will gain valuable insight that will help prioritize outreach, refine marketing messaging, identify engagement trends, and deliver a more personalized experience leading all parties towards a strategic end goal. Knowing what's working and who's responding will support ROI and value. WIN!

Real People Supporting You

As I mentioned earlier, I was assigned a dedicated onboarding specialist (Hi, Jeff…again!) who was very proactive in understanding how I wanted to use Constant Contact for my client's recruitment and retention marketing. Although all users may not have access to Jeff, I was impressed with the expansive educational resources that the platform offers, both on-demand and live.

I've seen too many good technology platforms fail because they lacked intuitiveness (think Apple versus Microsoft), or leaned too heavily on self-onboarding and support, leaving users confused, frustrated and unable to accomplish their goals. On behalf of frustrated marketers everywhere, I appreciate the fact that Constant Contact has invested in both an intuitive UI/UX experience AND in real people to onboard, support and educate their users.

For those of you who really want to geek out, here's a few additional features that I love for more advanced recruitment and retention efforts:

• Permission / Brand Locks - This functionality allows admin users to lock areas / elements of marketing material to ensure brand compliance. For example, you are creating recruitment messaging for your regional directors and only want to allow them to edit a personal intro / outro, but no graphics or other areas of content. DONE!

• Parent / Child Structure - Building on my point immediately above, I love that I can create communication that can easily be assigned to "child" accounts. Also, I have full transparency into all accounts below me, including reporting, while each child account can only engage with their specific data.

All in all, I'm very happy that I've made the switch to Constant Contact for my client's recruitment and retention marketing. It's allowed me to expand my marketing offering, while offering an even better platform price for my client. And, I truly believe that for brokers, team leaders and recruiters that don't have the budget for a professional marketer such as myself, they can still achieve success in their recruitment efforts without the frustration and headache that comes with many other marketing solutions.

On top of it all, Constant Contact offers a no-risk free trial so that you can start building your recruitment campaign and check out all of the integrated features. Below are a few helpful links for those that are interested. Happy recruiting!

To have a full-product FREE TRIAL for 60 days or meet with the Constant Contact Enterprise Team, click the links below:

FREE TRIAL • REQUEST AN ENTERPRISE DEMO • READ MORE REVIEWS ON G2

Bondilyn Jolly is President of Marketing at WAV Group. Imagery in this product review was provided courtesy of Constant Contact.