Creating an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

From creatives to copy, learn the best practices for putting your message into the inbox of qualified CDL holders.

Building an email marketing campaign that truly resonates with your driver audience is essential to attracting and retaining qualified leads. We’re here to share some tips, tricks, and best practices to help you attract qualified drivers and get the most out of your email campaigns.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a cost-effective way for you to communicate a message to an audience and move them toward a specific call to action. This could mean asking a driver to apply for a job, giving a recruiter a call, or attending a hiring event. You can send an email to anyone in your network of drivers as long as they have willingly opted in to receive communications from you.

Email marketing is very effective, not only in generating new leads for your company, but also in nurturing existing leads that may not be responding to other avenues of communication. Using an email campaign to reach your current database of drivers can be a great starting point.

Below are some tips that will accelerate the success of your email campaign.

Tip #1: Define the objective

What is the goal of the email?

For instance, let's say you are a carrier interested in filling a new priority lane. You have the job requirements, all you need to do now is spread the word. One effective way to promote a new priority lane and generate interest is by sending out an email to a targeted audience of drivers.

Here are some questions to keep in mind when defining your objective:

• What is the type of driver you are trying to reach?

  • In this example, you are trying to reach CDL-A holders that meet the specific requirements of the job in a specific geo-location.

• What are you trying to accomplish with the email?

  • Perhaps you want drivers to apply for the job, or maybe you want to direct them to a landing page for more information. It's recommended to have only one objective per email campaign, as this will help you better analyze the success of your strategy.

• How are you going to appeal to the audience?

  • Inform the drivers about the job, including its pay, benefits, and what sets it apart from other jobs.

Tip #2: Grab their attention in the subject line

Utilizing the subject line effectively can make or break for the success of your campaign. Drivers are really good at sensing when something is too good to be true, so make sure you spark their interest while still setting realistic expectations. Highlight your key points and resist using any gimmicky language.

If done correctly, your subject line can be the motivating factor for a driver to open your email. Here are some tips to crafting a clickable email message:

• Keep the subject line short (six to eight words).

• Put the important words first

• Indicate if an action is required

• Use an emoji - this is a fun way to make your email stand out in a crowded inbox

• See examples below of strong subject lines

  • 🔥 Job alert! Get rolling with Company Name today.

  • APPLY NOW 🚚 Top pay & flexible schedule

  • VIEW 👀 Job opportunities with Company Name

Tip #3: Get creative

Using images or iconography in the body of an email makes it much easier to read. There are plenty of ways you can get creative within the message you are trying to send, but the key is to use high-quality images (ideas for images: equipment, showcase your terminal, introduce your office employees) and avoid over-used stock photos.

Tip #4: Less is more

Drivers are busy, and they spend a lot of their time doing just that - driving. When they’re on their downtime, checking their email, you want to be respectful of what little time they have to read through their inbox. You will see a much better success rate with an email campaign that is easy to skim. Take advantage of creatives, use clear calls to action, and bold ideas.

Tip #5: Strategize the timing & analyze the performance

Similar to the amount of text you put into your email, timing is key to a successful campaign. You always want to keep your audience in mind and try to reach them at the most optimal times. Test different times for sending your emails. Are drivers opening your messages more in the mornings or in the evenings?

You will also want to add UTM tracking to help you understand the source of the lead if a driver applies from your email. Analyzing the data is going to be critical to the success of your future strategies.

Ready to deliver your message directly to drivers?

Our team will help launch your campaign to exactly the right inboxes with:

• Pre-qualified audience targeting using our driver lookup tool

• Custom messaging (with the power to integrate your custom HTML)

• Performance reporting