by Sean Devlin, Front Rush
Fair warning:
This article is a bit technical, but we thought it is a pretty cool topic, so we decided to go with it anyway. The motivation for this article came from the brilliance of another website, which you will find the link for below.
Here’s what I’m talking about…
When sending out emails to recruits, its common practice to ask them to do something. That something could be to fill out a questionnaire, so you put a link to a questionnaire. Or it is to reply back, and conveniently most email clients have a ‘reply’ button. Or its to read an article, so you paste in a link to that article. You might ask them to download a document, so you attach the document.
You get the idea.
A particular scenario that now has some technical “umph” behind is the idea of asking a recruit to call you back. Historically, you would say “please call me back at this number”. Or “please call me at the number in my signature”. But with the mobile web, what if you had a link in your email that a recruit can click to call you back immediately. So, they click the link from their mobile phone, then their mobile phone starts calling you.
We see many email templates that have “fill out questionnaire”, “our university home page”, etc. What we are proposing is the idea of having a link directly to your phone number. When the recruit gets your email on their mobile device, they can then click that link to call you immediately. You are making it as simple as possible and removing all barriers for them hence improving the probability of them calling you back. At the very least, when they see a big button in their email with your phone number, its original and memorable.
So how do you do it? That’s where the technical part of this article comes in.
Its actually done the same way that you make something a “link”. Generally, you paste something into your email, then highlight it, then click a “link” icon. In the background the resulting code looks something like:
<a href=”google.comhttp://google.com”>google.com</a>
which is a link to Google.
If we modify it slightly…
<a href=”tel:555-489-2100″>555-489-2100</a>
Then this will provide a link that when clicked will automatically call directly from the email. This definitely is a bit technical for some coaches, but if you use a recruiting software that lets you send emails…this is very easy to do. You really just need to do it once and you will know how to repeat it every time.
By the way, here is the link to the original article that goes into more technical detail, if you are interested.
Give it a try, Coach!
If you need help with this or any other technical challenge you are facing, email Sean at sdevlin@frontrush.com.
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