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Case study – Evenbase / Just the job: digital recruitment leader uses CXO to improve personalisation

Just the job: digital recruitment leader uses CXO to improve personalisation

The rapid proliferation of digital and mobile technology is placing increased pressure on businesses to ensure their customers enjoy targeted and personalised online experiences. Making sure that content is relevant, and being seen by the right people at the right time on the right device has become a key priority across all sectors.

http://www.evenbase.com/

This is particularly the case in the competitive employment market, where finding a job is a highly personal process. As the online job board cements itself as jobseekers’ first port of call, the pressure on digital recruitment services to match the right job with the right candidate is significant. It’s why the leading players in the marketplace are implementing customer experience optimisation (CXO) strategies that allow for cross channel behavioural targeting and personalisation.

The resumé

Evenbase, launched in 2012 by the pioneering team behind the UK’s leading generalist jobs board, Jobsite, is one of the world’s top five digital recruitment brands. The company is part of DMG Media – the consumer media division of DMGT plc, whose brands include the Daily Mail, Metro and Zoopla. In addition to Jobsite, the Evenbase portfolio comprises specialist job boards such as City Jobs & e-Med Careers , as well as the recruitment services Jobrapido and Broadbean. The company employs over 400 people globally, with its services spanning 55 countries.

Jobsite remains one of Evenbase’s flagship brands. In 1995, it became Britain’s first multi-sector recruitment website, including the first ‘Jobs-By-Email’ (JBE) service – a feature which has subsequently become an industry standard.

At Jobsite’s inception, the UK internet had just 40,000 users. Today, with the internet population colossal by comparison, research shows that, every day, 72 per cent of UK users visit a DMG site. This means that a vacancy advertisement on Jobsite will be seen by the right candidates in the right location; and email Job Alerts to the candidate database ensure adverts always reach the right candidates. With the digital recruitment model continuing to grow, Jobsite’s user traffic is significant – reflecting that of a market leader. As such – in an ever-competitive marketplace – Evenbase knows it needs to optimise the user experience for its loyal customer-base.

In October 2012, Evenbase chose to partner with Maxymiser – the global expert in testing, personalisation and cross channel optimisation for online businesses – to enhance customer engagement and increase conversion rates across its job board division.

“Maxymiser demonstrated a clear understanding of our business and our goals – and it was evident that, on top of their powerful technology, they also had a brilliant consultancy team that understood what we wanted to achieve,” says John Mills, Customer and Consumer Insight Manager at Evenbase. “We also knew that Maxymiser’s experience in other sectors – such as banking, online gaming and retail – would enable us to benefit from learnings in other verticals. These learnings have significantly informed our campaigns and helped us strengthen our brand positioning.”

Career goals and relevant experience

The optimisation programme has, in its first year, focused exclusively on Jobsite – “Our CXO strategy is a central part of plans to differentiate our services,” says John. “Traditionally, job boards have been about the volume of vacancies and candidates. We are focused on relevancy, and ensuring that we offer value to both candidates and clients.

Jobsite is a purely online business. However, unlike the vast majority of e-commerce operations, the user experience does not conclude with a direct sale – but with a job application. As such, Evenbase’s CXO strategy has two ‘conversion’ goals; to help candidates identify relevant vacancies, and to ensure our clients receive relevant applications from high quality candidates.

As looking for a job is such a highly individual exercise, the ability to personalise the user experience has become a critical success factor in digital recruitment. “Personalisation is absolutely critical. As such, the majority of our campaigns have focused on delivering relevant content to our candidate-base and delivering high quality applications to our clients” says John. “This has required a cross channel approach – in particular, making sure that the website and our job alerts service are aligned.

“Jobsite hosts a huge volume of vacancies and our research has shown us that real candidates don’t have time to go through every one to find the job they want. Customised job alerts are therefore crucial. Maxymiser has allowed us to personalise the user experience and to ensure that candidates set up a relevant job alert so they are only emailed the vacancies most appropriate to them. And it’s really working.”

Achievements

One of the earliest, and indeed most insightful, campaigns focused on the ‘vacancy template’ – the crucial page that details key job information for candidates. “The campaign was set up to examine the design of the template. The key metrics were increasing both the number of applications and job alert sign-ups. We wanted to improve relevancy so that when candidates arrived at the page, they were able to find key information easily, navigate more effectively and, crucially, be presented with the most appropriate vacancies for them. It was essential that this experiment was a success due to the high importance of the page to the business. Recruiters pay to advertise their vacancy on this page so, by improving the conversion rate and delivering more, relevant candidate applications we set ourselves apart from our competitors which ensures that our clients continue to spend their recruitment budgets with us ” says John.

“The campaign was fascinating, we used 96 different variants, which is huge. Data showed us that by making the design clear and providing well-defined signposts for users, we could significantly improve conversion. The winning experience led to a 6 per cent uplift in completed applications. Given that the site enjoys a high volume of traffic, this represented a huge increase in relevant applications – and has had a significant impact on the business. In addition, job alert sign-ups grew by 408 per cent. When you consider that our JBE service was already well-established, this was an incredible result”

This led to a number of follow-up campaigns to refine the presentation further. This time, the campaign separated non-registered and logged-in users. “The follow-up experiment led to a 147 per cent increase in JBE sign-ups for logged-out users. It also drove a 330 per cent uplift in job alert sign-ups for registered users. Increasing those numbers in such a fashion –helps us to maintain engagement with users irrespective of whether they are actively pursuing a new job. In the process, Maxymiser is helping us to deliver personalised and relevant content to our candidates.”

Work experience

The partnership with Maxymiser is not only delivering real value for Jobsite, it’s transforming the internal culture at Evenbase. “Consistently looking for innovative ways to optimise the online experience is now a big part of the culture here – and many other sites across the portfolio are following suit.” says John.

Evenbase believes the reason for the success of its CXO strategy goes well beyond technology. “The tool is fantastic and underpins everything and helps us to quantify and test ideas gathered from our research – but more than that, the Maxymiser account team really understands our business and provides invaluable insight that informs the campaigns we run. It’s not only about conversion, it’s about understanding our clients and candidates and looking at all our available data sources to guide a sophisticated campaign roadmap so that will continue to provide the best online experience.

“As customer and consumer insight manager at Evenbase a large part of my role is understanding what both clients and candidates want from a job board and discovering how we can better connect these two together. Research has shown that both are seeking a more relevant job board experience. We appreciate that all our candidates are real people looking for real jobs. We can no longer follow the traditional job board model – we need to offer a better online experience through greater relevancy and increased personalisation. And through our partnership with Maxymiser, we’re doing just that.”