Email marketing for recruiters: 5 performance truths every recruitment agency needs to know

While everyone’s talking about AI, social selling, and inbound pipelines, the savviest recruitment marketers are doubling down on something far more powerful and far more overlooked: email.

Yes, email. 

Fresh industry benchmarks from Kulea, Vincere’s native email marketing automation partner, reveal just how impactful email can be when paired with clean data, smart segmentation, and integrated technology. In fact, agencies using Vincere and Kulea are consistently outperforming the market, achieving open and click rates far above industry averages. 

This isn’t your typical batch-and-blast strategy; it’s a high-impact recruitment email marketing driven by insight, not vanity metrics. 

Here are five performance-driving truths every recruitment marketer needs to know.

1. 66% of email marketing for recruitment is fake and it’s derailing your decisions

This is the biggest eye-opener from the report:

Two-thirds of email engagement activity is triggered by bots. That means most marketers are making campaign decisions based on misleading data, leading to inflated open rates, artificial click-throughs and false confidence.

Kulea’s advanced bot detection technology filters out false signals, giving you real and reliable metrics that make all the difference. 

Here’s what recruitment marketers see after filtering out bots:

• Open rates: 31.18% (vs. 21.33% general marketing benchmark)
• Click-through rate (CTR): 3.02% (vs. 2.62%)
• Triggered campaigns see 152% higher CTRs than traditional batch sends

If your email marketing for recruitment agencies is still based on unfiltered metrics, you're flying blind.

2. CRM Integration powers email marketing for recruitment agencies

The best-performing agencies in this report had one thing in common: they used a natively integrated CRM and email solution.

Why does it matter?

When your recruitment CRM (like Vincere) and your email platform (like Kulea) are deeply integrated, you unlock:

• Bi-directional data sync, so your contact records are always up-to-date, clean, and deduplicated
• Accurate segmentation by using live talent pools and enriched geodemographic data for laser-focused targeting
• Real-time triggers so emails go out based on actual candidate or client activity. 

Without integration, you’re stuck chasing data instead of leads. With it, email marketing for recruitment agencies becomes a high-converting, always-on growth engine.

3. Candidates and clients engage differently, your email marketing strategy must reflect that

This is a crucial, often-missed insight. The data shows a stark difference between how candidates and clients interact with your emails:

Candidates are curious, they open your emails, but don’t necessarily click. Clients, on the other hand, engage deeply with the content once they open it.

Email marketing for recruiters needs to reflect this:

• Candidate strategy: Focus on storytelling, job-matching content, and clear, compelling CTAs.
• Client strategy: Subject lines are critical, get them to open. Once they do, the data suggests your content is already working.

Treating these audiences the same can be ineffective.

4.  Reach the decision-makers with effective email marketing 

Recruitment marketers often assume that C-suite and senior leaders won’t engage with email. The data proves otherwise.

In fact, executives are one of your most engaged segments:

They’re reading your emails, they’re clicking and they’re likely decision-makers.

If your recruitment email marketing strategy doesn’t include tailored content for senior leaders, you’re leaving deals on the table. 

To engage executives:

• Lead with insight
• Keep it brief, but impactful
• Deliver value immediately with case studies, results, market data, exclusive insights etc.

5. Email marketing for recruitment agencies is all about timing

When you send your emails is just as important as what you say. Here’s what the data shows:

• April: Highest open rates, ideal for re-engagement and BD pushes.
• July: Best click-through rates, perfect for driving action mid-year before the summer lull.
• Thursday & Friday: Top performing send days. 
• August: Lowest volume, highest CTOR. Fewer distractions mean more focused attention, which is great for exec outreach or niche campaigns.

This is useful for planning campaigns around budget cycles, hiring peaks, and seasonal engagement windows. Align campaign cadences to this data, creating predictable pipeline opportunities.

So, what does email marketing mean for recruitment agencies in 2025?

It means the agencies succeeding in email aren’t just good copywriters. They’re:

• Fully integrated with a recruitment CRM. 
• They’re making decisions based on real, human engagement, not inflated vanity metrics.
• Leveraging recruitment automation to trigger emails at the most apt times, based on live candidate and client behaviour.
• Segmenting campaigns by role, geography, seniority, and engagement so every message lands with intent.
• Using clean, accurate, real-time data to power every decision they make.

How Vincere and Kulea helps you do email better

Vincere and Kulea give recruitment agencies the infrastructure to build smarter, more effective email marketing from the ground up.

Here’s how:

• Real-time data sync between your CRM ensures your contacts are always up-to-date and ready to target
• Built-in talent pools that allow you to segment and personalise based on live job activity, geography, seniority, industry, and more
• Behavioural triggers automating your workflows, so emails go out when candidates or clients take action
• Clean, bot-filtered data gives you real visibility into what’s working and what needs optimising 

Together, Vincere and Kulea give you the tools to move beyond basic email marketing and build an always-on, performance-driven engagement engine.

Want to know how your email marketing stacks up?

Read more about Kulea and Vincere integration.

Request a free demo to learn more.