Recruiters are quick to fire out job ads but far less likely to ask: Did it actually land? If your outreach is getting flagged, filtered, or flat-out ignored, then even your most urgent roles won’t stand a chance. With GDPR tightening and spam filters evolving, getting seen isn’t as simple as it once was.
Your inbox strategy isn’t just a delivery issue, it’s a critical pipeline problem. When your emails miss the inbox, you miss out on candidates, conversations, and conversions.
At Vincere, we’ve seen how easily strong outreach strategies can fail when delivery gets overlooked. If you’re not managing your email strategy proactively, you’re already at a disadvantage.
Let’s dig into the hidden costs and how to get ahead of them.
The hidden threats derailing your candidate outreach
Spam filters don’t care how brilliant your role is or how urgently you need to fill it. The reality? 1 in 6 recruitment emails never even reach the inbox. The worst part is you won’t even know, leaving you with ghosted emails, delayed responses, and dwindling candidate engagement.
Common causes of poor deliverability:
- Shared domains with no warm-up period
- Overused spam trigger phrases
- Missing authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
- Sending to disengaged or outdated lists
- Low engagement signals over time
These are more than technical missteps, they’re silent revenue leaks.
Vincere CRM helps recruiters avoid deliverability pitfalls by syncing live CRM data with automation, so you only send to engaged, up-to-date contacts. With built-in segmentation, cold contact suppression, and support for domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) via Force24, you stay out of spam folders and in front of top candidates, without risking your sender reputation.
Why email deliverability matters more than open rates
Open rates can be misleading. If your email doesn’t land in the first place, no one’s opening anything, and poor deliverability impacts every stage of your recruitment funnel:
- Delayed or zero candidate responses
- Lower quality pipelines
- Deteriorating recruitment agency reputation
When candidates don’t see your messages, they assume you’re not reaching out or worse, that your brand isn’t trustworthy, that’s a serious business risk.
Vincere's Automation software ensures your outreach gets seen by tracking engagement in real time and triggering follow-ups based on opens, clicks, or inactivity, it helps protect your sender reputation and increase response rates. You avoid sending repeat messages to disengaged contacts, reduce bounce risks, and keep your brand visible and credible in the inbox, so every message works harder across your funnel.
GDPR: your deliverability reputation depends on it
GDPR directly impacts your deliverability score. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) favour senders who respect consent and deliver relevant content to opted-in lists. If you’re not managing data properly, your sender reputation takes a hit.
The Vincere and Force24 advantage:
- UK-hosted, GDPR-compliant data storage
- Hashed deletion for complete data security
- Built-in automation that respects consent and preferences
- Dynamic segmentation based on real-time activity
The anatomy of a high-performing recruitment email strategy
What separates high-performing agencies from the rest? They treat email like a pipeline priority, not an afterthought.
Here’s how:
- Double opt-ins and preference centres: Let candidates choose how and when they hear from you, this boosts engagement and builds trust
- Proper DNS authentication: Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prove your emails are legitimate.
- Segment and personalise: Send smarter, smaller, better-targeted campaigns
- Warm up new domains: Don’t go from 0 to 100. Slowly increase send volume to build sender reputation
- Monitor performance: Track bounces, unsubscribes, opens, and clicks. This data isn’t nice-to-have, it’s your roadmap
Using Vincere’s Analytics & Reporting tools, you can track delivery metrics, campaign engagement, and list performance in one view, empowering your teams to act quickly and optimise outreach.
How Vincere customers are winning the inbox game
Agencies using Vincere and Force24 are staying ahead with an integrated email strategy that actually delivers.
Here’s how we’re doing it:
- Real-time syncing with Vincere CRM to avoid outdated sends
- A/B testing subject lines, timing, and content to reduce spam flags
- Using SMS and automation follow-ups when emails go unopened
- Automatically pausing disengaged candidates to protect sender score
- Triggered workflows based on activity
The result? Higher engagement, faster replies, stronger pipelines and better placement performance.
By connecting your recruitment ATS + CRM with automation and deliverability best practices, you gain full visibility and control over candidate touchpoints, no more black-box campaigns or dropped leads.
Your 3-point deliverability action plan
Ready to take control? Start here:
- Audit your setup: Get a technical review of your domain, DNS records, and sender authentication
- Clean your data: Focus on active, engaged candidates. Archive the rest. Segment intelligently
- Work with the right tools: Use a platform designed for recruitment, like Vincere and Force24 with baked-in GDPR compliance and deliverability best practices
How Vincere and Force24 help you master email marketing
Vincere and Force24 give recruiters the tools to take control. Vincere ensures your outreach is driven by live CRM data, smart segmentation, and real-time engagement. Force24 provides the deliverability engine, authentication, GDPR-compliant infrastructure, and expert email performance monitoring.
Here’s how it works:
- Real-time data sync with your CRM keeps contact records always up to date and ready to target
- Built-in talent pools let you segment and personalise by live job activity, location, seniority, industry, and more
- Behavioural triggers automate your workflows with emails that go out the moment a candidate or client takes action
- Bot-filtered analytics give you accurate insights into what’s working and what’s not
With Vincere and Force24, you’re not just sending emails, you’re building a high-performing, always-on engagement engine.
Want to see how your email marketing measures up?
Request a demo to see it in action.
