There are countless ways to fill your vacancies: from external agencies to smart software that supports you. But what is the best investment? In this blog, we zoom in on the effect of recruitment marketing automation on your recruitment spend. What does RMA cost and what does it deliver?
TLDR | Recruitment marketing automation (RMA) is a smart and cost-effective investment. Although licensing costs depend on your requirements and the number of users, they are always clear and predictable. Something that is usually not true for media agency costs. With RMA, you save on hiring external media agencies, increase the number of responses thanks to soft conversions and improve your campaign results by continuously optimising with real-time data. The recruitment process itself also becomes more efficient by automating repetitive work. And thanks to well-maintained talent pools, you don't have to start recruiting all over again. All these factors lower your cost-per-hire and so you can do much more with your budget!
The investment in RMA software
You can't just put a single price tag on RMA software. Of course, each supplier uses its own pricing model, but the investment often also depends on all kinds of factors. Think about:
- The number of software users
- Software configuration - do you want to use complex features or just the standard options?
- The level of support and advice you get
To give you an idea: at MrWork, rates for the 2 most popular features - Job Campaigning + the Soft Conversions Toolbox - start at €950 per month. With these forms of RMA, you can easily run recruitment campaigns yourself and enable low-threshold responses. And yes, you get professional support and proactive advice in the process. Of course, the more you want, the higher your investment. For example, do you use our AI Recruitment Assistant? Does one person work in the software or dozens of recruiters? Do you link your ATS to the RMA software? Let us know what you need and we will make you a tailor-made proposal.
One thing you can be sure of is that your licence fees are fixed. They do not grow with you as you use more recruitment marketing, as is the case with a media agency. So when you choose RMA software, you know exactly where you stand. No surprises or hassles.
"With the media agency, our expenses would fluctuate monthly. They couldn't offer us a fixed-price subscription. With software, the licence fees are clear and fixed. That gives peace of mind." - Marieke van den Bosch, Corporate Recruiter at Bochane Group
The benefits of RMA software
With RMA you can save time (and therefore money), increase the effectiveness of your recruitment marketing and spend less on external (media) agencies, leaving you with money. So the knife cuts on all sides!
Less money spent on hiring media agencies
If you leave recruitment marketing to a media agency, you not only pay for buying advertising space, but also for the hours the agency spends. Think of setting up and managing campaigns, building reports, analysing and coordinating with you as a client. In practice, 30% of your total recruitment marketing budget quickly goes into these agency costs. That adds up.
Instead of outsourcing, are you going to control your recruitment marketing yourself, using RMA software? Then you will not only be faster and more flexible, you will also save thousands of euros. After all, you will have set up a campaign yourself in no time (thanks to all automations in the platform) and will not have to pay for external parties to do it for you manually. A nice saving!
"Thanks to RMA software, recruiters can put a job campaign live themselves - within 10 minutes. We no longer need external agencies for that. That makes a difference." - Niels van Harten, recruitment marketer at Enexis
Calculation example: large corporate
An organisation with 14,000 employees spends €450,000 annually on recruitment marketing through an agency. About 30% of that - €135,000 - goes on agency costs. With a comprehensive RMA implementation (including ATS link, content library and multiple users), they save more than 50% on those costs. And are their needs growing? Then the software costs remain almost the same.
Lower cost per applicant thanks to soft conversions
Conversion, conversion, conversion. It is one of the biggest frustrations of recruiters in the Netherlands. Because even if your campaign performs so well in terms of reach, interaction and CTR, applications often fail to arrive and the ATS remains empty. The average conversion on recruitment sites is between 1% and 3%. So out of 100 visitors, at least 97 drop out, even though they are interested. They are just not ready to apply yet.
One of the most powerful applications of RMA is soft conversions. These low-threshold response options - such as starting a WhatsApp conversation - give conversion rates a big boost. Often this rises to 5%, sometimes as much as 10%. As a result, you need much less media budget to speak to more candidates.
Say you have a media budget of €750 for a campaign. With that, you realise 500 clicks to your job page.
- Without soft conversions, your conversion rate is 2%. That means you get 10 responses.
- With soft conversions, your conversion rate increases to 6%. So you are now talking to 30 candidates. 3x as many!
"We are currently running a low-response campaign (lead form) and are getting dozens of responses a day as a result. We have spent less than €200 on advertising budget and have been in contact with more than 140 candidates." - Max Sips, founder at Port of Opportunities
More candidates through optimised campaigns
Setting up campaigns is one thing, but without insight into their performance, you can only guess what works and what does not. And that is a waste of time and budget. Recruitment marketing is continuously measuring and adjusting. If you have to do that with all kinds of separate dashboards or manually enter data into Excel files, it does not provide much of an overview.
With recruitment marketing software you do have that insight. Always. Highly detailed. All the data is ready in one place and that gives you the opportunity to make quick adjustments. Is an ad not working? Then you adjust it immediately. Is a channel performing remarkably well? Then you simply scale it up.
Getting the most out of your media budget. That means more candidates for less money.
More efficiency, lower costs
Traditional recruitment is labour-intensive. A lot of time is lost on manual chores, such as updating the ATS, screening candidates, making interview reports and much more. By letting software take over some tasks, you can save a lot of time. Think about pre-screening candidates automatically or an AI Assistant answering candidates' questions.
"The biggest reason for me to work with RMA software is very clear: saving time. When I used to set up campaigns manually, it took me days. Now I have set up and published several campaigns in an hour. Thanks to this kind of automation, I only work 3 days a week for Securitas Technology instead of 5." - Thom Oudhuis, recruitment marketer at The Selection
So automating processes creates more efficiency and therefore lower costs. For example, because:
- A fast and streamlined process matches candidate expectations and therefore fewer candidates drop out during the selection procedure.
- A small recruitment team can fill a serious workload of vacancies because they don't have to do much manual work.
- A tight recruiter experience offers recruiters more job satisfaction and therefore higher productivity.
No more repetitive recruiting thanks to engaged talent pools
One of the fastest ways recruitment marketing automation (RMA) pays for itself is through smartly building and maintaining talent pools. Almost every recruiter has a valuable but often forgotten resource: candidates you already know. Think of previous applicants, former employees or people who once showed interest but fell just short.
Instead of repeatedly investing budget in reaching new people, you can use RMA to keep existing contacts warm. With personalised updates, inspiring content or professional tips, you keep these talents active and involved. Thanks to automated communication flows, contact is personal, but you don't have to spend time on this as a recruiter.
And when a suitable vacancy becomes available? Then you have an active pool of interested parties who already know and trust you. That saves a lot of money on advertising costs and external recruitment channels.
A lower cost-per-hire through RMA
In short, with RMA you improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your recruitment strategy. You make the most of your media budget, save on hiring agencies, spend less time on manual tasks, adjust campaigns correctly and draw from an engaged talent pool. There aren't many recruitment solutions that pay for themselves in so many ways. No-brainer!
