Sourcing emails: The nurture email

3 mins, 37 secs read time

In our Sourcing emails series, we’re sharing lots of tips on how to engage and nurture prospects throughout your email outreach campaigns to help you build relationships with great prospects for all your open roles.

Nurturing and re-engaging prospects is a fundamental part of building a solid talent pipeline, especially for evergreen roles. One of the most effective ways to get your talent pipeline where it needs to be is by creating email nurture campaigns. Think of nurture emails as follow-up emails that share relevant and timely information to start conversations and keep prospects engaged. These emails should add value for the prospect, entice them to join your company and highlight new information such as open roles, details about your company culture or any relevant awards or updates.

If you need more ideas on what information to include in your follow-up emails, here are some key tips you can use for all your nurture emails:

• Provide timely information about new and relevant opportunities as they open up to keep the prospect up to date.
• Share engaging content such as new job openings, company updates, company awards, PR mentions, published blogs/eBooks and product launches to spark the prospect’s interest.
• Include a clear call to action that outlines the next step you’d like them to take, whether that’s scheduling a call to learn more about the role and company or connecting on LinkedIn.

Here’s a nurture email example you can use as inspiration in your outreach campaigns:

"Hi [first name],

Since I’ve shared a bit about [your company] and the opportunity to make an impact on our [department/team name], I thought it might be helpful to tell you why I'm excited to be part of this [two or three adjectives describing the company culture (inclusive, high-growth, etc.)] [type of company/industry (recruiting, tech, etc.)] company.

One of my main reasons for joining [your company] goes back to their efforts related to [a company pillar/key aspect of company culture that might resonate with the prospect (DE&I, career growth, etc.)]. I'd love to tell you more about how we’re [elaborate on an initiative the company is creating to work towards that company pillar/key company culture aspect].

I'm truly inspired and impressed by the people I get to work with here. If you'd like to connect and learn more about the culture or the opportunity at [your company], please go ahead and add a time that works for you to my calendar [link to calendar].

Thank you,
[your name]"

Pitfalls to avoid

It's easy to fall into some common pitfalls when creating a nurture email. Here are some items to avoid when engaging prospects in your email nurture campaign.

• Sending content that lacks additional value — As you build relationships with prospects, it’s important to know the ideal candidate persona for the roles you’re hiring for so you can send targeted and valuable content to them. It can deter prospects from continuing to engage with you further if the content you’re sending isn’t relevant or providing any additional value to them.
• Copy and pasting the entire job description — We don’t recommend copying and pasting the entire job description into the email, especially since this makes a lengthy email and can deter the prospect from reading it altogether. Instead, try tailoring the information to what the prospect may find relevant and interesting.
• Lengthy email copy — A general rule is to keep your email copy as succinct as possible. You can achieve this by divvying up the value proposition into multiple email touchpoints. This ensures that you’re not squeezing all the valuable information into the first email and leaving yourself with repetitive information in future emails.

Sometimes you won’t hear back from a prospect, even with a stellar email nurture campaign. When your outreach attempts are not getting any response or indication of engagement, it’s time to send a breakup email. This is one final attempt to engage them before ending your outreach with them – for this campaign.


Read the full series overview, as well as each post on introductory and follow-up to nurture and breakup emails, on the Greenhouse blog.