Cold Email for Staffing and Recruiting Agencies
We run cold email for staffing firms, on the client side. Email to hiring managers, not to candidates. Your recruiters keep making the calls; we handle getting the manager to write back in the first place.
We set up sending domains and mailboxes in your name, on domains that have never sent a candidate email and never will. We build the list every day from roles that have been open too long, companies whose postings just spiked, and managers who just got budget. And we write each email about that specific role. Starts as low as $2,999 a month, month to month. This page is about who reads the email, why staffing firms have the worst domain reputation of any industry we work in, what a sequence says, and how the setup keeps your client email away from your candidate email.
Who reads it, and when
The hiring manager. Not HR, not talent acquisition, not the VP of People. The controller with an open accountant seat, the plant manager staffing a second shift, the engineering director whose senior role has been posted since spring.
They read email between the two jobs they’re doing until the seat’s filled. They got an email from a staffing firm the day the posting went up, and four more that week, all offering “top talent” and “a true partnership.” They deleted every one, because at day three they still believed the internal team would fill it.
At day 50 they don’t believe that anymore. The email that shows up at day 50, names the role and the date, and says “we have two people in process” is the first staffing email they’ve read in weeks. The timing is what makes the difference, and the timing comes from the list.
Why staffing firms have the worst domain reputation in B2B
Most firms send thousands of emails a week to candidates from the main domain, through the ATS. Candidates ignore most of them, some mark them as spam, and the domain’s reputation drops a little with every campaign. By the time the firm tries to email a client, the domain that carries the recruiters’ names is already on thin ice with Google and Microsoft.
Then the business development email goes out from that same domain, through the same ATS, in the same template with the same footer, and it lands in junk right next to the candidate blasts.
Client-side outreach has to run on separate domains that have never touched a candidate. Low volume, plain text, no ATS tracking links, from a named recruiter or BD lead. That’s the reason the emails reach a hiring manager at all, and it’s the first thing we set up.
The other thing to get right is the reply. A hiring manager who says “yes, send them” needs a recruiter with candidates on the other end within hours, not a shared outreach inbox somebody checks on Friday. Replies go to whoever’s working that desk, with the posting and the date attached.
What the sequence says
Three emails over 12 business days, all about one signal. This one’s a Senior Accountant role at a manufacturing company, posted 52 days ago and reposted last week.
Email 1, day 1.
Subject: The Senior Accountant role, open since July 14
Hi Denise,
Saw the Senior Accountant posting’s been up since mid-July and was reposted last week. We have two accountants in process now who came out of manufacturing companies your size, both within commuting distance of the plant, both able to start inside three weeks.
Standard contingency, no exclusivity, and we’d only send profiles if the seat’s still open.
Is it?
Marcus
Email 2, day 5, as a reply to email 1.
One more on this. The posting has month-end close and inventory costing in it, and one of the two has done both at a plant on the same ERP. If the seat’s filled, no problem, I’ll close the file.
Email 3, day 12, as a reply to the thread.
Denise, should I close this out, or check back if the posting’s still up next month? Either’s fine.
Marcus
Each one’s under 90 words. The date’s in the subject line. The first email offers people, not a partnership. The second names one thing from the job description so she knows somebody actually read it. The third gives her an easy out, which in staffing comes back as “actually, yes, send them” a week later more often than you’d think.
The five signals, and how the email opens
The list gets rebuilt every day from these, and the first line comes from whichever one fired.
A role open more than 45 days. “Saw the Senior Accountant posting’s been up since mid-July.” Then candidates in process, with a start window.
Postings spiking at one company. “Saw the eleven postings that went up in the last three weeks.” Then an offer to take the overflow, contract or direct, to the department head with the most reqs.
A round, a contract win, or a new facility. “Congratulations on the DoD award.” Then an offer to build the pipeline before the reqs post, so the manager isn’t starting from zero in 60 days.
A new department head. “Congratulations on the VP Engineering role.” Then a first search on contingency, before the shortlist from the last job gets a call.
An in-house recruiter leaving. “Saw the Recruiter role go up on your careers page.” Then an offer to cover the open reqs until the replacement starts.
How the sending is set up
Three to six domains that look like yours, registered in your name, that have never sent a candidate email and never will. Two to four mailboxes each. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC from day one.
Two to three weeks of warmup before anything real goes out. Twenty to forty emails a day per mailbox.
The sender is the recruiter working that desk, or your BD lead. A hiring manager writes back to the person who has the candidates.
Everything’s plain text, with no ATS tracking link, no image, and no signature block with six logos in it. Unsubscribe by reply, honored the same day.
Replies go to the desk the same day with the posting, the date, and the thread. You see every reply, including the ones that say no.
When you leave, the domains and mailboxes are transferred to you with the logins.
How it runs
Week one we register the domains, set up the mailboxes, agree with you the job families, geography, fee model, and VMS exclusions, and turn on posting-age tracking and the other four signals for your market.
Weeks one to three the mailboxes warm. First real sends go out in week two.
From week three, replies land on the desk with the posting attached. Your recruiters send the profiles.
Every morning we look at yesterday’s job orders against the target. If we hit it, we send more. If we missed it, it’s one of four things: wrong companies, not enough of them, the email was off, or it didn’t land. We find which, fix it, and that’s what goes out today. You can follow it in the log.
What it costs
Starts as low as $2,999 a month, month to month. No setup fee, no minimum term.
That covers domains, mailboxes, warmup, posting-age tracking, the other signals, the copy, sending, replies, and the daily log.
It doesn’t cover calling or LinkedIn. If you want those run by our team on your account, that’s the outbound program, linked below. Most staffing firms keep the calling in-house. Their recruiters are on the phone all day anyway.
Results
Those are software, logistics, and restaurant clients. We'll put a staffing number here the first time a staffing client lets us use their name.
Book a 15-minute fit call
Tell us your job families, your market, and how your recruiters split their time between candidate and client work. We'll tell you whether we'd take the account, what email 1 would say for your desk, and, if it shouldn't be us, who to call instead.
Other ways we work with Staffing and Recruiting Agencies
,
if you want the qualification line, the VMS exclusion list, and the job order count, not just the email.
,
if you want email plus LinkedIn and calling with our team on the phones.
,
if you want to retarget the same hiring-manager list with paid social.
Cold Email for other industries
Questions people ask us
We already send BD email through Bullhorn. What’s different?
It doesn’t go through Bullhorn, and it doesn’t go from the domain that sends your candidate email. Separate domains, plain text, no tracking links, and a list built from posting age instead of a company list. The ATS is fine for candidates. It’s what’s putting your client email in junk.
Our main domain is already flagged. Can you fix it?
The program doesn’t touch it, so client outreach lands regardless. Fixing the main domain is a separate job, and the truthful answer is it usually means cutting candidate volume and cleaning the list. Happy to talk through that on the fit call.
Do the emails go to hiring managers or HR?
Hiring managers. HR owns the vendor list and says no. The manager with the empty seat says yes and tells HR to sort out the paperwork.
Can each recruiter send under their own name for their own desk?
Yes, and that’s the standard setup. The accounting desk’s emails go out under the accounting recruiter’s name and the replies come back to them. A hiring manager wants to talk to whoever has the candidates.
Contract and temp, or only direct hire?
Both. The sequence changes. Aging roles get the direct-hire version above. Posting spikes get a contract version offering to staff the overflow. We set it per desk.
How many emails go out?
A few hundred a week for a single-market program. Roles open 45 days or more in your job families are a few hundred a month, and each gets three emails. That’s a tiny fraction of what your ATS sends candidates in a day.