Flyers

During my first week as a marketing intern at Referral Union I began working on increasing the number of pre-registrants by creating flyers aimed at both applicants (see sample) and employees in the DC area.

The flyers targeting applicants will be posted on bulletin boards at local universities, and possibly also distributed through their career centers, while those targeting employees will be given out in restaurants and cafes that are popular with professionals during their lunch break, and in bars downtown during happy hour, where they go after work.

This is just a start in our effort to raise awareness about the site, I am glad to be a part of the RU team, and look forward to many exciting and successful projects in the future!

March Madness

It's a little early to start hyping up the NCAA Basketball tournament, but as a UCLA (finished second last year, ranked #5 at the moment, and a huge basketball legacy) alum, I get up for the event every year.

I am tinkering around with the idea of running a promotion on my site where applicants and current employees can sign up and enter a bracket. The winner might get something like a free six month subscription, some career-advice books, or whatever. Plus, this gives me an excuse to enter another bracket (did I mention I picked GMU to make the Final Four last year?).

In order to enter the contest, users would have to register with the site, upload a resume, post their company, etc, all of which are free. Next up, Fantasy Kentucky Derby or Fafarazzi?

Priming the Pump

Now that I've had a fair number of current employees register, I need to start looking at ways to build up the applicant database. I'm going to start with college campuses in the DC area, since that's where the majority of current employee pre-registrants work. Some of these schools include Georgetown (where I earned my MA), The George Washington University, American University, Catholic University, George Mason University, Howard University, University of Virginia, University of Richmond, Marymount University, James Madison University, and a few others.

Some helpful resources within each school might include: The Panhellenic Associations and the InterFraternity Councils (which govern greek life on campus), various professional clubs, career services, and good-ol' fashioned flyer-posting. These all sound excellent tasks for my intern(s).

There are also various national and regional governing bodies for both greeks and clubs. Most of them put on conferences where companies can host a booth for between $500-1000. These might be good events to attend in the future.

The Virtue of Vice

They say you'll never go wrong investing in vice. Apparently the maxim holds true even with affiliate programs. When I first posted about my affiliate partnerships, I placed links to each in the body. The two highest click through rates (CTR) were for The Wine Messenger and Frederick's of Hollywood at 9.52% and 7.55%, respectively.

If this is your bag, and apparently it is, check out some of my new affiliate partners:

Pre-registration Email Going out Today

I finally figured out how to use Outlook to manage the various email accounts associated with the site, and I composed my pre-registration email. I tried to send it out at work, but my company's firewall blocks my outgoing emails (incoming messages are fine, apparently), so I will have to do it when I get home.

For some background:

I have decided to prime the pump somewhat before the site comes online. While it will be about six weeks before it's good to go, I want to populate the database with quality postings before that. This way, the database isn't empty when people show up. No one wants to be the first person to arrive at a party. I selected various people from among my professional and personal network who are good candidates as either applicants or current employees, or know people who might be (if you get the email and know people who could use the site, pass it along!).

The email gives a good overview of what the site does and what's coming in the future. I also introduced my "Six months free" promotion. I will be giving away free subscriptions to a number of pre-registrants. This way, they will have sufficient time to find applicants to refer before they have to pay. It's sort of a two-pronged strategy. First, it incentivizes early registration, which helps me, and second, the more quickly the site matches up applicants and current employees, the sooner it will be able to publish testimonials. Pre-registrants who are not selected for six free months will get two free months instead. Applicants are free, of course.