We’re smack in the middle of the busy shipping season, the time of year when delivery companies such as UPS most need to have their staffing ducks in a row. This year the company took an innovative approach to filling those seasonal slots, hitting the road with a mobile campaign that used short codes in print and outdoor ads to bring in applicants.

The campaign, designed and executed for UPS by recruitment marketing firm TMP Worldwide Advertising and Communications, was meant to ease the application process and improve the intake for two general seasonal divisions at Big Brown: drivers and package handlers.

Mike Vangel, who leads the national UPS account at TMP, explains that the multi-phase recruitment began with print ads last August in a national trucker trade publication called “Careers in Gears.” Readers who wanted to learn more about the seasonal full-time openings for drivers at UPS were asked to text “DRIVER” to the mobile short code 95495.

“We weren’t sure driver candidates were going to respond to the text-messaging call to action, but we were thrilled with the level of response by candidates willing to use their cell phones to begin the application process,” Vangel says. “They had to actually begin the application process online, but we saw this as a way to bridge those candidates interested in starting a career at UPS without making them physically sit in front of a computer desktop or laptop

In subsequent print and outdoor ads for the handler jobs, readers were offered the choice of going to the UPS hiring Web site at www.UPSjobs.com/print or texting a short code “UPSjobs” to 95495.

“It’s great to work with a client like UPS because they love technology and use it to track what they do: ship packages,” Vangel says. “That led us to find creative ways to track the response to the media that we used to attract recruits for them.” That had proven difficult with recruitment campaigns run through traditional media such as print, radio and cable TV. But by adding a mobile return channel to those ads, TMP was able to give UPS a better picture of how its hiring efforts were succeeding.

The campaign is ongoing and will proceed through the holidays, but from Aug. 1 to Oct. 3 the initiative received 8,054 mobile opt-ins. Users who signed in with a Web-enabled phone were taken to a WAP page where they could start the online application process immediately. Those without Web capability—admittedly the majority of the respondents—got a text message thanking them for opting in and requesting an e-mail address where UPS and TMP could send further information about applying. Ninety-six percent of those volunteering their addresses clicked through the e-mail they were sent.

All told, the company expects to receive more than 30,000 hiring opt-ins by the end of this year, Vangel says. If so, that will amount to a cost of about $3.84 per opt-in and a cost per data capture of less than $1. Thanks in large part to the addition of the mobile backchannel, the whole recruitment campaign has cost less than the price of a full-page ad in a traditional daily or Sunday newspaper.

“We wanted to make sure that we were using a medium that the candidates themselves felt very comfortable with,” Vangel says. “In the past we used to force them to fax a resume, and then we moved to sending them to a specifically tagged URL on the Web. Why not take it to the next logical step and make it a process that you could begin on the phone?”

That comfort with performing non-voice functions over the phone is a particular cultural phenomenon among the age group TMP was trying to reach for UPS, he says. “The primary demographic we’re reaching for is between 18 and 35, and they have a real comfort with cell phone technology. That coupled with the process itself is what has made this work.”

“People are more engaged when they’re texting you than they might be with just reading a print ad, then finding a computer or a fax machine. Those response methods imposed a disconnect. There’s an immediacy with SMS campaigns. Within seconds, they had a response to their initial text message and were able to advance to the next level. That grows candidate relationships much faster than the old ways.”

We’re smack in the middle of the busy shipping season, the time of year when delivery companies such as UPS most need to have their staffing ducks in a row. This year the company took an innovative approach to filling those seasonal slots, hitting the road with a mobile campaign that used short codes in print and outdoor ads to bring in applicants.

The campaign, designed and executed for UPS by recruitment marketing firm TMP Worldwide Advertising and Communications, was meant to ease the application process and improve the intake for two general seasonal divisions at Big Brown: drivers and package handlers.

Mike Vangel, who leads the national UPS account at TMP, explains that the multi-phase recruitment began with print ads last August in a national trucker trade publication called “Careers in Gears.” Readers who wanted to learn more about the seasonal full-time openings for drivers at UPS were asked to text “DRIVER” to the mobile short code 95495.

“We weren’t sure driver candidates were going to respond to the text-messaging call to action, but we were thrilled with the level of response by candidates willing to use their cell phones to begin the application process,” Vangel says. “They had to actually begin the application process online, but we saw this as a way to bridge those candidates interested in starting a career at UPS without making them physically sit in front of a computer desktop or laptop

In subsequent print and outdoor ads for the handler jobs, readers were offered the choice of going to the UPS hiring Web site at www.UPSjobs.com/print or texting a short code “UPSjobs” to 95495.

“It’s great to work with a client like UPS because they love technology and use it to track what they do: ship packages,” Vangel says. “That led us to find creative ways to track the response to the media that we used to attract recruits for them.” That had proven difficult with recruitment campaigns run through traditional media such as print, radio and cable TV. But by adding a mobile return channel to those ads, TMP was able to give UPS a better picture of how its hiring efforts were succeeding.

The campaign is ongoing and will proceed through the holidays, but from Aug. 1 to Oct. 3 the initiative received 8,054 mobile opt-ins. Users who signed in with a Web-enabled phone were taken to a WAP page where they could start the online application process immediately. Those without Web capability—admittedly the majority of the respondents—got a text message thanking them for opting in and requesting an e-mail address where UPS and TMP could send further information about applying. Ninety-six percent of those volunteering their addresses clicked through the e-mail they were sent.

All told, the company expects to receive more than 30,000 hiring opt-ins by the end of this year, Vangel says. If so, that will amount to a cost of about $3.84 per opt-in and a cost per data capture of less than $1. Thanks in large part to the addition of the mobile backchannel, the whole recruitment campaign has cost less than the price of a full-page ad in a traditional daily or Sunday newspaper.

“We wanted to make sure that we were using a medium that the candidates themselves felt very comfortable with,” Vangel says. “In the past we used to force them to fax a resume, and then we moved to sending them to a specifically tagged URL on the Web. Why not take it to the next logical step and make it a process that you could begin on the phone?”

That comfort with performing non-voice functions over the phone is a particular cultural phenomenon among the age group TMP was trying to reach for UPS, he says. “The primary demographic we’re reaching for is between 18 and 35, and they have a real comfort with cell phone technology. That coupled with the process itself is what has made this work.”

“People are more engaged when they’re texting you than they might be with just reading a print ad, then finding a computer or a fax machine. Those response methods imposed a disconnect. There’s an immediacy with SMS campaigns. Within seconds, they had a response to their initial text message and were able to advance to the next level. That grows candidate relationships much faster than the old ways.”