Finding the right text message solution for your company is important. With so many different options, you should do the research and consider your top priorities and find the right SMS platform to meet your business needs. TextRecruit competitors offer a variety of services for candidate and employee communications. TextUs is one company that provides not only the tech solution but also the support needed to reach your candidates.

What tech acquisitions mean for you

Any time a tech company is acquired or merges with a larger company, there are pros and cons. On one hand, you may be getting a broader offering of services. On the other hand, you may not require or want to pay for all of the bells and whistles.

TextRecruit was acquired by iCIMS in 2018 and offers services for candidate and employee engagement that leverages text, chat, and AI to optimize the hiring funnel. It’s offered as part of the overall iCIMS talent cloud.

Here are some of the top questions you should ask when looking for a business texting solution—especially one that has been acquired by a larger company.

1. Is it cost-effective for your needs?

   When you try to offer many things to everyone, pricing can increase. Instead of picking what you need, you are required to bundle or get services that may not be necessary for your company goals. Sometimes you save when you bundle services, sometimes you pay for things you don’t need. Make sure you know your priorities and use cases before agreeing to an SMS recruiting platform. As a TextRecruit alternative, we have customers who have switched to TextUs citing price increases as a key reason.

2. Does it integrate with your CRM or ATS?

   If you’re an iCIMS user, then adding a service is a benefit to you; however, if you are using a different ATS or CRM to track applicants or build relationships, then your business texting platform may not work for you. Make sure the TextRecruit competitor you choose has options that integrate with other software platforms and has a track record of building integrations on their roadmap. TextUs has integrations with Salesforce, Greenhouse, Workday, and more so customers are not locked into using iCIMS.

3. How are the analytics?

   If you are paying for a text recruiting platform, you want to make sure that you are able to tailor your SMS campaigns to be effective. Like with any communication or marketing tool you implement, tracking your analytics is vital to your business and text messaging success. Make sure the TextRecruit competitors are offering reporting to help you make more informed decisions for your SMS strategy. TextUs gives users insight beyond that of TextRecruit by showing message deliverability, and more in-depth metrics around user engagement including the number of messages within active conversations and number of customer-initiated conversations.

4. How is the customer experience and support?

   You want your candidates to have a positive experience with you, so why wouldn’t you want the same positive experience? Sometimes you sacrifice support and relationships as a company gets bigger. There are many competing priorities and silos appear. Make sure the TextRecruit alternatives have quality customer support and they don’t forget about you after the sale. Our customers experience better support and response times—TextUs is a high performer in G2’s “Best Relationship” category due to our ease of doing business and quality of our customer support.

5. Do the features meet your needs?

   Make sure the features you do pay for are user-friendly and help you manage your workflow—not add additional work or stress. Also, look to see if the TextRecruit alternatives are continually offering new features and improving workflows. Sometimes when companies become too big, they build features only at certain times to be a “catch-all” instead of building to solve customer pain-points. TextUs has a strong record of user experience and offers easier workflows for sending SMS campaigns—such as the ability to send campaigns straight from your contact list. TextUs also offers contact groups, tags, and saved dynamic searches to more easily segment your audience.

Features you won’t find with TextRecruit

Speaking of features, here are a few that you won’t find with TextRecruit. If they are high up on your priority list, make sure you find a better TextRecruit alternative.

Text quality indicator: Do you want your campaign sends to be the best they can be and have a guide before you hit “send”? A built-in text quality indicator when creating campaign messages helps users achieve better deliverability rates.

Adding attachments: Do you want to send attachments and give more than 160 characters? Adding rich media like photos, videos, and PDFs supports the words you send and can increase response rates and engagement.

Incorporated brand links: Do you want to build your brand credibility and make sure your contacts see your text messages? If you’re using a third party link shortener instead of having it built directly into your SMS platform, it could get blocked by mobile carriers.

A/B testing: Do you want to measure the success of your campaign messages at the same time? With A/B testing you can track which messages and flows work best so you do more of what works and don’t waste time.

SMS API: Do you want to connect easily to other software tools? TextUs offers a RESTful API that allows companies to integrate TextUs messages and contacts with your CRM or any other tool.

Is there a downside to AI and automation?

Automation and AI have the ability to make our lives and processes easier. Chatbots have become common on every website and within the recruiting industry—TextRecruit can pre-screen candidates with them. But what if your customers and candidates want to talk to real support and not a robot? In fact, studies show that “74% of consumers prefer talking to a real person than a bot.”

Automation is great for access, but does the texting software offer a “hot” transfer that connects in real-time to a real human once a conversation starts? Building AI takes time. It’s a learned process to be able to work at full capacity and function properly to mimic human behavior. There’s nothing worse than asking a bot a question about your application status and getting a watered down answer that is not specific or unique to you.

We have seen customers do better when they provide a mix of automation and 1:1 touch points with their contacts. Especially within the staffing and recruiting industry, we see a more robust response time and rate when personalized communication is offered. The staffing industry response rate is 34.7% which is lower than other industries, but staffing is only incorporating conversational texts half of the time versus other industries that are having conversational messages 70% of the time over automation.

The type of message you send impacts your response rate. Conversational texting gets three times more response rates than automation.

If you look at the diagram above, staffing does better than other industries when conversational text is implemented. The staffing industry is close to 60% where others are around 50%. Automated texts typically cap out at a 20% response rate no matter the industry.

If you start with automation, make sure you move to a real person texting to establish an engaging conversation. Try to shoot for more than 60% of your texts to be conversational to optimize engagement.

You don’t want to sacrifice quality when you start to send automated campaigns.

TextUs does include automation in its features and on the product roadmap. This year we launched Keywords and plan to invest more in 2023. But the questions you should ask for your business texting needs are: “Do we want a communication mix or just pure automation?” and will only focusing on AI and lack of customer support affect your bottom line?

Feature Comparison: TextRecruit Alternatives

Platform Products
Web app
Mobile app
Chrome extension
User Features
1:1 messaging
Mass texting
Scheduled messages
Templates
Message personalization
Opt-in status
Opt-outs
Contact import
Auto responses
Text quality indicator
Contact segmentation
Add attachments
Campaigns
A/B testing tools
Branded link shortening
Link tracking
Keywords
Automated sequences	Coming soon
Webchat
AI-driven responses
Admin Features
Analytics
SSO Support
Data encryption
SMS API
CRM / ATS integrations		Limited to iCIMS
10DLC registration
3rd-party penetration testing
Customer Resources
Onboarding assistance
Technical support
Help center

The staffing industry is leveling out now from the pandemic. You have seen a flux in not hiring, to hiring when candidates were demanding, to now a more balanced approach in recruiting for both sides. Implementing SMS recruiting to your strategy will let you communicate more effectively—but make sure you choose the right SMS platform for your business goals. The end of the year is a great time to evaluate your tools and plan goals.

If you’re looking for TextRecruit alternatives, ask if your candidates want a personalized experience with easy-to-use communication tools and friendly support when you need it. If we check your boxes of priorities, contact us today!

Business Texting Statistics and Predictions

We gathered data from TextUs users and outside sources to bring this insightful look at texting statistics and how sms will shape better business results in 2023.  We covered industry trends across several verticals and shed light on texting insights that you can use to establish best practices across your organization.

Get the stats and predictions