How HerKey uses emails to empower women and accelerate their careers

The company

HerKey (previously known as JobsForHer) is consistently dedicated to empowering women in India by providing them with opportunities, access to learning resources, and a supportive community. The company caters to women who have taken a break in their careers with guidance and motivation to re-enter the job market.

"I started the company on International Women's Day in 2015 with the idea to help women accelerate their careers. Over the years, we have expanded that vision — whether the woman is a starter, restarter, or riser, we help her in that career journey by finding her the opportunities and knowledge she needs and giving her a community that holds her up and doesn't push her down," says Neha Bagaria, CEO of HerKey.

The challenge

As HerKey grew, the task extended beyond mere talent-job connections. With a dedicated team committed to advancing workplace gender equality and supporting women in staying current in a dynamic environment, there arose a need for more proactive measures. The new focus involved implementing effective strategies to encourage and inspire women to believe in their potential for reentry into the job market, emphasizing the necessity to optimize their email efforts. "Our substantial growth prompted us to seek an email provider capable of not only meeting our current needs but also catering to our future requirements," remarked Bagaria.

The solution

To achieve this, HerKey's team was on the lookout for an email service provider that could give them the security they needed to reach out to women, maximize their open rates, and get their audience to engage in the way they hoped. Zoho Camapigns worked as a perfect fit.

"Before using Zoho Campaigns, our email metrics were very low," says Dev Gupta, AVP of Marketing at HerKey. "It's obvious that since using Zoho Campaigns, our deliverables—our open and click rates—have increased. But the most important result of using Zoho Campaigns is that our conversion rates have increased."

Given how extensively they use various social media platforms, HerKey's messages encompass a wide spectrum, including informing women about job opportunities, presenting various educational prospects, or conducting awareness campaigns to inspire women by showcasing the achievements of countless others who have accomplished remarkable feats and encouraging them to believe in their own potential.

Both sides of HerKey's business place a sharp focus on reaching the right audience with the most effective messaging possible. "Email marketing is effective across all the different kinds of marketing strategies we use," says Kiran Kumar, Marketing Manager at HerKey. "Our digital marketing team is split into a B2C team and a B2B team. The B2C side works more towards database growth and increasing the number of job applications we get, whereas the B2B side seeks to nurture more leads and manage the entire lead life cycle."

Features that made a difference

A/B testing, follow-up emails, and segmentation are the standout features for HerKey. Among these, segmentation holds the greatest importance for their business, as it enables them to cater to millions of users across diverse geographic locations, age groups, and job preferences.

Looking ahead

"We switched to Zoho Campaigns when we were at one million women; today, we've scaled up to two and a half million women," Bagaria says. "And I think this is just the start of our relationship with Zoho. Zoho Campaigns has been such a successful experiment for us that we'll not only look at continuing to scale our work using Zoho Campaigns, but also look into how we can integrate it with Zoho CRM—something our sales team already uses. That will be a great way to re-engage not just with the women on the platform, but also the different clients that we have coming through."

To know more about HerKey, click here.