NGM BLOG

Your staff can be the best ambassadors. Four steps to engaging email communication with them.

22.2.2019

 

 

One of the most important groups of customers you can engage with are your company’s staff, but I often see them way down the list of importance when marketing campaigns are being developed and launched.

 

A study of 2,000 Britons in 2017 found the average adult has 40 friends, including two best mates, four close pals and five work buddies. What better way could there be than to expand a positive message and view of your company’s products and services, than via your own staff to their like-minded friends?

 

It’s not just about what we communicate to our internal business teams, but how we do this and by what media. As individuals, we all consume media in different ways and it is an outmoded concept to think that an email or conference call will do the job of engaging and motivating our teams to act as ambassadors for the company’s products and services, when they are constantly bombarded by and reacting to a variety of interactive media in their daily lives.

 

I have been as guilty as others in this area. We create dynamic communications specifically targeted to external customers whilst having less understanding of the individuals in our own teams whose job it is to understand and engage with the latest campaign.

 

Research carried out by the Radicati group, a technology market research company in the US, shows how email use has significantly increased over the past four years from an average of 205 emails sent and received per day to 246, an increase of over 20% in this period. The probability of a single email to our teams receiving any engagement has therefore reduced over time due to crowded inboxes, let alone the lack of creativity of a standard email.

 

 

STANDOUT is the important word. Some systems are unable to monitor an email sent to a group. Thus, the reaction to receiving little or no response is a propensity to resend a similar email to the same group, which just adds to the clutter. It’s like having a face to face conversation and on receiving a response of “I don’t understand what you’re saying”, just repeating yourself with the same language BUT LOUDER… Using email programmes such as Mailchimp, that offer creative diversity and monitoring, can quickly identify the success or otherwise of internal communications. These programmes also offer a service which only sends repeat messages to those who did not engage with the initial communication, thereby treating internal (staff) customers in the same way as external ones – with a personalised approach instead of a generalised group one more likely to be discarded or ignored.

 

Starting with four easy steps lets make a difference to our internal customers.

 

Four Steps to more engaging email communication:

1. Personalisation: The mass-email approach is dead. It’s time to think about how you can create more personalised and dynamic emails
2. Feedback: Gain feedback – insert buttons to gain response and engagement with your email material.
3. Format: Your communication must be easy to read on any device –  see Ofcom trends in device use over the past six years.
4. Timing: The timing of a communication makes a huge difference in how it is received.For example, if you know a good proportion of your staff commute, then the latest OFCOM Communications Market Report 2018 on commuters use of their smartphones may help in the decision as to when to communicate certain messages. The data show the following:

• Seven in 10 commuters use their smartphone during their journey.
• The most popular smartphone activities for commuters are sending and receiving messages (43%) and using social media (32%).

 

 

 

My thanks to Ofcom, The Radicati group US and HF holidays for their statistics.