Situation

We all know that email is powerful.  It is both fast and personal.   Email is one of the most effective channels for reaching employees and motivating employees to take action, but many companies implement it badly – even when their marketing teams produce highly effective emails for customers or prospective customers.

All too often, businesses send employees long text-heavy messages that aren’t even broken up with subheads and bullets. Such messages are visually dull and do not engage readers.  Even worse, calls to action are typically lost amid all the text. If the message includes hyperlinks, the link is usually positioned awkwardly, breaking the flow with something like “click here” – that’s not a call to action. “All text” emails actually negate engagement because the employee must stop and focus on the message.

Since most employees are typically very busy, they skim the first few paragraphs (if that) and go on to something else. Text heavy emails are a missed opportunity.

Communication Approach

I’ve applied the following approaches to help businesses make their employee emails more engaging:

Minimize the Amount of Text

Often you don’t need to explain everything, just provide what the reader needs to know now.  A link can take them to an intranet page with full details.

Use Headings, Subheads and Small Blocks of Text

This makes an email scannable.  Using headings, subheads and small blocks of text allows the reader to quickly absorb key messages and determine whether to act upon them.

Use Graphics and Boxes

Images and callout boxes brighten a message and focus the eye on key elements.  They make the overall message more inviting and likely to be read.  If the organization’s technology supports it, images can be stored on servers and downloaded each time the message is opened – giving you a metric for the number of times the message was opened.

Use Clear Subject Lines

The subject line is likely to be the first thing your recipient reads.  They will decide to open it based on what the subject line says.  I’ve seen internal communications functions use subject lines that are easy for them to think up and manage, but do little for the reader.  Examples of this include:

> April CEO Letter
> Benefits Update
> News Roundup

Better Subject lines are:

> Become An Innovator
> New 401(k) Investment Choices
> News this Week: The Exciting Altair Launch, Easy Ways to Prepare for Email Migration, and more!

Be Consistent

It’s essential to establish expectations among the intended audience.  When they come to realize that your messages respect their time and are easy to read, they will be more likely to open them when the message arrives – maximizing the immediacy of the email channel.  Boring, hard to read emails will be put off until later, meaning they’ll never be read.

Implementation

I’ve implemented the changes described above to internal communication emails at three businesses that are leaders in their markets. Creating the emails doesn’t require HTML skills.  The format can be implemented by anyone with advanced Word formatting skills and can be done using either Word or Outlook.

Result

The revised formats proved more effective at conveying the intended messages to the target audiences and quickly demonstrated higher levels of employee engagement.  For example:

• An employee survey at a company where I transformed email communications found that 86.5 percent of employees rated email as the most effective communication channel.
   
• A revised CEO town hall meeting invitation doubled attendance.
   
• A communication launching a new benefit delivered 84 percent of the target audience to an intranet page offering full details and required forms.
   
• A message supporting an HR change management initiative cut through the clutter of the corporation’s typical email messaging; it was opened by at least 50 percent of the target audience within the first 24 hours, generating positive comments to HR staff and high overall awareness. (Due to system configuration issues, approximately 40 percent to 50 percent of employees were given the ability to opt-out of open-rate reporting.  Any data from this group was provided on a voluntary basis.)

Conclusion

While a CEO letter or other executive message to a broad audience may always need to be largely text, there are opportunities to liven up the format to make it more engaging. Internal communicators need to learn from what our marketing colleagues have known for years – eye-catching emails with bite-sized chunks of text are effective and they produce results. So the next time your habit or instinct tells you to write an employee email that’s boring to even you, look for more creative ways to communicate the message. Consider an email postcard or a message formatted with style – there are lots of possibilities, and your audience will thank you – as will your internal client when they see the results!