Email remains one of the greatest marketing toolkits for communicating with customers and clients without hesitation. But it also continues to play a crucial role in internal communication despite the existence of high-level solutions for team communication.
Leaders and managers continue to use email to communicate with their colleagues and teammates because email is a reliable and easy-to-use platform. In this article, we will give more reasons why email is important for internal communications and tips on how to create high-performing internal emails.
Key benefits and main types of internal email
There is debate about whether organizations should encourage their employees to use email for internal communication or suggest other options. But it’s important to take into consideration that the average professional gets around 121 emails every day and email remains the preferred choice due to its several benefits.
When CEOs or managers want to share news about policy changes or inform about upcoming projects, they send emails to their employees for the following reasons:
✔ Email is reliable
✔ It gives opportunities to send emails to specific employee groups
✔ It’s possible to track and analyze how emails perform
✔ Email can be part of internal branding
✔ It is accessible from anywhere where there is a stable internet connection
After discussing the benefits of email in company communications, in the next step, we will explore cases when companies send these types of emails:
Emails about policy change
Business growth is an evolving process; as a result, company policy also changes. Therefore it’s crucial to inform employees about these changes at the right time. Many organizations send emails about the policy changes in detail and share in which ways those modifications would affect employee performance. The main rule here is being as transparent as possible and regularly keeping employees updated through emails.
Emails about employee benefits
Employee benefits are a significant source for improving employee satisfaction. Typically, hiring or recruiting managers send emails about benefits programs such as healthcare coverage or paid vacation time that is available for employees.
It’s important to start off by clearly outlining what type of benefits the company offers at how employees can access them. It will also be helpful to send a survey via email about benefits and to collect feedback about whether employees are satisfied with those programs and make necessary changes.
Emails for employee recognition
Great employees are the backbone of company success. In that matter, it’s a great idea to send an appreciation email to thank an employee for their dedication and share your gratitude.
This type of email should celebrate the employee’s achievements or progress and how they help businesses to accomplish various goals. By creating awesome employee recognition emails, managers can boost employee morale as well.
Give and ask for feedback through emails
Feedback plays a significant role in improving employee performance and boosting retention. Managers can send emails to give feedback to especially new hires and share tips that can help them to work better and be more productive.
Another important step is listening to feedback from their employees and getting insight on how to improve employee performance and increase engagement.
Employee newsletter emails
Another effective tactic is sending an employee newsletter, which is an integral part of the internal communication strategy. Those types of emails include important and relevant company information. What is great about employee newsletters is that they help to avoid information overload and share information in a more structured and centralized way.
Outstanding email newsletters not only can improve workplace communication but also will increase employee engagement and enhance the relationship between leaders and employees.
How to create engaging internal emails in five ways
After speaking about why companies should use email for employee communication and what the main types of internal email are, in the next stage, we will suggest some steps you can follow to boost employee engagement and ensure effective communication in the workplace.
Define internal email’s role in internal communication strategy
An internal communications strategy establishes goals for company communication and sets the steps to reach those goals. It guides communication types and methods that leaders should indicate. Thus, this strategy should include creating employee emails, as a part of the internal communications strategy.
It will be a wise idea to spend time and effort on setting tactics for building a solid internal email strategy. It includes deciding what messages will boost employee performance and company morale. Another crucial factor is to measure the efficiency of your employee’s emails and their role in company communication.
Avoid information overload
Employees are bombarded by receiving many types of emails, both from internal and external stakeholders. Because information is one of the main struggles that employees face in their workspace, the internal communication strategy should include steps on how to avoid that. And when using email for employee communication, it’s vital to send messages that are time-sensitive and important.
Managing to avoid information overload can benefit email engagement as well as increase open rates.
Create captivating subject lines
It wouldn’t be surprising that the subject line considers a major factor in creating a promotional email for external communication. But the process is the same for employee communication as well.
First of all, subject lines should be short and punchy and should clearly communicate a message. Besides that, it should be engaging and attention-grabbing enough to captivate employees’ attention. In case the message is addressed to a certain group or department, the subject line needs to underline that too.
Subject lines should be as clear and concise as possible and emphasize what is inside the emails. These emails share information on the benefit of the training program or company mission statement.
Lastly, when creating subject lines, it is important to follow internal brand voice guidelines.
Keep It Short and Simple
Statistics show that for 86% of employees consider ineffective communication as one of the main causes of workplace failures. To avoid this scenario and make your internal communication effective, keep your emails short and punchy to ensure they will hook employees’ attention.
First and foremost, the message should contain important details at the top so that it stands out from all of the other messages.
One way to do this is by highlighting the most important details of your message. You may also want to include any key messages you want your employees to take away from reading your email.
Optimize your emails
There are several steps that can make internal communications more effective and increase email engagement as well:
✓ Establish two-way communication
It will be beneficial to create open communication between managers and employees and encourage them to give and receive feedback
✓ Find out optimal times to send emails
Sending an internal email on a Friday night is definitely not a smart idea, thus defining the right time to send emails is an essential step to optimizing internal communication.
✓Personalize your message
Addressing employees by name may seem like a small tactic, but it is also a vital step to increase engagement in these emails.
✓ Follow employer brand guideline
It’s important to use colors, other visual elements, and language that harmonize with the employer brand.
✓ Segment employee groups
This step is vital to segment employees by job position and department to make emails more personalized and relevant.
✓ Share helpful materials
Including helpful resources in your emails that will improve employee performance is a great idea for increasing email engagement.
✓ Include visual content
Sharing videos on internal email will not only captivate employees’ attention but will make your message more digestible.
✓ Track your campaigns
It’s a smart idea to calculate email metrics like open and click-through rates and increase employee engagement.
✓ Make email mobile responsive
A large percentage of your employees tend to use their phones in their daily work process, and this means companies need to implement tactics to optimize their email campaigns for mobiles.
To sum up
Establishing strong communication within your company can be the main reason that will ensure business growth. Open and effective communication with the workforce is vital to indicate employees are valued and are an integral part of the company’s vision.
In this stage, companies continue to use email for internal communication. In this blog post, we covered some tactics that businesses can use to make this process more effective. Following these suggestions, it will be possible to write an effective internal email and build a successful internal communication strategy as well.
