10 ways to help your email engagement skyrocket

Tired of writing emails that your employees delete unread? Learn the days, times, number of links and other essentials to improve open rates, land your messages and inspire action. 10 ways to help your email engagement skyrocket

If your employees are deleting or ignoring your email messages, the fault might not lie with the channel, but how you use it.

Whether it’s improving subject lines or embedding video, there are proven tactics for increasing engagement with internal email.

Email is a channel you simply must get right. Despite all the talk about mobile apps and new kinds of intranets, email is a primary means of communication for the enterprise and will remain so for foreseeable future.

Here are a few tips for improving email engagement:

1. Know when to send them.

The best day to send emails varies from organization to organization, so check your analytics.

American Water—a New Jersey-based water and wastewater treatment company with operations in 47 states—found a drop-off in email engagement on Mondays and Fridays. Communicators usually avoid emailing on those days, says Michael Wood, senior director for internal communications.

On a recent Thursday, a vice president wanted to send an email. Wood said the slots for the day were full. Delaying it a day would result in the poorer readership typical of a Friday.

Wood suggested they send it the following week for optimum impact.

“The data has allowed us to say, ‘It’s not effective to send messages on a Friday or a Monday,’” Wood says. “‘You’re not going to get the same level of open rates or readership or engagement that you’re seeking.’”

Be prepared, however, for your own organization’s analytics to show that all days are equal.

Microsoft communicators looking for the ideal day to send email found (to their disappointment) that engagement doesn’t differ much over the workweek, says Eric Jaffe, a senior manager in employee communications. Since 2013, Jaffe’s team has sent more than 31 million emails. Email is Microsoft employees’ preferred vehicle for information.

1 10 ways to help your email engagement skyrocket

“We had this notion that, God, we’re going to find this magic window for the email that performs better than anything else,” Jaffe says.

It might be disappointing not to find that sweet spot, but the discovery freed Microsoft up to focus on getting the content right, he adds.

2. Do A/B testing.

Unsure which subject line might get the most opens? Microsoft does quick A/B testing on matters such as subject lines to a small fraction of its audience to see which option works best. This entails sending out two (or more) alternatives and measuring which performs better.

The company’s data showed that most engagement happens within the first two hours, Jaffe says. There is no need to wait weeks for a definitive study. One newsletter went out to a small sample with three headlines.

“We waited two hours,” Jaffe says. “We looked at the results. We then applied it to the next 100,000 employees and used our best-performing subject line.”

This drives a 7.6 percent increase in engagement, which means an extra 9,000 employees see it.

All this means you can and should derive key data from your own employees.

3. Shorten your subject lines.

Successful subject lines tend to fall into one of two categories, says Michael DesRochers, managing partner at PoliteMail. Those of fewer than five words get high engagement. Likewise, subject lines of nine to 11 words score well, he says.

Curiously, there’s a drop-off in medium-length subject lines of five to eight words. If you’re writing them longer than 11 words, recipients might not see the whole subject line displayed in their preview, decreasing the likelihood they will open it.

Three kinds of subject lines perform best at Microsoft. Jaffe recommends successful hooks such as these:

2 10 ways to help your email engagement skyrocket

A. Mention another tech company.

• An email about an acquisition—“Why we’re acquiring Xamarin”— rated 16 percent above the average. • Another strong performer cited the company’s legal backing of a tech rival: “Microsoft to file legal brief supporting Apple.” This ranked 12 percent above average. • A mention of an Irish software firm, “Havok at Microsoft” scored just as well.

B. Mention a Microsoft product on its own or with another tech company.

• What’s up with Microsoft and a storied carmaker? A subject line, “Volvo and Microsoft Band 2,” popped over the average by 19 percent. • Another mentioning a rival—presumably highlighting Microsoft’s strengths, came in 15 percent higher: “Kurt’s take: Surface vs. iPad.” • And speaking of cars, ditto for the percentage jump in the subject line, “Nissan is using Azure today.”

C. Showcase a benefit to recipients.

• “What’s in it for me?” Savvy communicators know that employees are always asking this question about messages they receive. Microsoft saw a 19 percent spike with the subject line, “Free personal DocuSign account.” • There was an 11 percent spike for two others: “Get Prime discounts,” and (go figure) “New pub opening on campus.”

“It’ll do better if you mention ‘free’ or ‘discounts’ or ‘there’s a new pub on campus,’” Jaffe says. He adds wryly, “Surprise, surprise.”

4. Monitor the ‘ignore rates.’

If somebody opens your email and immediately closes or deletes it, hey, you can count it as an open and add it to your success stats. Then again, that won’t help you honestly assess the reach of that message. For that, you must also look at “ignore rates,” says DesRochers.

3 10 ways to help your email engagement skyrocket

“Open rates tell you they got it,” DesRochers says, “but if you have a high ‘ignore rate,’ they’re not getting the message.”

Far better to know how well you’re doing and adjust accordingly.

5. Design for mobile.

Mobile open rates have gone from 0 percent in 2013 to 20 percent in 2017, says Jaffe. That number will keep growing.

This means you must design responsively, thinking about how your email will show up on mobile devices and what the user experience is clicking through. Can they read that tiny font? This can be a challenge when headlines are images that shrink to an unreadable size.

For example, if your email teases an article on the intranet, will they be able to read it? What if they don’t have their intranet password handy?

“Is the content you’re producing for email really geared for that level of engagement?” Jaffe asks.

6. Limit the links.

Sure, you have a ton of information to share. But if you really want to get someone to click through to information on benefits, community volunteering or any other message, include no more than one link in your email. This will double your click-through rate, PoliteMail data show.

“Don’t muddy the waters,” DesRochers says. “You’re going to get people to take action if you give them one thing to do, versus giving them multiple actions.”

7. Avoid attachments.

You may have tons of great background in that pdf you want to send, but click-through rates are low for attachments. People are disinclined to read attachments—even those sent internally. As few as 10 percent of email recipients will open an attachment, Wood says.

4 10 ways to help your email engagement skyrocket

If you have a message, Wood says, get it the message in the email itself.

8. Cut the blather.

Most of us have gotten used to writing more tersely for the web—cutting the word count, keeping sentences and paragraphs short. A page that isn’t one long block of text is more appealing to the eye.

The same thing goes for email. Employees at American Water will give about three minutes for reading time, and they prefer videos at 30–45 seconds, Wood says. Communications that run longer are likely to lose them.

“The longer email, the less people are going to read it,” DesRochers says.

9. Use graphics, images and formatting to catch the eye.

Images, better formatting and instant surveys improve readership, Wood says. Similarly, using pre-designed templates can help you create a better-read email.

“The more image-heavy it is,” Jaffe says, “the more interesting the content becomes. There are more visual cues for the employees to understand the content so it can be shorter.”

10. Embed video.

American Water includes “snackable” videos in videos, such as a 45-second pre-Thanksgiving message from the CEO thanking the staff and urging them to travel safely.

It’s not just the executives that people want to hear from. American Water sends safety videos once a week to its operating employees. These feature employees at various levels of the organization and in different regions. This has dramatically increased viewing of the safety videos, Wood says.

The CEO has also sent mini-videos congratulating employees in hurricane-ravaged areas for the way they stepped up in a crisis. On the lighter side, the company encourages joint work on

5 10 ways to help your email engagement skyrocket

volunteer projects every September in what it calls “American connection month.” Departments spend a day performing community service activities together.

Afterward, communications released a video of 200 employees at one venue packaging food for the needy. The video, a photo collage with music, proved to be a hit.

Microsoft has learned that even the position of video in an email can affect its performance. The top left side draws the most engagement, says Jaffe.

He says this position “is so strong, it would kick up even a bad image and a bad headline. It would have a profounder impact than the image or the headline.”

In conclusion...

Above all, think of email as a more visual medium.

When you can, include images, graphics, polls or videos to create a more visually interesting email. Reread your copy and cut extraneous words, get to the heart of the story, and use white space to help readers more easily scan the content.

Do all this, and you’ll see a spike in your email readership. Best of all, your readers will better absorb your messages.

6 For Outlook Email Intelligence, TM Not Overload.

Did they even read the email?

If you ask employees how they want to Because executives understand numbers, receive corporate communications, they’ll PoliteMail for Outlook makes it simple to tell you they prefer email. credible data Still, employees often feel overwhelmed Did they and measure key by email. understand the content? Was the message metrics over time.

The key to making engaging? Did they even And because email your read the email? communicators understand creative, communications tool PoliteMail enables is understanding In addition to email Monitor and compare Easily ask questions opens & click counts, key email performance and collect answers impressive, mobile how to best utilize it. track email read-time. metrics over time. for qualitative results. responsive HTML Beyond simple open and click tracking, To gain such pages in Outlook, PoliteMail analytics yield actionable insights understanding, it’s without coding. time to take a more analytical approach Now send to your Outlook email broadcasts. responsive Outlook email!

PoliteMail is compatible with Microsoft Office for Windows, Internal Communications Tools including Office 365 and Outlook 2016, 2013 and 2010 for Outlook®

©2017 PoliteMail Software. All rights reserved.