IMV7 : Internal Email Marketing

The following is a transcript for IMV7 : Internal Email Marketing. The original podcast is located here.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast brought to you by MindComet. And now, here’s your host, Ted Murphy.

Ted Murphy:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo, Episode 7. I'm your host, Ted Murphy, and with me today is Shay Studley-Toland, Communications Director at Tyco Healthcare. Welcome to the show today, Shay.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Thanks Ted, and that is my real name, no hyphen, and Studley is not an adjective. It is my maiden name.

Ted Murphy:

It must have been rough growing up?

Shay Studley-Toland:

Yeah, but you know what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Ted Murphy:

So Shay, we're here to talk today about internal email marketing communications, and I know that your role in, communications director at Tyco Healthcare, this is something that you've been dealing with a lot and you had mentioned to me that it's becoming a bigger part of your communication strategy. Tell me a little bit about why you originally decided to apply email marketing techniques to your internal communications?

Shay Studley-Toland:

Sure, well we have 50,000 employees, and they hold positions anywhere from a front-line manufacturing person to a sales representative, to an executive, to a clinician specialist. And we've gone through massive changes over the 9 years I've been with Tyco, and you know the speed of communicating, the flexibility of doing so, is very important to me. And as a communication generalist I've gone through the meetings-in-a-box, the newsletters; I've probably launched eight throughout my career; and while I think they have a very important role in internal organizational communication, I just don't think that they're fluid, flexible, and time-responsive enough to keep the steady rhythm of communication that you need to have an engaged workforce.

Ted Murphy:

So when you say "steady rhythm" the reason you went to email is that you think that it can kind of keep up with the rapid pace of the way your organization is changing?

Shay Studley-Toland:

Absolutely, and I really wanted some approaches that were less like initiative-driven, and frankly just take too much time to produce the graphics, the hard copy, the meeting in the box, the shipping; and really wanted to get employees used to hearing from us in a regular way. And email marketing lets me do that pretty quickly in format that they get used to seeing, and so it becomes kind of a standard operating procedure. And clearly we can augment with more traditional methods, but it was important for me to get people used to hearing from our executives, from each other, in a particular way.

Ted Murphy:

So in what way does your email communications differ from your print communications? Like what are you; are you communicating entirely different types of messages then?

Shay Studley-Toland:

No, I think the magnitude and the extensiveness of the message is different. For instance, one email you would clearly never have – or I would never put eight click-through's for an entire body of text. I'd like to compartmentalize the content; really give some need-to-know information, and then follow that up with a lot of – with face-to-face communication. So I'm apt to use email communication for our team manager, so to speak, because I have to keep in mind that within manufacturing, clearly they don't have Pc's. They may at home, and we may use that mechanism during their down time, off hours, but I need to enable the key managers to then kind of convey some must; no information to our audience. So I'm doing it quickly, succinctly, and then following up with more traditional methods with perhaps some longer, more robust success stories, and some great visuals, and some great reinforcements.

Ted Murphy:

And what type of information are people responding to in these emails? I know that one of the great advantages of email is you can track response rate, and click-through's, and things of that nature. So what are you seeing that people are really responding to?

Shay Studley-Toland:

Well, our organization is in the middle of quite another big change. Tyco announced that they are separating into three organizations. And so I think in the past, if I had been with another organization, maybe even eight years ago, we would have spent weeks doing a hard-copy newsletter to announce the changes. But this time we really took an email approach, and I think people appreciated; literally I was hitting the switch at six a.m., right after the public announcement was made, and within minutes we had enabled our entire workforce, or the managers who then, to my earlier point, could tell the frontline employees of this very important news. And so we had great feedback, just about the speed of which we'd been able to communicate this very important news. And then, over the years, we've had crisis management, we've had; we've certainly had more success stories and financial updates, and the traditional executive messaging you might not expect to see.

Ted Murphy:

Is there any information that you would say that you shouldn't send in internal emails, or use in this type of situation?

Shay Studley-Toland:

Sure, I think that; I kind of struggled with that because there's; "is speed ultimately more important," or "is sensitive information best conveyed face-to-face?" I mean I can kind of personally say that if there's sensitive communication, yes, you'd of course want to see it face-to-face, or hear it face-to-face I should say, but in the case of, for instance, of a sales representative, they may be handling a territory in Idaho; they may see their district manager once every six weeks. So, while all things considered, I'd love to have a direct supervisor give sensitive news, it just isn’t pragmatic all the time. So we're in the middle of surveying a little bit; is this off-putting to get sensitive information this way? And I think initially we're hearing that, "Yeah, but if it's delicately crafted and appropriately crafted, that speed is most important," and especially with the demographic we're targeting. With sales reps, generally 25 to 32, it's very appropriate for that age range, and they're, I think, increasingly more comfortable with hearing even critical, or negative, or challenging news, via that mechanism.

Ted Murphy:

Do sales people actually read those emails? Those guys have short attention spans.

Shay Studley-Toland:

You gotta make it relevant, man, and I'm sure that they don't read everything that I craft, but you know, that's the oneness on me, if I bore them to tears and prevent them from selling products, then shame on me. That's – I can't be bothering them with that.

Ted Murphy:

And I think that's probably an idea that carries from both external and internal email marketing, is that you gotta keep it short and sweet.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Absolutely, and really relevant. I have a particular communication firm who should know better, and I think even five minutes before we were supposed to talk, I got my third email from them today. And it just, it strikes me at organizations who should know better, and who are just really compromising the integrity of these pieces, and it's frustrating. We have clinicians that we're starting to target via email marketing and campaigns, and I think you just have to bundle appropriate messages, and if they're interested they can click-through when they want, but please don’t bombard me seven times a day with a conference, or a survey, or a gadget. You know we all experience that and it frustrates us.

Employees though have some higher level of affiliation with an organization; heck we spend the minimum 40 hours here, some weeks we practically live here, and this place is important to us, you know, our place of employment. So I do think people have a greater deal of willingness to hear from executives and plant management, and regional management, more often because their livelihood, their career pathing, in some ways their social network, is very much about work. And so I do think we have a greater capacity to communicate frequently, not ad-nauseam, seven pages in, but I do think that we have a greater degree of capacity for communicating more often internally.

Ted Murphy:

What about when you first rolled the program out? What was the response?

Shay Studley-Toland:

I think it varies in demographic a little bit; I think that's just the reality. I think that, you know we employ everyone from 21 to I don't even know, but probably 80. And so I do think we should be sensitive of that, and that's, to my earlier point, you just got to keep a flexible campaign. You cannot put all your eggs in one basket. But I do think traditional communication has put way too many eggs in traditional print, or even traditional technology. I mean, I remember that; quick communications can be pretty trend-driven, and you know, five years ago, even seven years ago, everything was spoke "kiosk" and the assumption was that manufacturing people would get on this kiosk during their ten minute break, and read company publications, and I remember a lot of companies spent a tremendous amount on their intranets, thinking just people would spend hours perusing these pages of content. And I just thought that was presumption and fairly arrogant of a corporation to assume that people will spend every moment kind of drilling through content.

Email marketing internally, while it gives some flexibility for a quick-through if this interests you; and I don't think it's spoon-feeing people, but it really respects the time that you have to dedicate to communication on any given day, and allows you to spend perhaps several minutes, several times over a week, versus a corporate magazine, which may be 40 pages, 8 pages, what-have-you, even my own. I'm a communicator at heart, I love to read, but depending on the week, I get a newsletter and I say, "Oh my goodness, I just can't possibly read this," and I pitch it. Other weeks maybe I'm just more open to doing so, and so I as a communicator in a corporation, need a more reliable method.

Ted Murphy:

And what about the cost benefit? I mean are the cost comparable, are you saving a lot with email? How does it all work out in the end?

Shay Studley-Toland:

Yeah, I think that the printers are struggling with this too, and they've really been re-tooling the way they print materials. You'll see a lot of on-demand, digital capabilities being touted. You know, I think to design an email newsletter is clearly less expensive than to design and print a newsletter. I think the mistake is to look at it clearly as a cost-containment effort, shifting everything to email. I think you really have to be looking; I've seen known corporate newsletter that comes out with a great deal of frequency over time; it's just very difficult to keep committed to that hard-copy publication, at least with lean staffs, depending what you function looks like, so ---

Ted Murphy:

You guys there have a staff of like what, 200 or so?

Shay Studley-Toland:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We run very leanly, and so for me; thank you, for me it was just a decision being able to allocate some resources to really, you know reaching people more often versus spending a lot of money with printers. Now they're not necessarily happy about that, but we still give them business, 'cause again, we still have to reinforce, and we still have tabletops at manufacturing facilities with some key messages, but you know, I guess my heart's been broken over the years because you put work into these corporate newsletters, and then you'll go to a manufacturing facility and you say like, "Hey, have you read the latest issue?" And they'll look at you like, "Oh yeah, that's the thing I use as my coaster," and it's heartbreaking. But you know, it causes you to think about, "Okay, I have 20 minutes down time, do I want to read an email passed on by my supervisor that is really relevant to me, or am I always going to read the publications, the one-size-fit-all type of publications," and so I think any kind of corporate communications editor has been disappointed at the saturation of newsletters. But hey, they're a newsletter; they're just one publication.

Ted Murphy:

Well, I think that's a valid point though in that you're saying some of these newsletters just wind up as coffee coasters; I mean how deeply do you look at open rates and quit through rates on an internal side as opposed to an external side? Obviously when you're doing a marketing campaign externally it's very important to see what your penetration is. Are you measuring those same types of things internally?

Shay Studley-Toland:

I have been looking at them for kind of two reasons: there's clearly some information that is "must-read" content, and if I see an open rate that's not sufficient, I would augment that with other methods. Or I would do a little bit of more formulaic "you need to read this" through managers and some reinforcement there. It also gives me really good feedback to whether people are finding it timely, and relevant, and you know frankly, clearly some of the communication has to be fun, and it has to be uplifting and motivating. And so for me it's a really good way to measure whether I’m kind of on target with the mix of communication.

Ted Murphy:

The industry standard open rates for external emails are about 20 to 30%; what are you seeing on the internal side?

Shay Studley-Toland:

It varies, I mean with some of our; we've had some pretty significant news, and I think we were up to 70% on some of them, or maybe even higher. I'd like to think that the other 20% had you know, left the company; of course that would make me feel better. But you know some content is 20 and 30, and I think that the more success-story driven type of articles, and I think that comes with the territory. If you've hit the right 20%, that's okay. So there's informational, there's educational, and there's kind of "must know" business imperative information, and you gotta have a good mix of both, and all, and be willing to accept varying open rates. I mean I certainly don't want to create an environment where people get an email from me via the president, "Oh my gosh, open, open, open," and you know people are leaving in this big brother state of fear– I mean that's certainly not the environment I want to create.

Ted Murphy:

We're watching you! You better open it!

Shay Studley-Toland:

Exactly, we're watching you, you know. And so, hey, I like the fact that email marketing is flexible, and I can just; I don't have to have eight weeks invested in a hard copy publication, which is frankly very – you can't really invest it, for those of you who do publications on a regular basis, it's tough. Like it's your baby; it takes six weeks, and it's not a flexible publication. That's not to say there isn't a place for it, but I just, I really enjoy email marketing because I can try some things. And I can frankly have some; you know not complete bomb failures, but I can have some misses and retool accordingly.

Ted Murphy:

And the cost isn't quite as much.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Exactly, exactly.

Ted Murphy:

So how much time does it take for traditional marketing or communications, when you’re doing a print piece, versus doing email communications? How much time does it take to put together one versus the other?

Shay Studley-Toland:

I mean a like-piece to a like-piece; it's probably considerably less to do an email marketing piece. I think my challenge has been, "Okay, I'm going to save a lot of time working with designers and printers, so I'll do five times as much communicating, and that's just not particle either. I think there needs to be a lot of reflection on; the content still needs to be written. You need commitment from management who provide some of the content. And so I've had the learning that lesson; you know start with a core audience or a critical audience and build to that, and perhaps make the business case that some of the resources you've been putting with designer and/or printers, should be reallocated to content generators. And I think that's probably the same that's been on, in any web development.

Ted Murphy:

You keep on talking about content, but what about the content elves?

Shay Studley-Toland:

The content what?

Ted Murphy:

The content elves. I mean don't elves make all that stuff?

Shay Studley-Toland:

You're on to that? Gee, well as a healthcare company we clone people to be writers actually. That's our new R&D initiative.That says a whole other issue. No, but that's – you're right, I tease about that because I'm probably one of the stronger writers in the organization, but it takes time, it takes discipline, and you know without it email marketing is a nice frame with the president's picture in the corner, but that's clearly not enough.

Ted Murphy:

So what would you say are the top three most important things that people need to be aware of when they're developing a successful, internal email marketing campaign?

Shay Studley-Toland:

I think probably the first is a commitment from the leadership to create an open dialogue environment, because you know just the frequency of email communication, and hopefully it has a two-way component so people are letting you know what they think, and you're being candid. There just has to be an appreciation that bad news is okay; we're going to talk about it freely. We really want to know what you think, because why use email if you're really not committed to creating that open environment? And you may not know this fully in your industry, but engagement is the whole buzz word in communications and HR; well you know, how do we get employees more engaged, and buzz, buzz, buzz. This is it, it's really creating an environment where you’re not only talking at them, but you're hearing from them. So that commitment has to be at the very top of the organization, 'cause you know even though people may say some critical things; doesn’t mean it's not valuable.

And then a good balance between strategy and purely fun content. You know it's easy to just keep drilling what people need to be doing, and our vision, and this and that, and you have the poster, you have the emails, but you know some of it simply has to be that "Sally did a really bang-up job in this campaign," or that so and so just had triplets, or that – just fill in the blanks for fun content. And then really cater to your different demographics, and make it really relevant; everyone thinks different things are funny. So you know your older population may very much want to read the service anniversaries, your sales reps may want to have more fun with who was kind of an interactive campaign.

And then I think third, a good balance between your vehicles; between emails, hard copy, face-to-face. Any good communicator knows that spot, don't become too dependant on email that you really have an impersonal communication campaign. Use it to really empower those front-line managers to be better communicators.

Ted Murphy:

Shay, I had a question sent to me from Will from New York who asked, "Do you recommend using internal email communications for smaller companies, and say 50 people? Is this really a cost-effective way of communicating?"

Shay Studley-Toland:

I work for huge conglomerates with thousands of people so I'm not sure if I'm the best person to answer that, but I will say that;I will say Will, that you know 50 people, I don't know if they're the similar profession, if they're in one place; I keep talking about like flexibility and versatility in your communication campaign. I do know a little glad firm we work with and they actually kind of copy me on some of their email communication, and they probably have about 50 people, and they keep it really fun. It's like the daily musings of our brilliant president, and they have some fun with it. But in it are really very real business strategies, and just kind of that motivation that you need throughout the day. But they also have a lot of face-to-face time too. So you know, cost effective? Absolutely, and if I had 50 employees I don't know that I would print anything. I think that that's a very small group to really spend your print runs. You really gotta look at thousands to make it cost-efficient for the most part. You're not going to do a corporate newsletter for 50 people, or I guess you could off of your trusty laser printer. But absolutely, have fun with email, but then get people together and then the email should say, "Meet in 10 minutes in the cafeteria," and you know you build it into a real robust campaign. But again, this is being offered by someone who has 50,000 employees in their organization, so I'm sure both have their challenges.

Ted Murphy:

There's a small difference between those.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Maybe.

Ted Murphy:

But I would say that under 50 that you probably just need to all get together in a room and talk about it.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Mmhhh.

Ted Murphy:

Because even at that point it still can be time-consuming to put together an email for 50 people if you really want it to look good, and you don't want it to just be X-space.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Yeah, I'm not going to disagree with you. You're the expert man, but you know I will say that sometimes emails don't need to look good. I mean the fact of the matter is that there's nice space for formatted emails, and you know, there's nice space for just kind of a real plug-and-play solution, and I think we do both. You know we use some that need real design resources, and some that are probably sustained outside of corporate communications, can be a bit more free-form. And you know, that's okay.

Ted Murphy:

Free form. Oh I like that, free form.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Yeah.

Ted Murphy:

As opposed to ugly.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Yeah.

Ted Murphy:

Free form.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Do not use more than three fonts. I like when non-design people try and make emails look pretty, so they use four colors and seven fonts.

Ted Murphy:

Absolutely, underline it, throw some animations in there, you're money. You're good to go!

Shay Studley-Toland:

Yup.

Ted Murphy:

Well Shay, it's been a pleasure talking to you today. I wanted to invite everybody to download our top-ten things to know about internal email marketing from our website, internetmarketingvoodoo.com. Shay, we'll have you back in the show again in the future and I appreciate all the insight.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Thanks a lot Ted.

Ted Murphy:

All right.

Shay Studley-Toland:

Take care, bye bye.

Announcer:

For more information on this week's topic, visit internetmarketingvoodoo.com. This podcast has been brought to you by MindComet, the Relationship Agency.


[End of Audio]

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