Information Overload - A problem faced by many internal communicators throughout the world. In this presentation denise cox of Newsweaver highlights the causes and looks at the solutions to overcoming information overload
7. all@everyone.com
Senders rely on employee self-selecting importance
Levels of emails increasing - especially at local levels
No measurement – not even open rates
No formal tool, process or governance in place
Employees feel swamped with content of little use
Stop opening emails
Important information is being missed
Causes of Information Overload
8. Are you part of the problem?
“Blast”
“Push”
“eShot”
“Mass”
“Deploy”
“All”
9. Governance in place
Reduced frequency
Increased relevance
Personalized to audiences
Targeted content
Decisions made from measurement
Or, are you part of the solution?
10. Timely, targeted, relevant
Segment audiences
Personalize content
Determine frequency
In depth measurement
Informs your communications
Acknowledges the employee
1. Data
21. Measure to reduce overload
Insight into audiences
Editorial guidance
Click maps
Trends
Best time and day
Target / personalize
Decrease volume
Content balance
Most/least traction
Destination traffic
Re-send
Consolidation opportunities
Share insight with stakeholders
22. Access free How to guides, research and white
papers
www.newsweaver.com/internal-communications/learning-center/
Next IC Essentials webinar – Thursday, April 23
Increasing channel effectiveness
Editor's Notes
These are the words used when sending to all, or not tailoring content and message. This contributes to information overload
Enterprisewide planning calendar
Partner with departments
Regular comms
CEO message
Urgent messages
Combining
Separate
Governance
Tools
Process
The right technology available today
Adding real email measurement allows for improved communications and greater confidence in messaging.
REAL TME METRICS DASHBOARD
Central email platform to provide enterprise-wide control and visibility.
Protected lists (all employees worldwide, all use employees, all sales & marketing employees being used to limited those with the capability to send mass emails.
Pre-designed branded
Interactivity
Integrated to HR/people datsa.
Customized
Measurement and alaytics.
Organizations should review the effectiveness of their email channel on two levels. First, there should be a company wide adherence to best practice. All-employee emails, excessive CCs and reply-to-all, plus the misuse of email for collaboration, document transfer and storage, leads to information overload and inbox clutter. Organizations need to address this specifically to educate and improve the use of email in the workplace.
The second level is to make use of the email technology available today. By using this technology communicators can increase the relevance and impact of their communications, in turn increasing results.
Once the technology is being used, Internal Communication teams should take a cue from their Marketing co-workers. This means moving away from a one-to-all tactic, and taking a sophisticated approach to communication. Internal Communication teams should implement a content marketing strategy, one that uses data to segment and send timely, targeted, relevant emails – the right information, to the right employee at the right time. In addition, they can use these email communications to drive adoption and traffic to their other channel strategies, including social and Intranet.
Once you get a data that the employee has taken an action, act on that. If they decline registration, stop contacting them. If they understand, stop contacting them. If they opened – only re-send to those who have not opened. Help decrease information overload.
We launched in-house newsletter, on the go, just over a year ago now. Previously had a monthly newsletter, as well as a weekly news email round-up that we used to inform and share organisation messages with colleagues. As an organisation we were going through a large amount of change – in just over two years our workforce had literally doubled – we’d had a change of chief executive and we were about to move to a new building. Our existing channels where too slow in production and colleagues said they didn’t have time to read everything, so important messages were getting missed. We knew we needed to s produce and share news with our colleagues more quickly, in a format that was easier to digest. We took inspiration from twitter –creating on the go that was made up of shorter news features and snippets.
When did you launch it? How does it work?Because we produce it weekly – production and review needs to be quick and simple. Our internal communication team collate, schedule and produce the content – from contributions we receive from across the organisation. Within the team the role of editor is taken in turns, and we all contribute to the overall review. We also encourage teams to use the channel to create their own newsletters too.
An appealing feature of on the go, is the bite-sized format. Tell us more.We know everyone’s busy with their day jobs – but being able to share information and keep up to date with the headlines is equally important. The bite-sized format took inspiration from the 140 character tweet length. Keeping things short and informative. What’s also been great is we can embed and add videos and sound bites too.
Through the Newsweaver platform you can track and measure exactly how the audience interacts with the publication. What type of feedback and input are you receiving?Through the measures we’re able to gather and share insight on the headline’s that are really grabbing people’s attention – and the topics that matter to different areas within the organisation. And that can be everything from features on wellbeing to a message from the exec. We can share feedback easily with our contributors around who’s clicking on their articles, as well as encourage engagement through sharing and comments being posted back. (After Sally’s answer, I will bring in Denise to explain how analytics on Newsweaver works)
What do you do with that feedback?The insight is great as it helps us give informed advice around communication channels and which ones will work best depending on the audience.