When before us are modern and bold communication possibilities, such as new apps, platforms for finding digital influencers or SEO tools, thinking about the old and classic newsletter seems little innovative or exciting. However, despite seeming an old tool, newsletters still represent an efficient and necessary way to start conversations, generate leads, and maintain an intimate relationship with a company’s stakeholders. What is at stake is the efficient use of this feature in a way that attracts the receiver’s attention. Easy to say, challenging to perform. How to find the ideal measure in a universe of organizations with such diverse goals, that communicates with people so demanding for quality content? Thinking about this resource as an internal communication strategy, I have come up with some ways that can help us plan newsletters in a more strategic form:
- Spend some time on benchmarking
Studying the market is the first step in understanding what context your customer is in and how their competitors communicate. Use market references in your favor and understand how this would apply to the internal audience to which the newsletter is aimed. With this background, it is much easier to define a starting point to differentiate and communicate with quality. At this point, it is worth analyzing all the examples, whether they are aimed at the consumer (external) or the internal public of the companies.
2. Study the business objectivesMaybe your client already makes newsletters internally and wants to follow the same strategy when working with a communication agency. However, it may also be that your analysis conveys that the company should follow the opposite path. To identify this strategy gap, there is nothing better than revisiting the business objectives with this mean of communication: bringing the whole team closer to management issues, generating engagement in the communication tools of the company, promoting interaction among teams, adapting employees to a new organizational culture , among many others.
3. Investigate the interests of the publicAdvertising has tightened many ties with communication when both areas realized that brands need to deliver relevant, quality content rather than always tying the company’s image to sales. This is a very present debate in our field, and it is also important to produce materials for internal newsletters. Think of the company’s mailing as their final consumer group. In this sense, move away from the cold institutional and protocolic bulletins and actually study the habits and interests of these people.
4. Deliver quality contentWith the above points, we have acquired providential information to carry out the job: we know the context in which the company is inserted, we have identified the objectives and the target audience. From there, it is possible to structure guidelines and contents that really arouse interest and engage readers. Do not bet all your coins on communicating company actions – use your public learning to provide materials on industry trends, market movements, and discussions on important issues in the company’s vision (gender equality, HR practices, innovation etc.).
5. Integrate the company communicationIf your job also involves managing the website and the social networks of the brand, worry about the integration of all these channels. It may be that some of the employees are not heavy users of the networks, and the newsletter is a great opportunity to call them to company profiles. Producing a more technical content for the newsletter with a call to action for a related post in the institutional blog can be a good way out, for example.
What other ways do you use to get out of obvious answers in the production of internal newsletters? Leave a comment!
By Amanda Lima
