Exactly how many internal communications emails will hit your work inbox today? It probably depends on your role, but chances are your days are busy and your inbox is full. Those in other departments in your organization likely feel the same way.
That’s why getting teams to take action, whether by joining an employee advocacy program or attending that next event your team worked really hard to plan, can be a challenge. One message usually isn’t enough, and you likely don’t have time to keep repeating it to stay top of mind.
The good news is that the same tactics that make your marketing efforts successful can also work for your internal audiences. We’ve gathered some of our favorite ways to use marketing automation to make your internal communications a little easier.
Improve Attendance at Your Next Event
If you’ve ever planned an event, you understand that the worries about low attendance are real. What happens if hardly anyone shows up? What if you waste your time and resources on something that totally flops? And what will your boss think? In marketing, we talk about the rule of seven, where prospects often need at least seven touchpoints before they take action. Internal events also benefit from that same steady communication to build awareness and interest.
The good news is you can use automation in your internal communications to build promotional sequences, send personalized reminders, and create a landing page for easy registration. You can segment invites by department or location, highlight different benefits for each group, and track engagement to send targeted follow-ups.
Staying present in employees’ inboxes helps you stay visible and improve attendance rates at your next big event.
Employee Landing Pages
When you think of landing pages, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? It might be lead generation, such as offering a juicy content download to a prospect who just finished reading your latest blog. However, landing pages are also a great way to collect employee data in a user-friendly format. Whether planning a giveaway, launching an internal program, or receiving RSVPs for a team event, landing pages can help you easily manage the flood of responses you might receive.
For example, you can create a branded internal landing page to collect T-shirt sizes for a company-wide event or to poll employees about which activities they’re most interested in. These forms can then trigger automated email confirmations and route the data directly to the appropriate person. As you can imagine, this process is much easier than the manual, time-consuming alternatives. It also helps streamline your internal communications strategy.
Employee Social Sharing
Your internal teams are some of your best brand advocates, but do you want to know what often gets between them and sharing on social media?
I want to help, but I just don’t want to say the wrong thing.
I keep meaning to post, but the day gets away from me.
If someone would just give me an example, I’d totally do it.
Research shows that having an employee advocacy program increases total social engagement for a brand by 25% to 40%. Marketing teams can build an email series with ready-to-share posts about thought leadership, upcoming events, and company news. Employees can read the email, pick what works for them, and start posting.
For example, one way we support our sales team here at Act-On is by making it easier for them to share relevant content, without having to come up with ideas from scratch. We use Oktopost, which integrates with our marketing automation platform and includes an advocacy feature that makes the process super simple for our team.
We’ll load up a set of posts on a specific topic, like email deliverability, and our sales team can either personalize the message or just hit repost. It saves time and helps them stay active on social media without stressing over what to post or when they’ll find time to actually write it.
Internal Campaigns to Showcase Marketing Wins
Have you ever launched an amazing campaign but felt like no one in the organization really understood what it did or the full impact it had? As marketers, we have to advocate for our work and “market our marketing” internally. Doing this helps others understand what your team is working on and feel connected to the brand story you’re all building together.
Consider setting up automated newsletters or landing pages that showcase recent marketing campaigns, key wins, behind-the-scenes highlights, and employee shoutouts. Sharing these moments across teams helps everyone stay informed and builds a stronger sense of connection.
Getting New Team Members Up to Speed
Do you remember the last time you started a new job? It can be overwhelming, even if you’re experienced and confident in your abilities. Onboarding is important, with one study finding that companies with a strong onboarding process increased new-hire retention, with some reaching 82% higher retention rates. An automated onboarding experience can help your new hires feel welcome and sets them up for success.
Marketing automation allows you to build onboarding journeys personalized to each employee’s role, department, location, or other important factors. For example, your new marketing employee might receive an email series over several weeks introducing them to brand guidelines, creative tools, and analytics platforms, along with key contacts they’ll need to collaborate with across departments.
Creating these automated paths helps make the employee journey smoother and saves time by avoiding the need to start from scratch each time someone new joins your team.
Moving Forward Creatively
Internal communications might not receive the same level of attention as our external marketing, but it also deserves creativity and focus. With tools like automated journeys, segmentation, and landing pages, marketing automation can help you engage with employees and put some momentum behind your internal goals.
Whether you’re encouraging employee advocacy, increasing event attendance, or simply keeping everyone in the loop, these tools make it much easier to connect without a huge time investment and a drag on your resources.
Want to learn more creative ways to use marketing automation? Check out how companies are using it for revenue marketing and how it helps solve the challenges marketers are facing today.