Organization’s newsletter overhaul increases open rate by 40 percent
By creating a highly personalized and interactive newsletter, Newsweaver inspired employees at the Children, Schools and Families Directorate to become more interested in the organization’s news.
What do you think of when you hear the words “employee newsletter”?
Perhaps “boring,” “waste of time,” and “What? We have an employee newsletter?” cross your mind.
That was the case at the Children, Schools and Families Directorate (CSF). The organization sent so many newsletters so often that employees stopped reading them altogether.
For its work in streamlining CSF’s employee newsletters to make them relevant, compelling, and helpful, Newsweaver earned first place in the Best Newsletter (Electronic) category of Ragan’s 2013 Employee Communications Awards.
So, how do you make an employee newsletter interesting? The key is personalization.
Newsweaver created an HTML template that CSF could highly personalize to each employee and the service unit in which each employee worked (schools and learning, resources, services for young people, and children’s services). Each edition of the newsletter included:
• A personalized banner to match the service in which the employee worked.
• A message from the employee’s line manager.
• Content relevant to the employee’s service and specific job.
• Links to the other three editions of the newsletter so employees can see what is going on around the organization.
• General CSF news of which all CSF employees must be aware.
• Videos, including one from the organization’s director.
• The ability to comment on newsletter articles.
• Embedded links to the CSF intranet.
Additionally, Newsweaver’s newsletter template enabled CSF to track important metrics such as open rate, clicks, content popularity, the number of articles people read, and the devices people use to read the newsletter.
Since its overhaul, the CSF newsletter has seen a 40 percent increase in its open rate and a 30 percent increase in clicks. Also, Newsweaver reduced the amount of time it takes to produce the newsletter by 50 percent.
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