Creating dialogue: Omni-channel is the only channel

Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash

Let me start with the shortest version of my favorite internal communications soapbox speech: It is shocking to realize how many communication strategies are still nearly wholly reliant on email in 2022, as email simply enables talking at rather than talking with. It doesn’t matter if you’re a large multi-national company or small nimble company with a few dozen employees. The technology exists—so many kinds of technology. The audience has spoken: Email is overused, overwhelming and old-fashioned. So why do so many communication strategies still only look as far as the Sent folder?

Run a quick search on the phrase email is dead and you’ll find thought pieces going back years. You’ll also bring up a few top results from respectable sources noting that email is in fact not dead, given that it’s a core component of the mobile experience. Change your search to email fatigue and you’ll find a whole new set of thought pieces, many published during the early days of the Covid pandemic. You don’t even really have to look it up. You could simply ask any colleague or friend (though maybe don’t shoot them an email to do so).

If email has always worked, what’s the problem?

We live in a digital era. It no longer takes decades to improve on technology. The Walkman launched in 1979 but the first portable digital audio player, MPMan, didn’t follow until 1998. The first iPhone was released in 2007, with the second following just a year later. Now, most of us receive device and app updates on a weekly if not daily basis—sometimes for the same device or app.

Our communication strategies should be taking their cue from technology as well as leveraging technology. This is especially true when we have a geographically dispersed audience, an audience that spans several generational groups (Boomers to Gen Z) or an audience with varying levels of mobile connectivity like an employee base that includes corporate office workers as well as manufacturing employees. Email will definitely get into all the mailboxes. But will the audience read it? Will it resonate with readers? Will you inspire them to think, feel or do what you’re aiming for? Maybe you’re leveraging a platform that provides email metrics so you can gauge whether the message is opened (good is estimated at 15-30%) and click rates (a disheartening 2-5% is considered good). All that work for such low numbers—and we still won’t know if anyone even read the message once it was opened or how they felt about it, whether they understood it.

So what should I be doing?

I’m not going to pretend it’s time to give up email all together. It is an integral component of the mobile experience. But it should be used strategically and sparingly. It should be an element of your communication strategy rather than your core delivery channel. Depending on your audience and company culture, you need to decide which blend of channels will meet your people where(ever) they are with both the content they need and the content they want.

• Dialogue opportunities can take many forms and they’re a key component of any communication strategy in 2022. In particular, our emerging and future leaders (Millennials and Gen Zs) prefer to be engaged as opposed to communicated to. Social components like comments, @tagging and liking are an easy way to facilitate this. Open office hours (virtual, if need be) are another option as are small, by-invitation sessions. These are different than traditional skip-level one-on-ones. They can and should skip reporting structures, career levels and more, creating opportunities for leaders to engage with team members at levels they would not normally connect with. Informal and unrecorded, they can be a powerful interaction for leaders and mid-level to junior team members alike.

• Video can deliver all the authenticity email struggles to create as long as you have a messenger comfortable in front of a camera. We no longer need to book costly studio time or write dense scripts thanks to platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Simply tee up your leader with the key message and some best practices. When your topic allows, you can level up the impact with a little creativity: live from the exhibit floor at Mobile World Congress, at a book signing, in their own garden.

• The best mobile apps integrate your audience’s experience across your business: content curation, email delivery, action and update notifications, access to key resources (address updates, IT tickets and more). If you can’t get into your people’s phones in 2022, do you even have access to your people? This can also address an element of those employees who may not be issued company mobile devices or email addresses. Personal smartphones, onsite computer kiosks in breakrooms, QR codes and more offer a variety of paths to key content regardless of an employee’s role.

• Intranets—or a lack of intranets, I should say—seem to be the flip side of email overload. If you hope to take content out of mailboxes, you have to host it somewhere. A well-designed intranet that incorporates content strategy, an intuitive and user-friendly experience, and governance will allow people to interact with it the way they do with their favorite online resources outside of work. They will bookmark it, refer to it when they need information or insight, send colleagues links to content hosted on it. In short, it will be where they go for what they need.

These are just a few channels that resonate from a corporate communication perspective. There are many others that facilitate project collaboration, program management, internal social feeds and more.

How do I decide?

Our options for building a bespoke communication strategy leveraging channels best suited to our company culture, leaders and team members are endless. As we navigate through the choices, what is clear is:

• Technology facilitates dialogue. With a multi-generational employee base and the continuing evolution to permanent hybrid work models, two-way communication resonates much more deeply than one-way push messaging—and should be a core component of your strategy.

• A blend of channels and platforms optimizes your ability to reach your audience where they are—whatever that may mean. It also gives your audience options for how they want to consume content, just like they have outside of work.

• The solution must leverage email as a component rather than a core delivery channel.

• Digital and mobile functionality are essential. The first time I called email the new snail mail was about 10 years ago. If that’s not how you’re thinking about it when building your communication strategy, it’s time to get passionate about it. Not sure I have it right? Try leaving your smart phone in a drawer during business hours for one work week. It starts to feel a lot like 1999—the year before a smartphone connected to the internet for the first time.

This blog was originally posted on LinkedIn on 15 March 2022.