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Is
Your Corporate Communications Strategy Working?
By Wayne McKinnon
(613) 860-1384
In my consulting work I deal with many
corporate communication folks as well as people in other
departments that take advantage of their services. When
I ask what methods they use to reach out to employees
almost everyone tells me about their "email-all" list as
if the list was the holy grail.
Many organizations have become sensitive
to overloading employees mailboxes so have placed
controls on who can send to this lists. That's not a bad
idea, but it emphasizes the need to ensure that staff
mailings are effective and are not viewed as internal spam.
People in other departments outside of
the corporate communication group who need to get their
message out tell me proudly that they have been accepted
into the corporate mailing as if that in and of itself
is a measure of success for their program.
Questions you should be asking about
your "Email All" list
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Are you assuming that simply being
on the list is enough to ensure that employees are
getting your message?
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What measures do you have in place
to validate your assumptions?
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Have employees begun regarding
regular corporate mailings to this list as junk
mail, and if so how can it be made more effective?
Here are some suggestions
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"Corporate Newsletter" is not a
compelling title.
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Long messages lose them quickly.
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Bureaucratic writing style loses
them even more quickly
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Include ways to measure the
effectiveness of the message. Receiving a messages
does not ensure success of the message.
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Do not try to achieve all of your
departmental communication objectives in a single
mailing.
The way I see it, if I have been
successful helping my clients promote topics internally
such as security awareness or legislative compliance,
you can be equally as successful with any topic if you
take the right approach. I'd like to see you succeed so
give me a call if you have questions.
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Wayne McKinnon
www.EffectiveCommunication.org
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