In a world where nearly 350 billion emails are sent daily, how can yours compete, stand out, and be read? Here are three best practices to help you increase readership and drive meaningful engagement.
- Write short, straightforward subject lines. The subject line either captures someone’s attention or gets ignored. When writing a subject line, keep it short and compelling and opt for simplicity over creativity. Because of how mobile devices and modern preview panels cut off subject lines, most people will only be able to see the first 42 characters (about 5-7 words).
The best subject lines express time sensitivity and topics of interest, raise curiosity, and are easily understood. Rather than use a creative subject line that says, “Thought we’d never ask? Now think again!” Use a more direct subject like “Engagement survey due today: In Office or WFH?” A clear and concise subject line should provide the reader with the context of what’s to come in the email.
Tip: If there’s a deadline, include it in your subject line. If you want a response or action by a specific date, make that clear upfront. Include days or months in the subject line and keywords like reminder, update, action, new, and now. Here are a few examples:
- “Action Required: Register by Friday”
- “Due now: Submit Budgets by June 15”
- “Reminder: Survey Due – Your Feedback Matters!”
- “Update: Enrollment opens Nov 1”
Pre-test your subject lines and get recommendations from PoliteMail’s subject line suggestion feature. This feature leverages a large AI language model trained with our extensive attention rate data.
- Send to smaller segments and more targeted lists. One size never fits all. When you want a message to resonate with a large, diverse group of employees, consider segmenting recipients by location, roles, management level, or departments. The language and angle can be tailored to different audiences, even if the message remains the same. Acknowledging how cultural, generational, and educational variations may influence how and why employees engage with your internal communications can be helpful.
While segmented lists are not always easy to achieve — getting an accurate, up-to-date all-employee list is often challenging in itself! — it’s a worthwhile project. By minimizing the number of generic or irrelevant emails people receive, you can increase readership, engagement, and response rates and reduce email overload
To help communicate the value of your case with IT or HR, leverage the PoliteMail 2023 Benchmark data and explain how you want to help reduce communications overload by sending fewer but more relevant emails.
- Send earlier in the week. When will your employees most likely open, read, and respond to emails? Equipped with data, you can analyze which days and times have the highest engagement rates. You can also look for behavior patterns across different segments.
PoliteMail’s Benchmark Report, analyzing over 3 billion internal emails sent to 14 million employees, reveals these timing recommendations:
- Mondays are the best day for gaining attention, readership, and clicks. These rates decline over the week. Currently, Thursdays are the most popular broadcast day.
- Expect lower-than-average responses when you send email on Fridays.
- Email that reaches the inbox at the start of the work day yields the highest attention and readership.
- Email that reaches the inbox first thing in the afternoon produces the highest click rates.
Use time-zone sending features to reach employees at the right time, wherever they are.
Engaging your workforce with email
By writing short, straightforward subject lines, including due dates and deadlines, sending to smaller, segmented lists, and working on timing, you will optimize the impact of your emails. Use data and metrics to continually refine your email strategy and evolve to meet the changing needs of your organization. In a world where inboxes are stuffed full daily, yours can still stand out.
