Many internal comms teams fall into a common pitfall (often recommended by IT): using their external email marketing software for employee broadcasts. Marketing uses software tools like Marketo, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or Drip to send email and measure results, so it must be effective internally, right? Well, not necessarily.
External email marketing software isn’t ideal for internal email campaigns and employee communications. I mean, when an email arrives with an “external” flag, is it ever perceived as internal comms? Internal communications teams should say goodbye to external email marketing software and embrace platforms specialized for internal use.
Why Marketing Software Doesn’t Cut It For Internal Comms
Imagine trying to host an upscale dinner party at a fast-food restaurant. Sure, fast-food establishments are technically designed for serving meals, but they’re not an ideal venue for a dinner party. Similarly, while external email marketing software has all the bells and whistles to reach prospects and customers, for outreach to employees, it adds unnecessary features and is lacking in others.
Let’s examine the top three most valuable internal email comms software benefits.
1. Employee directory integration.
Email marketing software requires list management work: regularly importing and uploading your employee lists and likely requesting updated employee lists from IT or HR. No list management is required when an internal tool plugs directly into your existing global address book. And if that’s not enough, these internal tools often integrate with your HR systems to automatically import and maintain updated employee lists — so you don’t have to manage anything; you can just write and send your messages.
Using existing address books or automated lists will let you sort and send to targeted audiences based on segmentation options like the employee’s department, geographic location, role, or interests.
Why this matters: Automating standard list maintenance and management tasks can improve your reach while eliminating unnecessary busy work. Since Gallup reports that only 7% of U.S. workers strongly agree that company communication is accurate, timely, and open, removing list management tasks will free up your internal comms team to do creative communications work.
Also, according to Gartner, 27% of employees and 38% of managers feel overwhelmed by information in their organizations; “These feelings of information overload can have real, negative business impacts, including less alignment with corporate strategy and a lower intent to stay in the organization.” You can reduce email overload by targeting specific workforce segments with more relevant internal messaging.
2. Reliable delivery.
While email marketing tools make designing and sending fancy HTML emails relatively simple, it’s a waste of time if your beautiful messages don’t reach the intended inboxes. Modern anti-spam tools often target messages sent by email marketing software, which means your internal comms messages could end up in junk, spam, or promotional folders. If an email is delivered successfully, your system will flag it as external, making it easier to ignore.
Why this matters: When emails are flagged as external, they are perceived as less trustworthy and less critical. When filtered into a spam folder or blocked entirely, employees can miss important events, updates, deadlines, and news, which negatively impacts employee engagement. Recent Gallup data found that “In 2023, 50% of employees were not engaged.” By saying goodbye to email marketing software, you can minimize the risk of employees feeling disconnected.
3. Accurate analytics.
In addition to better, more reliable inbox delivery, specialized internal email communications tools produce more accurate data because internal security controls do not block images and links. Email metrics are blocked when recipients have to “click to download” images or get link warnings.
Why this matters: Data accuracy is essential when sharing internal comms results with leadership. You likely need to report email opens and reach, readership levels, engagement, and clicks for internal email measurement. However, email marketing software will severely under-report metrics like these. With more accurate data, you can prove the results and outcomes of your communications efforts. For example, you can show how your open enrollment campaign increased participation in employee benefits.
Bonus benefit: You don’t need opt-out footers for internal communication. And who wants to encourage employees to opt out of your executive leadership communications, anyway?
Using email marketing software for internal communications is tempting because your company already has a subscription, but more often than not, it’s an inadequate tool, like serving greasy burgers and fries to your dressed-up dinner party guests.
When you embrace platforms crafted specifically for internal email communications, you gain the benefits of employee directory integration, targeted audience segmentation, reliable delivery that improves engagement, and accurate metrics to measure the true impact of your work.
