Listen up! Here’s what employees want to read in their newsletters

This is the first article in a three-part content series on engaging employees via email. This series, in partnership with PoliteMail, offers tips and multiple ways to improve your internal email communication.

Want to make your employee newsletter bigger and better? Perhaps you should reconsider the “bigger” part.

“Employees will read publications more often if they are shorter and to the point,” says Rob Drasin of employee engagement consulting firm Trident Communications.

Of course, brevity isn’t all there is to creating newsletters that employees genuinely want to read. It also takes compelling content that means something to them.

“Measuring email engagement involves a combination of time spent on the message, as well as interactions with links and content,” says Michael DesRochers of Outlook analytics firm PoliteMail Software.

Ragan.com asked three internal communications managers what they have found to be the most effective newsletter content strategies, as well as tips for communicators looking to make their newsletters draw a little more attention.