The Pitney Bowes Intanet Case Study

Internal Marketing: Engaging Employees Through Transformation

Manager, Internal Digital Strategy

Pitney Bowes | Internal Marketing: Engaging Employees Through Transformation 2

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

George Bernard ShawIrish Playwright


Objective:State-of-the-art internal communications function to drive productivity and positive change

Solution:A responsive, efficient communication ecosystem built around employee needs


Building the Plan to Market to Employees

Understand Our Audience

Deep dive into the needs and behaviors of our audience(s) Create personas to help tell better stories using the right channels

Evaluate Current Vehicles

Perform channel audit of existing internal communications Distill key insights and define channel roles and KPIs

Tell Important Stories

Establish high-level content strategy for major initiatives Develop editorial calendar

Turn Plan Into Action

Define editorial roles and responsibilities Recommend editorial workflow


Personas are storytelling tools that help us understand our audience’s goals and desires through composites of real people.

They serve as the basis for communications planning.


Personas Identified

Corporate

Sales

Digital Commerce

Engineering

Service Management

Presort


Persona: Joanne in Corporate

Joanne is always thinking about how she can do more with her time – and add value to the company in more useful ways.

The most consistent thing about Joanne’s day is that she gets in early so she can be prepared for the day ahead. She needs some time to get ready because she could be starting the day off with a meeting or presentation, and she feels more comfortable with preparation.

Sometimes Joanne might spend her morning focusing on responding to emails and coordinating efforts with her colleagues that way. Most of the time she’s on her computer and mobile device because so much of her work is done through using Microsoft Office applications and through email, which means that she is never far from her laptop.

Being able to work wherever and whenever is helpful because Joanne tends to multitask in the many meetings that she also attends throughout the day. She values face time as it breaks up a lot of the time that she spends in front of a computer, which is constant. At the same time, she also feels compelled to at least check email even after work hours.

Joanne wants to be successful in her career and needs to feel that the company she works her is also doing the same. She looks forward to any news and information about company performance, and expects to know about what’s happening as soon as it happens. If she can’t find the company news that expects on internal channels, she’ll look wherever she can to be informed.

Joanne’s Goals• Develop professionally and improve

her group’s performance and reputation.

• Find the information she needs on her own time and through her means.

• Avoid spending more time on laptop or phone that feels unnecessary.

• Understand the company’s performance, personnel and organizational shifts.


How We Talk to Joanne

Increase the transparency quotient.Knowledge workers tend to be closer to what is happening in the company at-large, but they want confirmation of what they’ve been hearing and to be acknowledged quickly.

Provide new ways to connect with and understand other employees.Corporate employees are more likely to browse and search for company news on their own, but will only do so if there’s optimal content and experience.

Utilize external news sources to add value and build legitimacy.These employees are more likely to be information junkies and discover what external people are saying about the company. Leverage external news sources to make corporate communications feel more trusted.

KEY INTERNAL CHANNELS

KEY EXTERNAL CHANNELS

email intranet manager

LinkedIn web/magazines mobile


Persona: Sam in Sales

Sam is what you would call a go-getter. He’s up and working before many people even wake up to get prepared for the long day ahead of him. Sam spends a few hours a day with clients on his laptop and mobile phone, so he’s always engaged. Reacting quickly to messages and acting swiftly with clients is critical to achieving success as a sales rep, so he’s always on Outlook and Salesforce while using other sites like LinkedIn or Hoover’s. Success is not only about meeting sales quotas but exceeding them. Sam feels secure in his job, but still feels the need for a healthy dose of competition to keep him going. He wants to remain one of the company’s top salespeople, and likes to know how much sales is contributing to company wins. Sam is comfortable with technology but feels that it could be easier for him to get product and service information when he needs it. Outside of sales team meetings, Sam doesn’t interact that much with the rest of the company. Most of the company news he gets is through his manager or email from people he already knows. He understands that it’s important to know what’s going on with the company, but doesn’t have the time to go through a lot of messages that may not be relevant to what he needs to do his job.

Sam’s Goals• Achieve high success in sales by not

only meeting quotas but exceeding them.

• Easily access and wayfind all the information he needs to work with clients, feel confident it’s up to date.

• Receive corporate communications tailored to the sales team in the places where they spend the most time.

• Access the same level of information across all devices seamlessly and instantly.


KEY INTERNAL CHANNELS

KEY EXTERNAL CHANNELS

email manager

LinkedIn mobile

How We Talk to Sam

Focus on targeted content that highlights the role of sales to the larger company.Since the sales team is results focused, they do not have much bandwidth for messaging that doesn’t feel like a value add to their daily activities.

Celebrate and recognize individual impact.Sales teams are motivated not only by results measured in revenue, but in the opportunity to be recognized and tell their story to the rest of the company.

Enable better peer connections for more effective sales.Communicate why greater participation in a more collaborative, interconnected work culture can generate better sales results.

Salesforce


A Note on Personas

Personas are tools that can be used to more effectively create any targeted communication or campaign. Through storytelling, personas help generate empathy in the person creating the communication. Persona communication guidelines serve as a useful baseline for identifying the right approach and channel opportunities.


Evaluating Current Vehicles


Taking a Closer Look

Taking the key channels identified by our personas, let’s take a closer look at their current state.


Analysis Using Three Key Attributes

Usefulness• Does the audience find the communication valuable?• Does the communication serve the purpose we wanted

it to achieve?

Engagement• Does our audience remain engaged with the

communication?• Is the communication presented in a way that is

consistently memorable?

Accessibility• Can our audience successfully access the

communication in the channel they find most suitable?• Is the communication accessible in all of the most

useful channels?


Email Channel Analysis

UsefulnessEmail is the primary way users are currently engaging with internal communications and how they want to engage moving forward. It remains the most useful form of direct messaging provided engagement and accessibility can be improved.

EngagementMost employees feel inundated by email throughout their work day. Employees would get more value from emails that more clearly identify content through clear and engaging subject lines, and organization of text.

AccessibilityMany users are accessing email messages across multiple devices. Ensure that email designs are optimized for all devices and make the length of emails more digestible on mobile devices.

Key TakeawaysEmail is still the path to internal communications for most users, but optimizing and improving the experience is needed.

Accessibility

Engagement

Usefulness


Intranet Channel Analysis

UsefulnessInside PB is valued very differently among different groups of users. There is at least an overall perception that Inside PB should and could serve as an important source for information, though it has so far not lived up to its potential.

EngagementCurrent engagement is relatively low. Employees have remarked about the lack of comprehensive content and unreliable search capabilities that prevent deeper engagement.

AccessibilityEmployees have incompatibility issues or poor experiences with various browsers and devices. There is also difficulty with overall wayfinding.

Key TakeawaysThe new InsidePB has great potential to quickly become the primary source for information if the user experience and content approach delivers on the ambitions of the site.

Accessibility

Engagement

Usefulness


Manager Channel Analysis

UsefulnessWhen they deliver information about the company, manager communication feels trusted, valuable and useful for most employees – especially presort.

EngagementQuality of engagement varies depending on the business unit as well as the availability and working styles of individual managers. When managers do communicate, employees are highly engaged.

AccessibilityLevel of accessibility also varies on a case-by-case basis. Providing tools and resources to make manager communication easier could be valuable.

Key TakeawaysManagers are one of the most important channels for internal communication with ample opportunity to be utilized in more creative and effective ways.

Accessibility

Engagement

Usefulness


It’s also worth keeping in mind how employees utilize external channels for future communication opportunities.


External Channel Considerations

Mobile plays a key role in how employees communicate in all BUs – from sales to presort. Besides optimizing all experiences for mobile, a dedicated company app could create an additional layer of value for communications.

LinkedIn is a highly utilized channel for many employees for both professional and personal uses. While opportunities for internal communications are limited, taking advantage of advanced features on the platform such as blogging and social following can help create positive perception of the company.

Salesforce is as ubiquitous as email for sales and digital commerce teams. Given the overwhelming volume of email received, using the Salesforce Chatter platform for company messaging could prove useful and direct.

YouTube is one of the most popular platforms in the world, which means that it’s highly shareable. Company videos hosted on YouTube can bridge conversation between internal employees and external partners, potentially boosting brand equity and EVP.


Mapping Priority Channels to Personas

PERSONA INTERNAL CHANNELS EXTERNAL CHANNELS

Corporate

Sales

Digital Commerce

Engineering

Service Management

Presort


InsidePB:


Digital Signage: Drive to Web


Managers as Communicators

15 sessions (3 general; 2 for each function)

~ 50 general and role-specific information documents

Role-specific ambassadors, armed with consistent responses to FAQs

IMPACT IQ to validate manager communication and engage employees

Manager’s workspace with resources and customizable content

Robust IMPACT workspace on InsidePB for all employees


We will measure the success of the vehicle as well as overall campaigns.


Key Internal Channel Roles and KPIs

CHANNEL ROLE KPI

Email creates buzz and participation around company news and initiatives and drives traffic to InsidePB.

Email opens, click throughs, click-to-open rate, task completion rate.

Intranet engages users as a destination for all internal comms and becomes a destination for work productivity, self-serve information and employee benefits.

Unique visits, organic visits, time spent on site, reduction in IT and HR support.

Managers deliver sensitive or confidential information to employees and encourage participation for CTAs.

Overall attendance.

Town Halls serve as an opportunity for revealing company vision and garnering employee feedback and encourage team building and camaraderie.

Yammer activity.

Print provides core company messaging for presort and serves as campaign extension for all other employees.

Task completion rate.

Digital Signage provides core company messaging where available, extends campaign messaging and delivers contextual and localized messaging and CTAs.

Overall impressions, click throughs, task completion rate, perception, understanding, accuracy.


At the program level, internal comms success will be reflected in changes from baseline in engagement survey questions like:

“Pitney Bowes does an excellent job keeping employees informed about our products and services.”


Turning Plan into Action


Roles and Responsibilities Map

Internal Team Collaborators

editor-in-chief• manages and approves all

internal comms content• establishes editorial

processes and guidelines• develops editorial calendar

and content agenda

community manager• manages and publishes all

InsidePB stories• engages with InsidePB

users, drives participation• shares, responds to user

feedback

managing editor• manages writers, content

development and production• ensures editorial processes

and guidelines are consistent

writer / editor• develops, pitches and

writes stories• establishes collaborative

relationships with BU and regional communicators

• maintains brand consistency

data analyst• gathers and analyzes user

engagement metrics• provides audience insights

writer• develops, pitches and

writes stories• collaborates with other

writers and editors

designer / creative• creates graphics and other

visual elements

BU communicator• manages and approves

content intended only for BU audience

• works with managing editor to surface BU stories company-wide

regional communicator

• manages and approves content intended only for regional audience

• works with managing editor to surface regional stories company-wide


Responsible for disseminating top level, enterprise wide messaging to all areas of the business, corporate must relay all information regarding the company at large including major news, branding, vision, and global issues.


InsidePB


Questions?


Thank you

The Pitney Bowes Intanet Case Study

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