Alnylam – How to Improve Intranet Engagement with Effective Internal Email Templates and Newsletters

Creating beautiful email newsletters

Challenge

Email sending issues, clunky template builder, driving traffic to the intranet

Solution

All-in-one internal communications solution

Focus Feature

Create, Send

Challenge

  • Like most internal communicators, Brendon and his team had the goal of engaging Alnylam’s 2000+ employees through consistent, ongoing, and measurable communication. Their engagement needs have become even more critical with the shift to remote work.
  • However, Alnylam’s existing internal communications email solution at the time presented IT issues that prevented scheduled emails from being sent out.
  • They also faced challenges with consistent email tracking, which prevented them from accurately measuring email performance.
“Before ContactMonkey, there were constant issues. Our firewall was catching emails that were coming from the communications tool we were using and not sending them. Another issue was the tracking just wasn’t working!”
  • Clunky email template builder that made it difficult to create flexible and visually-appealing email newsletter templates.
  • Inability to drive employees towards using the intranet, which was Alynylam’s goal. Issues when sending and tracking email made this difficult.
“We were having consistent issues and it had been going on for like a couple of months. It was one issue after the other, between emails not sending because they were getting caught in our firewall, and then tracking not being consistent. So at the end of the day it was kind of like that’s really important, you know? Obviously if I can’t send that email that’s a problem. So that’s what really drove us to look at other solutions like ContactMonkey.”

Solution

After facing persistent issues with their previous internal communications tool, Brendon and his team decided to look at alternative solutions for sending and tracking their internal communications from Outlook. The team was looking at a few different tools to handle newsletter generation, email management, and email tracking.
  • Using ContactMonkey, Brendon and his team can now also drive more engagement to their intranet and identify if the content they are sending resonates with their employees.
  • ContactMonkey’s engagement features allow Brendon to create a star rating scale for their different employee newsletters that they use on an ongoing basis.
“We have received feedback from people about our emails, saying they look great and that the emails have improved in quality since we started using ContactMonkey”
During COVID-19, the team used ContactMonkey’s survey features to understand what type of resources employees need the most to get their job done.
“Obviously right now, as you can imagine, our surveys have been focused on what employees need right now to get their job done, so they feel supported during the pandemic. And then really thinking about how do we support people who are on site because we have people working in laboratories. So that’s been really the critical communications that we’ve had to focus on.”

How ContactMonkey’s Internal Communications Solutions Helped Alnylam

With ContactMonkey’s internal communications email software, the Alnylam team benefited in the following ways:
  • Using ContactMonkey’s drag-and-drop email template builder, Brendon creates multiple responsive HTML email templates with ease.
  • Customize email templates to build personalized, visually-engaging employee newsletters.
  • Survey employees using ContactMonkey’s embedded star ratings to gauge employee response to different forms of content.
“We have a rating system and an ability for people to comment on what we send out. That’s one way that we’re getting feedback.”
  • Schedule future emails and send them automatically from Outlook.
  • Access to consistent, clear, and comprehensive email tracking metrics for every email they sent out!
“ContactMonkey is really easy to use and allows me to create really nice content. There’s enough customization so we can do what we really want and have some creative freedom.”
  • Allow other team leaders who might want to create newsletters to build effective communications.
“We’ve started to use ContactMonkey for our manager workshops. It’s a much smaller group, so we have a 100% open rate, but the important part is seeing what links they click on. This helps our Training Manager know what material managers are searching for in between the workshops and shapes future training.”

Key Results

“I think ContactMonkey is awesome! It’s really easy to use. There’s enough customization there that I feel like we can do what we really want and have some creative freedom.”
The Alnylam team can now create, send, and track their employee newsletters without having to worry about IT issues or something breaking during the sending process from Outlook. They have the ability to build consistent email templates, gather employee feedback, and track email metrics.
  • Improved email design and customization led to positive feedback from employees.
  • Gained real-time feedback on email content from star rating surveys embedded in employee newsletters.
  • Glitch free email scheduling and integration with Outlook lead to a seamless user experience.
  • Access to accurate email tracking and metrics to strategically improve the internal communications.
“If we send out a company wide email about a business process, a new application, or anything tied to operations, we’ll pretty much always get a 100% open rate. Our click rate is pretty consistent, between 5% and 10%.”

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