As you may know, I invest a lot of time learning about marketing, because I find that marketers spend their time trying to attract customers’ attention—so there is a lot we internal communicators can leverage from marketers.

Marketers spend a lot of time contemplating the role of email and their expectations for the channel.  The idea is this: If you had to start your email program from scratch, would you run it the way you do today? (Another way to ask the question: Are you so focused on small improvements that you’re failing to step back and look at the entire program?)

Many of the questions marketers ask apply to using email to communicate to employees. Here are some to consider:

1. What is the role of email in our company?
2. Does the return we get on our regular broadcast emails justify the time and money we spend on them?
3. Do we integrate email with other initiatives, including social, mobile, print, or broadcast?
4. What are our company’s business goals, and what role does email marketing play in achieving them?
5. How do we best reach and engage our employee segments? What are their pain points, and does our email program address them?
6. Is our program’s frequency and cadence logical to employees, or do we need to move to a more customer-centric approach?
7. Are we using the right metrics to measure and communicate email’s ROI and value?

Use these questions when thinking about how well your email program is working.