Creating a sustainable communication rhythm starts with understanding when your audience needs information and how often they need to hear from you. Getting your communication timing and frequency right can help build trust, reduce communication fatigue and create more consistent and effective communications and marketing.
Have you ever signed up to a store email to receive updates and special offers, then realised that you are now receiving an endless daily barrage of emails?
Yeah, me too.
Creating a rhythm in your marketing and communications is key to informing, not annoying, your audience.
There are 2 main things to consider when you are mapping out the rhythm:
- Timing – When does the information need to reach the audience?
- This sets the urgency, relevance and the opportunity to act upon.
- Frequency – How often does your audience need to hear from you?
- This determines whether the communication is a one-off, needs reinforcement or should become a regular update.
For this article we will work across 3 levels of communications and marketing planning to map out examples of timing and frequency.
These levels are:
- Overarching organisation framework
- Imagine this is your organisation’s master document that maps out the full framework for marketing and communications with your audiences all aligned to the objectives. You would map the adaptive framework steps to both internal and external audiences.
- Individual campaign
- This could be an internal or external communications or marketing campaign where you would likely be able to pull most of your adaptive steps from the organisation framework.
- Individual comms piece
- This could be a single piece of comms that comes with a request to send. It could be a policy update, meeting notice, service outage or a social post. It will be the urgency that will determine the timing.
Timing is determining when your audience needs to know.
Consistency doesn’t mean communicating more often.
It means building trust in the delivery and quality of information.
So, let’s take the deep dive and ask some questions:
- Is it urgent?
- When does the audience need the information?
- Do they need time to act or prepare?
- Is there a deadline?
- Is there a time when the information would be more relevant?
- If you communicate too early, could your audience forget the information?
- If you communicate too late, could it mean your audience misses out?
When I was part of a large organisation communications team, it was imperative that cyclical updates from executives went out at the right time of day to build trust in the information, so we ensured that regular CEO newsletters went out by no later than 10am on the send date.
We conducted a staff survey, when planning our comms framework, and discovered that information that was sent from executives late in the day or after hours were perceived by staff as executives trying to hide information. In reality, it was just probably because after hours was when they got a quiet moment to read or curate the information piece to send.
But the research indicated that anything sent later in the day was seen by staff as trying to hide information.
This perception was eroding trust between most levels of staff and the executive team.
Fast forward to our WHEN planning and there was an easy fix, send in the morning, timed for when the majority of staff were at their desks and fresh from a few cuppas.
So how often do you need to communicate with your audience?
Just because you have been given permission to communicate with your audience, does not mean you have permission to annoy them and flood their inbox or feed.
How often people need to hear from you will be influenced by the importance and timing of the information. Do they need to hear from you weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually?
This is where it becomes helpful for planning to break the frequency down by what you are communicating and to whom.
WHAT needs to be said, WHO needs to hear it and WHERE it will be distributed will all help you determine the WHEN.
For example:
- A CEO newsletter could be monthly.
- A personal update to build trust between all levels of the organisation (WHY), providing an update on the organisation’s objectives (WHAT). It would be for all staff who want to understand the organisation’s direction and how it is achieving its objectives (WHO). A personal update delivered via an HTML newsletter to staff inboxes (WHERE), once a month, at 10am on the last Thursday of every month (WHEN).
- Note that the newsletter could be accompanied by staff-supplied articles about their or their team’s work and how that contributes to the organisation’s strategic, business and unit plans.
- An upcoming information event could be a series of social posts.
- An information event designed to encourage the target audience to register and attend (WHY). It should communicate what the event is about, what attendees can expect to learn or contribute, the event details and how to register (WHAT). The target audience could be people interested in topic XYZ or those affected by or able to provide feedback on topic ABC (WHO). A Facebook and/or LinkedIn event and supporting posts could link through to Eventbrite to manage registrations (WHERE). Promotion could include a save-the-date or early-bird post with enough lead time for people to plan, a reminder closer to the event and a final opportunity to register before registrations close (WHEN).
- Note: An event campaign would likely include more ‘WHERE’ promotion, depending upon ‘WHO’ your audience is, but the above is an example only.
- An operational update
Safety messaging to reduce heat illness (WHY), about working safely in high outdoor temperatures as the wet season approaches and above-average temperatures are forecast (WHAT). This will be for staff working in the field who may have limited or intermittent access to regular emails (WHO). A safety article could sit on the intranet, with a mention in the CEO newsletter linking back to the article, and the information could also be discussed in toolbox meetings (WHERE). This should commence at a minimum the month prior to the wet season (WHEN).
Create a rhythm that you/your team can sustain
Whenever you are planning out a complete adaptive approach, you need to ensure that the team has capacity to realistically execute all of this successfully.
Think about who provides or creates content, is there software to support all this work and sometimes you may even find that staff are not only capable but willing and wanting to provide updates on projects they are working on.
Just because you have a rhythm, also doesn’t mean you can’t break it.
A schedule shouldn’t be a prison.
Urgent safety information doesn’t have to wait for the monthly newsletter. A significant organisational announcement doesn’t have to wait till Tuesday because Tuesday is the day you post on socials.
Just as important is measuring and listening to feedback from your audience. If feedback is telling you people are becoming fatigued, then change the ‘WHEN’ or whatever else you need to do to address user feedback.
So, if you have gotten this far, you know WHY you’re communicating, WHAT you need to say, WHO needs to hear it, WHERE you are going to reach them and WHEN they need to hear from you.
Now it’s time to bring it all together in your own adaptive approach.
Are you ready to build your own adaptive approach?
This article is part of The Adaptive Approach insight series.