In defence of email
Multichannel comms meet people where they are
Listen. I am aware that this is not a hot take. Email newsletters are not new, exciting, or even tangentially connected with hotshit like AI, but they are a great format and deserve a look in at work. They’re free to send, cross over to the non chatters, and help to break down communication silos. Also good to answer what exactly it is designers do beyond popping interfaces and making logos bigger.
Old tools reach far
Look at it there. Like any Microsoft product, Outlook newsletters exist in a realm far away where only the bravest archeological users dare travel. It’s not the best, but it is straightforward to draft, and send emails that render decently on your coworkers mobile. This matters when 3/4 of email opens happen on a phone (Cerkl).
Our own humble work newsletter averages out about 75-85% open rate which is in line with benchmarks for a company our size (Staffbase). This is higher than you might expect if you’ve worked with marketing campaigns, and serves as a great opportunity to get eyeballs on what you and your team are doing to make things better. And yet, in spite of their effectiveness, work newsletters are hardly a common practice.
Meeting people where they are
As a UXer you are often reminded that you are not the user. I worked at a start up a few years ago where everything was communicated by default in Slack. I assumed therefore, that everyone read the messages and kept up with the channels. This was true for the engineers. For the business people, a little less so. A coworker I was chasing for something let me know that if I wanted them to actually see something, I should email them. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
It is worth noting that age can factor in. Something that appeals to a 22 year old isn’t necessarily going to do the business for a person in their 40s or 50s. I look at things like Twitch or TikTok and find the overwhelming interfaces really off putting. They ain’t for me.
This isn’t to say let’s kill Slack or Microsoft Teams (although I wouldn’t mind burning Teams to the ground). It is more that we can serve people across multiple channels. Cross posting is fine, and it isn’t that difficult to take a moment to adapt a message to suit a context.
Some practical patterns to rip if you want to set up a somewhat intentional communication strategy for your team:
Match the channel to the shelf-life of the message. Chat is well suited to ephemera that is gone tomorrow
Don't chase 100% open rate. Vanity and madness this way lies
Segment where possible. Tailor your newsletter to individual teams, roles, locations, etc.
Measure engagement. Comprehension comes from read time, click-throughs, and things like reactions
The point of this post isn't that email beats Slack. It's that email is the channel most reliably underuse, despite it being the one more likely places to actually get read by the people who never open a Slack sidebar in the first place.