Target multiple audiences in your organisation with one easy post!
As we’ve moved into a predominately hybrid working environment over the last couple of years thanks to the pandemic, the need for widescale, instantaneous communication within organisations from leaders and communications specialists has been at the forefront of this huge shift. Whether this is to announce new initiatives, assist with employee onboarding, advertise modern learning and development opportunities, or communicate organisation-wide announcements, it’s important to get these messages out to employees quickly and efficiently, and companies have generally used email as a platform to do this.
BUT mass emailing, especially in this context, can be clunky and might not give you the results you want, and it has spotlighted a few pain points, like lack of audience targeting, lack of active engagement, or people missing the email completely.
What is Company Communicator+?
Of course, Microsoft, in true Microsoft form, has created an app to resolve these issues, and we loved it so much that we wanted in on it too! Based on the Company Communicator App template for Microsoft Teams, let us present to you our Company Communicator+ App! It’s an extension of the already much-loved Company Communicator App, where, like the original app, you can send messages to multiple, targeted audiences directly to Teams chat or channels, but this time, with a few added features.
How does it work?
Once deployed, you can easily create messages by using a team tab where team members who are permissioned can collaborate, create, preview, and send messages.
Message creation:
The message creation itself allows for eye-catching, rich, markdown-supported messages for your audience, with a call-to-action prompt.
Audience targeting:
You can then pick from four options to target your audience, where you can send to:
- General channel of selected teams
- 1:1 chat to members of selected teams
- All users who have the app installed
- M365 groups, distribution lists and security groups
Message metrics:
Once your message has been sent, you can analyse the reach and performance of your message with key metrics, as well as exporting detailed results.
Other enhancements:
To give you more flexibility, creativity, and autonomy over your messaging, as well as opening up discussions for audiences, we have made a few further enhancements including:
- Editing sent messages
- Deleting sent messages
- Providing full message history to new users
- Image uploads
- Image resizing
- Enabling replies
- Importance flagging
What problems does this app solve?
The main problem this app solves is cutting through the noise that comes with highly collaborative, hybrid working by meeting your targeted employees where they work, in an efficient, time sensitive way. As we move away from email, it increases the likelihood that messages are read and acted upon, while also encouraging active engagement and discussion.
In a nutshell, you can say ‘see ya!’ to:
- Clunky, mass emailing that might not be relevant to all employees
- Rigid, inflexible message formatting
- Lack of engagement, or audiences missing the message completely
- Lack of information on metrics and behaviours around messaging, therefore no opportunity to assess and improve communication approaches if need be
- Difficulty keeping track of threads
And hello to:
- Seamless, targeted, flexible, audience-specific messaging
- Creative and engaging content with a call to action
- Instantaneous connection with your target audiences in chat format
- A space that encourages replies, discussion, and questions
- Visibility around messaging and engagement patterns so you can tweak your approach
- Easy access to historical messages
- Second chances at messaging if information is incorrect
How to get started
For tech-savvy people, you can get started for free and host your own version of the app, by following the details available on GitHub.
If you need more help, Engage Squared can deploy the Company Communicator+ App into your environment, and further customise the app to meet your specific needs. We can also help with the change management activities and ongoing support of the solution if needed.
To learn more about how we can help, get in touch.