Nail the Employee Experience with Personalized Benefits Communication

Best practices in copywriting psychology tell us that knowing your target audience is a crucial first step in delivering communication that packs a punch. Armed with some demographic and personal preference data, you can elevate your benefits communication so that employees are inspired to use their benefits, rather than ignore them.

Try these tactics to get to know your employees:

• Let your data do the talking. Use existing employee data as a starting point to identify your company’s demographics. Take note of commonalities like age, gender, location, job duties and tenure.
• Go straight to the source. Survey your employees. Gather information about their schedules, work environment and communication preferences. Include questions that reveal their values, interests, motivators and stressors. Combine the survey findings with your demographic info and watch your workforce personality unfold. You’ll see patterns and unique segments of your employee audience emerge.
• Create personas. With an understanding of the distinct employee segments in your company, develop a persona for each. Personas are fictional characters representing a segment of your employee audience. With these personas handy, you can more easily prepare communication that mean something to your target audiences.

For ages, marketers have used segmenting to target their messages to specific audiences for the highest ROI. If you’re not already segmenting your benefit communication to fit your employee audience, it’s time to start.

According to HubSpot, two of the most effective strategies for email marketers are segmentation (78%) and personalization (72%). A report by Litmus on the 2023 state of email reveals that personalizing messages with dynamic content is the top tactic used by email marketers, and the best way to improve email performance. Consumers want to feel like brands know who they are and what matters to them.

The same is true for employees. Benefits are highly personal. Employees want to hear about benefits that are important to them. Tweaking your messages to fit your employee segments will address their unique needs in thoughtful and unexpected ways. That small level of personalization goes a long way toward fostering meaningful, authentic employee engagement — and making your company a great place to work.

Conversational communication is the art of speaking plainly. Forget jargon, acronyms and formal language. Make sure your communication messages are written in a tone that’s easygoing, memorable and clear. People like to hear from humans, not robots.

Use these tips to script your messaging:

• Keep it simple. Use language that’s streamlined and succinct. Make sure your messages are credible, inspiring and tell a coherent story. According to copywriting psychology, the easier something is to read, the truer we perceive it to be.
• Make it purposeful. Think about how you would communicate the information to each specific employee group in person. Ask yourself questions like, “Why is this communication necessary? What does this communication aim to change? Why is it important?”
• Be authentic. To connect with your employees, your communication should be as truthful and transparent as possible. Let some personality shine through. It should build trust and strengthen the bond between your employees and the organization.
• Stay casual. Conversational writing feels like a face-to-face conversation between two people. It’s relaxed, meaningful and relevant. Informal writing flows better, making it easier for readers to understand and value the messages.