Audience Segmentation: Creating More Personalized and Relevant Content for Employees

​​​As consumers, we want personalized and timely content. Don’t employees want the same from their company news and information?

​Read on to learn about ways to segment your internal audience and help increase engagement. 

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In today’s “information overload” environment, consumers (who are also employees) want — and are coming to expect — personalized content and experiences tailored to their needs, wants and behaviors. Audience segmentation is not a new concept, but it can be an effective one. These are just a few ways to segment your internal audience.
 

1. Demographic data: This type of data, including age, race, ethnicity, tenure, job location, etc., is extremely valuable when it comes to segmentation. At a minimum, companies can use this data to segment their employees based on the message.
2. Behavior and preferences: It’s important to understand employee behaviors and preferences, particularly when it comes to channels and content. Layering this on top of demographic data enables communicators to create and deliver more relevant and timely content. In addition, it can be extremely valuable for leaders to have a top-line understanding of how they’re employees — by department, location, etc. — prefer to receive information on varying topics.
3. Life stage or cycle: Communicating about your company’s 401(k) plan to an employee who has just started her/his career may have a different message and objective than that to an employee who is within 3-5 years of retirement. If your company is rolling out a new leadership development program for new people managers, what and how you communicate to eligible employees should be more targeted and personalized than what is posted on your company’s intranet or newsletter.
4. Job role and/or responsibility: For some topics, companies will communicate with people managers first to arm them with information in advance and prepare them for questions from their direct reports. This same approach can be taken with a specific function or department — HR or an employee service center are good examples — to ensure they’re prepared to answer various employee questions and understand the escalation process.

 
While not every message can or should be segmented, taking this approach for those where it makes sense creates more personalized and relevant content for the end user.

Do you have any examples where internal audience segmentation proved to be effective?
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