Ask Devin

Oooh — I love this question! Honestly, personalization is making a huge difference for internal comms teams of all sizes right now. And I’m talking well beyond simple merge tags to drop a name into an email (still do that though!). The real shift is toward meeting employees where they are and delivering information in ways that feel relevant to them.

That can look like considering where an employee is located and scheduling emails or SMS to land at an appropriate local time, segmenting comms by team or department so employees only receive what’s relevant to their role, or using automation (and yes, a little AI!) to create truly personalized birthday and work anniversary messages instead of sending the same generic note to everyone.

Now, I know what you might be thinking… personalization sounds great, but I don’t have time for that. Fair point! And this is where leaning on your comms champions can make all the difference.

Take birthday or anniversary emails as an example. An employee’s manager usually has a much better sense of their personality, interests, and quirks than you ever could. Instead of shipping that generic message, you can set up a reminder on a manager’s calendar a week or two ahead of those milestones, asking them to share a few quick inputs — what stood out about this employee over the past year, what they’re most proud of, or something that reliably makes them laugh, etc. Those responses can be collected in a simple form and used to personalize a message that’s scheduled to go out automatically on the big day.

Automation and AI are definitely another trend that’s bubbling up quickly. When comms teams can scale the volume and consistency of their sends without adding more manual work, they get time back — time they can reinvest in being more thoughtful, creative, and innovative with their strategy. Used intentionally, these tools aren’t replacing the human touch; they’re actually creating more space for it!