Hey there, I'm Devin!
Most of the time you can catch me deep in the world of internal comms at Workshop (yes, the Happy Mondays folks!), and while I love AI, there are just some comms questions that need a human who really gets it… that’s me!
Hey Devin,
I want my internal emails to drive real engagement — not just opens, but comprehension and action. What design or structural choices actually influence behavior?
This is actually something I was just working through! I’ve always had really high open rates at Workshop, but I realized I wasn’t totally sure whether employees were actually downloading the information or just opening emails because the subject line was interesting.
One of the first changes I made was adding a TL;DR section right at the top of our emails. This allowed employees to quickly understand the main priority points of the message and get a short, digestible overview of what was shared and what mattered most. The goal was that even if someone didn’t read past the TL;DR, they still walked away with the information they needed.
One thing I was very intentional about was making sure the TL;DR matched the formatting and order of the content that followed. This might seem obvious, but I’ve seen recaps that are brief yet don’t actually align with the rest of the message. When things aren’t sequential, it can create confusion instead of clarity.
From there, I started thinking about how that same TL;DR could live beyond email. In some cases, I’ll cross-post it in Slack or Teams and include a link back to the full email for anyone who wants to go deeper. That way, the message lives in more than one place, and employees can engage with it in the channel they’re already using — without forcing a long read.
Beyond structure, design plays a big role in driving comprehension and action. Having on-brand, thoughtfully designed emails helps internal comms feel more intentional and more aligned with the experiences employees have outside of work. We’re all used to getting well-designed marketing emails from brands we love, yet internal communications can sometimes default to long walls of text. Don’t be afraid to bring design into your emails or partner with your marketing or design team to introduce branded elements.
To make this easier at scale, templates are incredibly helpful. Maybe you have one template for All Hands recaps, another for department updates, and another for time-sensitive announcements. Templates ensure you’re never starting from scratch, create consistency for employees, and make it easier for messages to be scanned, understood, and acted on.
At the end of the day, balancing clarity with skimmability is about being realistic. People are going to skim. Designing emails that acknowledge that reality — while still making the most important information clear, structured, and easy to find — is what ultimately drives real engagement.
