The Email Channel allows you to send Oak content directly to your audience for greater visibility. Instead of relying on employees to log into the platform to discover updates, Email Channel helps organisations increase visibility and engagement by delivering important communications directly to employee inboxes.
Ideal for announcements, urgent updates, training materials, onboarding information, newsletters, and feedback requests.
The Email Channel is a part of the wider Channels capability, designed to expand how your organisation distributes and communicates content.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to send content through the Email Channel, along with best practices for optimising your content for delivery to employee inboxes.
Looking to explore more of Channels? Discover how to create engaging displays with Screens.
This guide covers:
- What content can be sent via the Email Channel?
- How to send content via the Email Channel
- Ways to use the Email Channel
- Email Templates
- Analytics
- Things to consider
Before you start:
- You must be assigned the Content Contributor permission for the area where you want to publish content.
- There's a few things to consider before sending content via the Email Channel. Jump ahead to the end of this guide.
What content can sent via the Email Channel?
You can send the following types of Oak content directly to employee inboxes:
- News Articles
- Blank Pages
- Policies
- Blog Posts
How to send content via the Email Channel
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Create one of the supported content types by going to the Actions button > Create. Once your content has been added, click Continue to navigate to the publication page (also known as the metadata page).
If the content already exists, click into the content and select the page options (three dots) in the top right corner, followed by Edit.
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On the publication page, go to the Channels section.
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Toggle on Email. The channel will be toggled off by default and must be manually enabled for each content item.
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If no audience is selected, the email will be sent to all who have permission to access the content. If you wish to tailor who receives the email, click Change Audience.
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Select the users or audiences from the user picker, followed by Confirm. The audience button will update to show the number of selections made. We recommend double checking this before publishing the content.
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Complete any remaining publication options.
Before publishing: Double check your content, including the selected audience, title and description, and publish date.
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When you're ready, publish the content. The email will be sent automatically to the selected audience.
If the content requires approval, the email will be sent only after it has been approved by a Content Reviewer.
If the content is scheduled for a future publish date and time, the email will be sent automatically when that date and time is reached.
- To verify the email has been triggered successfully, go to the Actions button > Configure > Email Log. The Email Log allows admins to verify the emails have been generated and sent correctly.
Ways to use Email as a Channel
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Use Oak as an email builder: Create email content in a secure area of your intranet and send it directly to employees. The content stays hidden from the intranet and does not need to be linked or searchable.
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News bulletins: If you would like more control over your Newsletter, a weekly news bulletin can be curated with the updates you would like to include, whether this is departmental updates or linking to content in Oak.
- Important updates: With the Email Channel, you can send important content directly to employees’ inboxes. Employees can read the full message in their email without needing to click a link to return to the intranet.
Email Templates
As with any email builder, some elements may be removed from the delivered email. For details on which elements are affected, see the section at the end of this guide.
To help ensure your message and visuals are delivered as intended, we’re creating email templates that can be used when building your content. Paste the template code into the content editor using the Source Code functionality, then add your text and other content.
We’ve included a preview of one of the templates below. For more information about the templates available, or for support creating your own, please reach out to your Account Manager.
Email Channel Analytics
Anyone with the Site Report Viewers permission will be able to access analytics by going to the Actions button > Manage > Site Analytics.
If a user opens the email, this will increase the view count within your analytics, in addition to exactly who has viewed the email. However, it will not record the channel the email was viewed from, such as email or in the intranet. The total stats are everyone who has viewed it and the total number of times.
Things to consider
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Content formatting may vary. Email applications often strip content created using HTML and CSS, so we recommend keeping it simple and limiting the use of custom content
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Your branding theme will pull through onto the content page viewed in the intranet, however this will not translate to the email. To change text style and colours, highlight the text and set the colour. Remember, there can be styling issues as often seen with email applications, so keep it as simple as possible
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Consider creating an email template that you can reuse. Simply duplicate the template and update the content as needed, rather than creating a new email from scratch
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Images are supported in emails and will be displayed to recipients
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Applets are not supported and will not appear in the email, although the text added to these applets will be. For example, Tab Applet and Accordions. If you would like the recipient to view the applets, include a link in the email to direct to the content item in the intranet
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If the template of a News Article includes a banner, this banner will be the header of the email
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When first using Email as a Channel, consider sending content to a test audience to review how the email appears before sending it to a wider audience
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Avoid overusing email notifications, as this can lead to employee fatigue and reduced engagement
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Emails may take several minutes to generate and deliver, depending on audience size and email processing times
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The email will come from the Author and the email set up within Site Settings
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