How Nasdaq transformed internal comms to drive global alignment, enable transparency, and boost employee engagement — fueled by measurable results.
The challenge: Nasdaq, a global technology company serving capital markets and financial services, faced a familiar yet complex internal comms challenge: an outdated, fragmented communications model that wasn’t well-equipped to meet the needs of its global workforce.
Its legacy newsletters — built manually in Outlook — lacked consistency and often went unopened, leaving key business priorities disconnected from employees. The global internal communications team sought to modernize its approach to:
- Engage employees: Outlook-based newsletters were visually stale, inconsistently delivered to their global audience, and routinely ignored by employees. Their comms needed to connect colleagues to Nasdaq’s strategy and culture with every message.
- Scale & optimize operations: With a lean internal comms team, manually creating and sending communications was inefficient and unsustainable to effectively reach a global workforce across multiple time zones.
- Enable transparency: With the number of initiatives and projects happening throughout the organization, email updates delivered sporadic or inconsistent updates. Project teams were looking for a way to build team engagement and transparency by delivering consistent, well-organized updates on achievements and timelines to key stakeholders.
The solution: Nasdaq partnered with Axios HQ to build a more modern, scalable internal communications strategy. They reimagined their newsletter program with Smart Brevity at its core:
- Three global newsletters: A Monday "The Week Ahead," a Friday "Week in Review," and a media clips roundup — replacing Outlook sends with polished, consistent updates that employees actually open.
- Time-zone optimization: Comms are scheduled to be sent at 6:00 a.m. local time in APAC, EMEA, and the Americas — ensuring every region starts its day with fresh, relevant updates.
- Departmental adoption: As other departments saw HQ in action, adoption spread by word-of-mouth. HQ now powers Nasdaq comms for M&A onboarding, generative AI adoption, major company events, as well as the core business units and expert functions. The Internal Comms team also supports HR and location leaders in delivering targeted updates to their teams.
How it works: Nasdaq’s new approach unlocked new workflows and a cultural shift in how the organization communicates.
- Empowered employees with strong governance: The team encourages colleagues company-wide to contribute content, but have just a handful of approved senders — ensuring security, consistency, and control of what hits employee inboxes.
- Humanized comms with personal accountability: Each newsletter carries a personal byline, fostering a stronger connection between authors and readers. Employees even reach out directly to the authors with content ideas or to say how much they have enjoyed the series.
- Targeted content optimized for global audiences: Regionalized sends for newsletters like "The Week Ahead" and "Week in Review" boosted readership by 12%, making sure every market sees key updates when they matter most.
- Built-in consistency: From Davos recaps to product updates, all teams follow the same visual format and Smart Brevity principles. The result is professional, engaging content that is easy to create and even easier to consume.
- Tailored support for every team: From the HR team’s segmented monthly sends to Internal Audit’s 97% open rates, even smaller teams use HQ to stay connected and aligned.
📊 Key comms and business results:
- Project updates with impact: Targeted newsletters provide stakeholders with clear visibility into project developments through concise progress updates, milestone achievements, and proactive challenge identification.
- Will Briganti, Head of Internal Communications at Nasdaq, noted: “Recently, our enterprise team deployed a limited-run newsletter series for our global sales teams to learn about a new lead management framework. By sharing structured updates through launch day, they achieved a 70% open rate, making sure the sales team stayed informed about an initiative that directly supports Nasdaq's strategic priorities while establishing a valuable performance standard for project communications.”
- Clear ROI on AI initiatives: Nasdaq demystified their AI strategy with a new Gen AI newsletter, highlighting use cases, hackathon outcomes, and adoption goals — earning a 6.5% higher open rate than the benchmark and more than 1,500 clicks to the Gen AI platform.
- Boosting alignment with specialized event series:
- Global Sales Conference: Nasdaq kept sales teams aligned on critical event logistics, garnering an 80% average open rate.
- World Economic Forum (Davos): Earning a 50% open rate across three daily sends, Nasdaq provided employees real-time updates on their thought leadership and activities.
- As one SVP shared: “This was a great series! Very informative, I watched many of the videos. Thanks for bringing the company along, as it were. I think this kind of ongoing business acumen is really important for engaging & educating our employees.”
💭 Will Briganti, Head of Internal Communications, closing thoughts on HQ’s impact:
- “HQ has revolutionized our employee communications. Smart Brevity transformed our content into digestible, authentic messaging that genuinely resonates with staff. The impact is clear: colleagues regularly approach us wanting to launch newsletters for their own teams. Beyond content quality, the platform's design streamlines collaboration with business partners and significantly reduces our editing time.”