Case Study: St. Louis Children’s Hospital achieves 1,500% increase in employee comments and 38% email click rates with Poppulo

Transforming the Internal Communication Function at St. Louis Children’s Hospital

St Louis Children’s Hospital, a 280‑bed teaching hospital with more than 3,000 employees, faced the challenge of communicating its mission and priorities amid information overload, an outdated intranet, and limited internal-communications staffing. John Twombly, the hospital’s sole internal communicator, partnered with Poppulo to modernize how the organization shares news and updates with employees.

Using Poppulo to send targeted internal emails — including a weekly Children’s Chat newsletter, single‑topic alerts, manager briefings, leader videos/podcasts, and segmented company surveys with feedback and analytics — the hospital dramatically increased engagement. Employee comments rose more than 1,500% (from ~50 to ~1,000 annually), average email click rates hit 38%, and overall employee engagement moved into the top 10% nationally among major healthcare providers and improved by 5 points since 2013, demonstrating Poppulo’s measurable impact.

St Louis Children’s Hospital

John Twombly