Here, we’ll share some of the best employee newsletter examples and show you how you can create an internal communications newsletter without hassle.
Why use an Internal Communications Newsletter?
An internal communications newsletter is an email that gets sent out to all staff, segments, or teams within your organization. This form of electronic communication is aimed at being timely and easy to manage. It’s also the main component of an internal communication strategy.
However, without the use of the right tools, you could get bogged down for days and even weeks to develop a newsletter that is aligned with your brand’s standards. Instead, you can rely on an employee newsletter template that already has the content blocks you’d need. All you have to do is drop in the specific message you wish to send.
What are the Best Practices for an Internal Communications Newsletter?
Before you dive into the best ways to create effective internal communications newsletters, be sure to review these best practices. These recommendations are geared at helping you better engage your audience and remain relevant through the messages that you send.
- Plan Frequency:
Plan your content and newsletters in advance so that your staff can begin to expect internal communications newsletters. - Focus on Visuals:
Just like a dull billboard or boring social media post will be overlooked, so too will a bland email newsletter. Be sure to use visuals to your advantage. With a tool like Publicate, design is already included in your newsletter template. - Develop Consistency:
Consider including recurring sections within your newsletter. For example, it could be something simple like having a quote of the week or an inspirational image. Some people will just open the email for that content alone (which boosts the chance of the associated content being read, too). - Create a Sense of Community:
Your internal newsletter communications are the perfect place to communicate your company’s values and foster a sense of community. You can profile existing team members, introduce new hires, share company wins, and the like so that your employees all feel looped in and valued. - Pull from Marketing:
An employee newsletter is just like a marketing campaign, except that it’s internal. So, you’ll still want to have catchy subject lines, fun headlines, and visually-appealing content within the email. After all, you’re still trying to grab and hold attention.
How to Create an Effective Internal Communications Newsletter?
1. Information Needed
You could have the most beautiful email newsletter of all time, but if the content is irrelevant to your audience, then you might as well just skip sending it. To avoid running into this issue, be sure to consider your audience and only deliver the information they actually need. Email overload and exhaustion is a real thing.
2. Be Transparent
It’s also very important to be transparent with the information you share with your employees. Be honest about how the company is doing, its future plans and goals, and how they play a role in helping the organization succeed.
3. Trigger Emotions
Emotional triggers sound intense, and sometimes, they can be. But, think of it this way: emotional triggers can be positive, too. They can be used to spur excitement, belonging, connection, curiosity, hope, and a sense of accomplishment.
Think about how you can spur those emotions on behalf of your employees when you send emails. For example, you can use a company newsletter template that touts the company’s accomplishments in the past month (i.e. sales increased by X%, and other exciting metrics that your team made possible).
4. Inspire And Educate
Sharing thought leadership content is a surefire way to inspire and educate your readers. If you want to share content from your internal leadership, that’s just one option.
You can also include content that’s from entrepreneurs or industry leaders, such as interesting podcasts, articles, TED talks, and the like. A tool like Publicate features the option to curate content from URLs you find valuable with the click of a button. This way, you can embed various types of content, whether it be images, videos, GIFs, or links.
5. Make It Relevant
Before hitting send on any email, ask the big question: “Why should my team care about this?” If the answer isn’t clearly explained by the content itself, then get creative to connect it to the readers.
Here’s an idea: if you’re sharing some industry news about new trends, then share the company’s initiatives on what’s happening to keep up with the trends and how employees are making this a reality.
6. Short And Simple
Don’t get too complicated with your internal communications newsletter. To avoid over complicating your emails, consider using Publicate’s templates that are already pre-designed and can be easily amended using drag-and-drop functionality.
7. Include Employees In It
It’s time to shine the spotlight on the people that keep your business running! You can include employees in a variety of ways. You may want to run an employee profile, share content written by employees, and pass along an inspiring quote or a funny photo that made an employee smile during the week.
There’s no doubt that employees like to hear from the leaders of the business every now and then. Try to incorporate content from your leadership team when possible. If you follow recommendation #1 (refer back above), you can accomplish this better if you plan your content in advance. That way, your CEO will have adequate notice to contribute.
9. Share Industry & Company News
You can maximize the value of your internal newsletter by sharing exciting company news and making it easily shareable via social media links in the email itself. This way, your employees can be like megaphones and blast out the tidbits of information for a massive impact.
10. Community Events
A fun way to get everyone involved in events is to publicize them internally via an internal newsletter template. Here are some example templates that serve this exact purpose.
11. Employee Or Team Spotlights
Did your sales team surpass its sales goals for the second month in a row? That’s a big deal! Let the organization know and celebrate their wins. By sharing the big and small wins of employees and teams, you can help to boost company morale and provide motivation to employees to continue doing their best.
12. Make It Fun
Company news and policy updates don’t have to be dry and boring. Get creative with your newsletters. Share this kind of information using a meme or a witty headline. There’s always a way to make even the most serious of content more light-hearted. (Keep in mind: design can play a role in this, too. Think about the colors you use as backgrounds, the images you incorporate, and the layout of the newsletter itself).
13. Include Videos & Pictures
Did you know that users spend 88% more time on a website that has video? We’re sure it’s safe to say that adding video and pictures to your email content surely won’t hurt your engagement (as long as it’s done right and doesn’t slow the load time). On Publicate’s email builder, you can very easily link a video with the click of a single button within the newsletter template of your choice.
14. Great Headlines
A headline is meant to grab the reader’s attention and split up the content. Just like the synopsis on a movie title on Netflix can either catch your attention or keep you moving, so can the headline within an email template. So, infuse creativity in your headlines (some ideas: alliteration, wordplay, questions, etc.).
15. Make It Interactive
Reading can become passive, but you have the opportunity to make an internal communications newsletter interactive by adding polls, quizzes, or surveys. You can also make it interactive by providing a space for employees to respond and share their own content.
For example, if you have a roundup of the best articles of the week, you can keep a closing section that allows readers to share their favorite content from the week (this also is a win-win because the next time you send out this kind of email, you already have built a library of links that your team contributed).
16. Jobs
Use your newsletter as a place to post open job vacancies. This way, you can work to promote internally first. Or, your employees may know someone that would be a perfect fit and they can recommend them for the job.
17. Milestones
Your company has an anniversary from when it was founded, and that’s worth celebrating. You can also use newsletters to highlight passing certain milestones, which helps to keep your team motivated as they get to celebrate what they’ve helped to achieve.
18. Top 10 Lists
Who doesn’t love a Top 10 list? Hey, you’re still here reading a Top 28 list! Top 10 lists are a snappy and simple way to share engaging content. Plus, your options for Top Lists are practically limitless.
19. Surveys
Use your internal communications newsletter to gain feedback from your team by incorporating surveys.
20. Suggestion Box
Chances are that you send out emails to customers asking them how you can improve their latest experience. You can use this same approach by adding a virtual suggestion box in your newsletter.
This could be a mailto: (a hyperlink to a specific email address), which means that when someone clicks on the link to leave their feedback, it would just go to a dedicated email inbox. But, if you do this, be sure to actually monitor the inbox and take into consideration the suggestions being made.
21. Contests
You can add contests and giveaways into your newsletters. This way, employees have extra incentive to open the newsletter and take part in whatever contest you may be running this time around.
22. User Content
User-generated content is wonderful for everyone involved because employees feel heard and seen and the creator of the newsletter has to do less of the heavy lifting.
Speaking of less heavy lifting, see how a newsletter template tool like Publicate can work to dramatically reduce the time it takes to create a successful internal communications newsletter.
23. Updates
You might be sharing updates on your company’s intranet or social media channels, but that can easily be missed by your busy employees. Use an email newsletter template to share important company updates. This way, employees can refer back to the email easily when they have to review a new policy or process.
24. FAQ
If you have employees constantly asking the same questions to management or HR, then devise a FAQ email to send out to the entire organization to help answer their questions and reduce your workload in answering the questions individually.
25. Customer Stories
Sharing positive customer stories or product reviews internally will remind your employees why they do the work they do. Ultimately, every business wants happy customers, and a lot of that comes from how employees do their jobs. Let them know they are valued by distributing these messages!