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10 of the Best Email Newsletter Software Out There

5/31/2021

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10 of the Best Email Newsletter Software Out There

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Do you know which is the best email newsletter software for your company?

Choosing the right email platform can be tough, as once you commit and start sending email campaigns, it’s hard to pause activity and start from scratch.

You might miss a weekly newsletter or two. And then there’s the hassle of migrating your email list from one platform to another.

There’s no single email newsletter software that’s “the best of them all.” There’s only the software that’s best for you… And we’re here to help you find which one is best aligned with your specific marketing needs.

So, let’s dig into 10 of the best email newsletter apps on the market and make your job a little easier.

Table Of Contents

First, what’s email newsletter software?

If you’re new to email marketing, the idea of email newsletter software might be alien to you.

Instead of sending individual emails from your normal email program (Outlook, Gmail, etc), with a newsletter software product, you can build a list of contacts who receive your newsletter(s) on a regular basis.

Inside your email marketing software, you can expect to see these key sections:

  1. Audiences: different segments of your contacts who will receive content personalized to their marketing persona.
  1. Campaigns: you can set up personalized campaigns for each audience.  For example, if you have contacts on your list who sign up to receive your newsletters on event planning, you know they’re interested in the topic. So you can set up a campaign to sell them a course on the topic. Typically, you’d be sending them a series of emails focused on persuading them to buy the course. 
  1. Automations: instead of sending manual emails each week, you can build custom automations based on certain triggers, like “sign-up” or “did not open”.

Now that we know what email newsletter software is, let’s get into 10 of the best to see if they will meet your business needs.

Here are ten of the best email newsletter tools to consider

1. GetResponse (yep, that’s us)

Key features

Alongside a slick UI (user interface) to make creating and sending your first email newsletter as easy as possible, GetResponse includes eight core features to help you craft the right type of email:

  • Email creator that lets you design beautiful emails with ready-made templates and an intuitive drag and drop editor.
  • Newsletters for one-off announcements or weekly/monthly updates.
  • Autoresponders to kickstart email sequences when a subscriber enters your funnel.
  • Automation workflows that send your emails automatically based on recipients’ behavior.
  • Automated blog digests to send your latest published post via email and social media.
  • “Perfect timing” and “time travel” so you learn when is the best time to send your email newsletters.
  • Segmentation and tagging that lets you target your audience with laser-precision
  • Transactional emails that are triggered by send receipts or reminders.

Here’s a quick video overview that shows you what the GetResponse Email Creator is capable of:

Keep in mind GetResponse isn’t just about email. It’s truly an all-in-one marketing platforms that also offers a website builder, signup forms, webinars, Facebook ads, and much more.

Free account?

Yes—you can get a free trial account with access to all key features for 30 days. No credit card needed.

Pricing

GetResponse has four pricing options available:

  • Basic: starts at $15 per month for an email list up to 1,000 subscribers.
  • Plus: starts at $49 per month for an email list up to 1,000 subscribers.
  • Professional: starts at $99 per month for an email list up to 1,000 subscribers.
  • Max: custom pricing available for transactional emails, migrations, dedicated support, and more.

If you opt for a 12-month billing period, GetResponse applies an automatic 18% discount. If you opt for a 24-month billing period, GetResponse applies an automatic 30% discount.

We’re nice like that. We know it takes time to perfect your email marketing craft. It’s not uncommon for our customers to run 6-month A/B testing, and email nurture campaigns can be several months long too.

Summary

GetResponse is perfect for businesses looking to send their first email newsletter and for experienced marketing teams looking for a more modern approach to email marketing.

With GetResponse, you get access to free customizable templates, set up your first newsletter campaign, and start monitoring your contacts’ user behavior — so you can make data-backed decisions for your campaigns.

On top of that, you also get access to all the other marketing tools you’ll need to build a strong online presence, like the website builder, live chat, Facebook ads, and more.

2. MailChimp

Key features

  • Standard email newsletter functionalities 
  • Easily automate scheduled email campaigns
  • Resend emails to non-openers using different subject lines to encourage more opens

There’s also integration with Facebook and Instagram ads, landing pages, and postcards for large teams running campaigns cross-platform.

Free account?

Yes—MailChimp offers a free account that supports up to 2,000 contacts. Note that contacts and subscribers are different. 

A subscriber is an active subscriber who receives your email newsletter. A contact is someone who may have signed up then unsubscribed.

Also, keep in mind that the MailChimp’s free account only lets you send your email campaigns immediately. The schedule function is only available in one of the paid plans.

Pricing

MailChimp offers three paid packages:

  • Essentials: $9.99 per month for up to 50,000 contacts and three audiences.
  • Standard: $14.99 per month for up to 100,000 contacts and five audiences.
  • Premium: $299 per month for up to 200,000 contacts and unlimited audiences.

You can also pay-as-you-go using an email credits plan.

Summary

At first, you may find it hard to get up to speed quickly with MailChimp — especially if you’re new to email marketing. But after some time of practice, you’d realize it’s a great tool.

Once you’ve created your first email campaign, replicating an existing email is easy so you can tweak from there. And whenever you need help with something you’re doing for the first time, MailChimp has an extensive support library and is always responsive on Twitter.

Related: MailChimp alternatives and competitors review

3. Campaign Monitor

Key features

  • Easy walk-through prompts on your first campaign
  • Data-based personalizations for your various audiences
  • The Link Review tool points out any broken links without you having to lift a finger

Free account?

Yes—you can get an indefinite free account for audiences of five or less subscribers.

Pricing

You can sign up to Campaign Monitor via three different packages:

  • Basic: access core features and send up to 2,500 emails for $9 per month.
  • Unlimited: uncap your email limit and get priority support for $29 per month.
  • Premier: unlock advanced segmentation features and get premier support for $149 per month.

You can also choose to pay per campaign if you are an infrequent newsletter sender.

Summary

If you’re ready to start doing lots of smart marketing from your email database, Campaign Monitor gives you an aggregated view. So you have a high-level snapshot of your segments and audiences.

For advanced teams, there are integrations with Salesforce, WordPress, and Shopify. This is ideal for those with great experience but can be daunting if you’re new to email marketing.

In-depth comparison: GetResponse vs. Campaign Monitor

4. ConvertKit

ConvertKit homepage.

Key features

  • ConvertKit’s email newsletter software focuses a lot on design
  • Plenty of branded and easily customizable templates to choose from 
  • Easy to use, no coding knowledge required

Free account?

Yes—you can get a free trial of the Creator or Creator Pro package.

There is also a free package for up to 1,000 subscribers. But it doesn’t support the migration of contacts from another tool and you can’t automate sequences or funnels.

Pricing

You can opt for one of two paid tiers with ConvertKit:

  • Creator: manage up to 1,000 subscribers for $29 per month.
  • Creator Pro: manage up to 1,000 subscribers for $59 per month and get access to Facebook custom audiences, a newsletter referral system, subscriber scoring, and advanced reporting.

Summary

If you are the creative type, Convert Kit is a great tool for going the extra mile in terms of design and imagery. Convert Kit reports 98% deliverability of its emails. While this sounds a high number, as your audience grows, more gaps may appear. 

In-depth comparison: GetResponse vs. ConvertKit

5. Constant Contact

Key features

  • An intuitive drag and drop experience
  • Resend emails to non-openers to improve engagement
  • Email marketing automation features to send automated messages based on specific triggers
  • Contact segmentation capabilities

Free account?

Yes – you can get a one-month free trial of the Email plan.

Pricing

Constant Contact operates two pricing tiers for its email newsletter software:

  • Email: unlimited emails split across three of your users for $15 per month.
  • Email Plus: unlimited emails split across 10 of your users for $30 per month.

If you prepay for six months, you can get a 10% discount and your first month free.

If you prepay for 12 months, you can get a 15% discount and your first month free.

Summary

The simplicity of the email editor is a real standout for Constant Contact. User reviews suggest this is the best part about this particular email newsletter software. But on the flip side, the most impressive features like polls, coupons, and RSVPs are only available at the more expensive pricing tier.

In-depth comparison: GetResponse vs. Constant Contact

6. MailerLite

Key features

  • Email optimization and results tracking features
  • Click maps and “opens by location” reports
  • Each recipient of an email can rate your product or service and Mailerlite tracks all responses for you to work on continuous improvement of your email campaigns.

Free account?

Yes—the free plan offers many features for businesses with under 1,000 subscribers. 

You can also get a 14-day free trial of the premium license.

Pricing

There is only one premium tier so you can select your package by your number of subscribers:

  • Up to 1000: $10 per month.
  • Up to 2,500: $15 per month.
  • Up to 5,000: $30 per month.
  • Up to 10,000: $50 per month.

Premium gives you access to 24/7 live support, white-labeling, custom HTML editor, templates, custom domains, and pop-ups.

You can also save time by scheduling auto-resends and time-zone-based delivery.

Summary

Jennifer Jin, Digital Marketing Manager at Rainforest Partnership highlights feedback surveys as her favorite feature.

“One of the coolest elements is the ability to send feedback surveys that are built into each email, so you don’t need to sign up for a third-party feedback service.”

Jennifer also points out that she loves the look and feel of the templates. 

“They are more modern than other email newsletter software and don’t feel like a traditional email editor template.”

In-depth comparison: GetResponse vs. MailerLite

7. Sendinblue

Sendinblue homepage.

Key features

  • Deliver by each subscriber’s time zone
  • Easily customizable email newsletter templates
  • Marketing automation features available in higher pricing tiers

Free account?

Yes—you can send up to 300 emails a day without handing over your credit card information.

Pricing

You can subscribe to one of three pricing tiers with Sendinblue:

  • Lite: send up to 10,000 emails for $25 per month.
  • Premium: send up to 20,000 emails for $65 per month.
  • Enterprise: available via custom quotes if you don’t find what you need in the lower tiers.

Summary

If you’re trailing email newsletters and have little experience, Sendinblue is a great option at a good price. But like most other tools featured in this guide, when you need to take your campaigns to the next level, you might be raising a business case for extra budget.

In-depth comparison: GetResponse vs. Sendinblue

8. AWeber

Key features

  • Use Aweber’s “Smart Designer” to create well-designed emails
  • Drag & drop email creation; no coding knowledge required
  • Pre-built email newsletter templates

All you need to do is enter your website address and several suggestions appear after a few seconds of analysis.

Free account?

Yes—you can opt for the free account if you have 500 subscribers or less. You get a good chunk of AWeber features but miss out on testing, automation, and removal of its branding.

Pricing

AWeber only has one paid tier:

  • Pro: starting at $16.15 per month, you get access to every feature in the AWeber suite for up to 25,000 subscribers. Pricing increases as you add more subscribers (up to $149 per month for 25,000 subscribers).

If you have over 25,000 subscribers, you’ll need to get in touch with AWeber to discuss.

Summary

The smart designer is a major draw to AWeber for small businesses that don’t have a dedicated graphic designer or time to allocate to playing around with templates.

The sliding scale subscriber model can get fiddly when growing an email audience and constantly changing payment models, though.

In-depth comparison: AWeber alternatives and competitors

9. Mailjet

Key features

  • Advanced Email Editor: edit and send emails to your contacts
  • Segmentation: send emails based on characteristics your subscribers have in common
  • Role management: If you’re working as part of a large marketing team, you can define what your colleagues can and can’t access. 

Free account?

Yes—there’s no expiry date on Mailjet trials and you don’t need to provide credit card information.

There’s also a free tier if you plan on sending less than 200 emails per day and/or 6,000 per month.

Pricing

Once you’ve chosen how many emails you want to send per month (30,000 to 900,000), you can choose from the following licenses:

  • Basic: you get support and removal of Mailjet’s branding from $9.65 per month for 30,000 emails.
  • Premium: testing and automation features get added when for $20.95 per month for 30,000 emails.
  • Enterprise: Mailject will custom quote when you exceed 900,000 emails or need custom delivery and integration.

Summary

If you’re an enterprise with hundreds of marketing team members working on several campaigns at any one time, the role management feature stands out.

The free tier is appealing but limited by the small number of emails you can send per day.

10. Benchmark

Key features

  • Photo editing features: adjust color, add effects, stickers, & texts on images
  • Build landing pages to grow your email list
  • Drag & drop email builder
  • Marketing automation triggers

Free account?

Yes—you can send up to 250 emails per month on the free plan.

Pricing

There are two paid options for Benchmark:

  • Pro: adds marketing automation starting from $13 per month if you have 500 contacts.
  • Enterprise: adds email white-labeling, priority support, and a dedicated IP but you must check with the sales team for a custom quote.

There is a discount applied if you pay annually. 

Summary

There are lots of automation and testing features available in the Pro plan that will help your long-term marketing goals.

First-time and trial users may not see the benefits of this email newsletter software until they pay for the next tier up.

Conclusion

The raft of options for email newsletter software ranges outside of this top 10. This can make finding the best email newsletter software a daunting task.

Rather than starting a trial and setting up accounts with these 10 (and any other email platform), we’re confident you’ll love GetResponse.

For example: Since starting out with GetResponse, Submission Technology, a lead generation agency, reports it has increased engagement to the tune of a 31% open rate. It also boasts a 7.31% unique click-through rate and 99.2% email deliverability rate.

Gemma Seager, Team Leader of Email & Push Notifications at Submission Technology, particularly loves the Contact list segmentation & A/B testing in GetResponse:

“Contact list segmentation and regular A/B testing allow us to check what really resonates with specific groups of contacts. We collect and analyze data and act on it during next campaigns.”





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May 31, 2021 at 02:03PM
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LinkedIn Lead Generation with Lead Gen Forms: Full Guide and Examples

5/31/2021

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LinkedIn Lead Generation with Lead Gen Forms: Full Guide and Examples

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If your goal is to quickly start acquiring high-quality B2B leads, look no further. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are one of the best ways to generate leads and new opportunities for your business. From a user’s perspective, they’re scalable, quick, and easy to set up and customize.

But what’s more important is how they help your business. LinkedIn Lead Gen forms boast some of the best marketing metrics of all lead generation channels, with excellent conversion rates, high-quality leads, and targeting parameters exclusive to LinkedIn.

The average conversion rate on a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form is 13%!

Table Of Contents

How LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms work

Here’s a quick overview of how LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms work:

  • Seamless user experience: Lead forms appear as ads on user feeds and inboxes. They’re designed to blend in with the platform itself, counteracting banner blindness. Users can send the form without ever leaving their current browser tab.
  • Hassle-free: Just one click from the user opens the form and prefills it with information taken from their profile (name, contact info, company name, seniority, job title, location). Another click sends the form. That’s it.
  • Easy to work with: Who needs another big system in their martech stack. LinkedIn Lead Gen offers a built-in editor that lets you create, edit and optimize forms. It’s intuitive enough to be used out of the box. 
  • Context: Advertising is most effective when your prospect is already looking for a product like yours while they see the ad. This makes the ad feel more like a helping hand than a buzzing insect. In this regard, LinkedIn is different from other platforms. People use it to learn, meet people and build their careers, an ideal buyer mindset for B2B communication.
  • Personalization: While LinkedIn Lead Gen forms maintain a consistent visual design (a necessary choice), you get access to many other ways to make your ad stand out. A “Thank You” page, and customized personalization token fields such as: name, company name, etc. are all great ways to give your promotions a personal touch.
  • Powerful targeting: LinkedIn is not just another social network. It has a truly unique community, coupled with targeting tools that let you tap into its potential with highly relevant communication. LinkedIn Ads average an impressive 6.1% conversion rate for B2B campaigns in the US. For comparison, B2B ad campaigns on Google search have an average conversion rate of 2.58%. While CPLs on LinkedIn tend to be higher than on most platforms, don’t let that put you off. What matters is lead quality, and on LinkedIn, you will often target decision-makers, who are worth significantly more as leads.
  • Comprehensive performance tracking and optimization: All relevant data is aggregated and presented to you in the Analytics section. CPL, fill rate, leads per audience segment, and so on.

    You can use this information to run A/B tests on creative or audience, testing one variable at a time. For users who’d rather manage leads in their own system, it’s possible to manually export leads from LinkedIn Campaign Manager or to integrate LinkedIn with a marketing automation platform or a customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

At GetResponse, we’ve recently used the LinkedIn Lead Form Ads to promote our Forrester Total Economic Impact study.

We chose this approach because we wanted to take advantage of the targeting options available on LinkedIn and lower the friction in our customers’ journey. After all, it’s easier to fill out a pre-filled signup form on LinkedIn than go through a separate landing page and manually fill out the details.

We kept the form pretty short (3-4 fields) because you can always find more information by directly going to your lead’s LinkedIn profile. We also made sure to streamline the process and set up instant notifications whenever a new lead filled out the form. Plus, all our new leads went directly into our CRM platform.

The overall cost per lead (CPL) we observed was in line with the industry benchmarks ($30-$40), however, it all comes down to how you set up your targeting and your form.

One thing to note is that the contacts you collect through LinkedIn Lead Form Ads cannot always be treated as leads (especially if you’re marketing an enterprise product) as most users are signed up with their personal email addresses. A potential solution could be to set up the form to only let through business email domains. That’ll lower your conversion rates, but at the same time, your chances of qualifying the leads will also be higher.

Dario Rizzo, B2B Marketing Manager at GetResponse

1. How to plan a LinkedIn Ads campaign with Lead Gen Forms

In this section, we will create a step-by-step plan for a lead generation campaign on LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn Lead Gen Form example.
LinkedIn Lead Gen Form example

Target Audience

Do the necessary research to understand your target customer. The quantitative approach might seem sufficient, but there is a limit to what can be learned from LinkedIn’s data tools.

To gain a true understanding you need qualitative data. Seek out Groups on LinkedIn and visit some profiles of people who would be in your target audience to get an understanding of what they list on their profile. You can pretty much target anything listed on a LinkedIn profile.

Tip: You can and should install a tracking script called “Insight Tag” on your website. It will gather information about people who visit your website and send it to your LinkedIn account so you can then re-target those visitors. 

Lead gen form setup - selecting the target audience.
Lead gen form setup – selecting the target audience.

Budget

All ads on LinkedIn are served based on an auction system. By default, bids are set automatically, but you can choose to do manual bidding if you prefer (and is suggested; what we do for all our clients to get the most return). The algorithm identifies target customers and decides which ad will be displayed based on a variety of factors such as: targeting, what other advertisers are bidding, seasonality, etc. This makes certain targeting parameters inflate the cost of campaigns more than others.

Form length

Decide what information you want your lead gen forms to capture. The limit is 7 fields, but in most cases, you won’t need more than 5. The beauty of using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms is that all of the fields you ask for are already pre-populated with your target audience’s LinkedIn profile information, so in just 2-3 clicks they’ll be registered as a lead after they submit your lead form. No need to manually fill that lead gen form!

Note: LinkedIn supports custom fields, so you can ask something more specific than just name or email. For example, if you’re selling marketing automation software, you could ask marketers “how many hours do you spend daily doing tasks that can be automated”.

LinkedIn lead gen form example.
LinkedIn lead gen form example

Creative

Tone and structure: The best way to earn trust is to not sound like a stereotypical salesman. Good ads capture the feel of a friendly talk between two people – not two businesses. Your tone should be conversational, respectful, and consistent with the rest of your online presence.

Structure: Keep it short, clean, and easy to understand. Place a call to action at the end of your message. 

Message: Don’t talk about yourself, talk to the prospect. Approach each conversation like a transaction. What value can you offer in exchange for their contact information? What is unique about your product or service? How does it address their needs? What are the costs and risks associated with similar products, and how do you address them?

If you’re sending your forms through LinkedIn InMail, it’s also a good idea to structure your message in a way that invites conversation. Consider phrasing parts of your message as questions, and remember many people on LinkedIn also have something to offer – be it their knowledge, connections, or own product. Ask them to tell you about it, many people will be glad to share.

LinkedIn lead generation ad creative example.
LinkedIn lead generation ad creative example

Plan for contingencies

While preparing your campaign, note down any ideas for testing in the future. Alternative ways to phrase your message, potential new directions for targeting, anything that can help you react quickly if your campaign needs improvements once it’s launched.

Rest of the funnel

When your campaign starts bringing in leads, it’s good to be prepared for managing them. Who will follow up with your leads and on which channels? The best way to approach this is to export the leads into your chosen CRM. This lets you keep track of when each lead was contacted, by who, and through what channel. It’s also a good idea to plan a lead nurturing cycle and have it in place before you launch your campaign. Finally, you need a way to send hot leads to sales.

Lead nurturing flow example.
Lead nurturing flow example

2. Targeting deep dive

Creating an audience

There are three ways to create an audience on LinkedIn. You can create one from scratch, choosing LinkedIn’s platform-specific targeting parameters. You can import an audience created in a 3rd party program, such as a customer database or mailing list (called account-based marketing lists; otherwise known as ABM). Finally, you can create lookalike audiences based on another audience. When to use which option?

  • If your goal is to reach new audiences with your product, create a lookalike audience based on an existing one. 
  • If your goal is selling again to past customers, use ABM lists and launch a remarketing campaign. You can target people who visited your website, interacted with ads, or downloaded your content. 
  • If none of your saved audiences matches the goals of your campaign, create a new audience by selecting parameters from a list.

Note that on LinkedIn you can target either individuals or companies. The latter option allows for effective account-based marketing campaigns.

Targeting parameters

Below you will find the full list of parameters you can target users on LinkedIn with. Use them to narrow down your target audience. Each parameter can be used in two ways – to include, or to exclude from the audience. 

Demographic

  • Geographic Region – mandatory
  • Member Age – better not to use it, since most people hide their age on LinkedIn.
  • Member Gender 

Education and interests

  • Member Groups
  • Member Skills
  • Degrees
  • Fields of Study
  • Member Schools

Career

  • Years of Experience
  • Job Seniority
  • Job Function
  • Job Title
  • Company Connections
  • Company Followers
  • Company Size
  • Company Industry
  • Company Name
LinkedIn Ads targeting builder.
LinkedIn ads targeting builder

3. Budget and Schedule

Campaign budget

How much you pay for LinkedIn ads depends on many factors, most importantly, clickthrough rate and other interaction metrics, who you target, and competing bids from other advertisers.

This is a good time to decide what KPIs you want to measure if you haven’t already. Define your goals and how much you’re willing to spend per measurable unit. In any case, start your campaign by spending small sums to make sure everything is set up correctly. Optimize until you’re able to achieve a good ROI. Saving a part of your LinkedIn ads budget for A/B testing several control groups is a great way to use your budget more efficiently, and gives you valuable insights for future campaigns. Usually, after a few weeks comes a moment where you dedicate most of your budget to the best performing combinations. But it’s never a bad idea to continue coming up with new ways to tweak your campaign. Approach it like a cycle of continuous improvement.

Optimize 

You can see how your campaign is performing with real-time reporting in your Campaign Manager account. LinkedIn can track conversions, cost per lead, lead form completion rate, and best-performing audience segments. If a campaign isn’t performing well, go back to the drawing board. You can identify issues by A/B testing – try changing the copy, creative, forms, CTA, landing page, testing one variable per test at a time. Sometimes the problem lies in targeting, in this case, try changing a single targeting parameter and see if it improves your metrics.

4. LinkedIn Lead Gen Form Ad Format 

When you create an ad on LinkedIn, you can create new ads in the visual editor or use one of your existing posts as an ad. You can use Lead Gen forms with any of the four formats available on LinkedIn: 

  • Single Image – the basic format. Single Image is a solid choice if you want to promote something that doesn’t need a lot of space, such as an ebook, or a webinar.
  • Carousel – similar to a single image, but with a scrolling mini-gallery. This lets you present multiple products together.
  • Video – the high-engagement format. Short videos that look good on mobile are a great way to promote products and services with a complicated decision =-making process. Make sure your video tells the whole story even without sound, 79% of audiences on LinkedIn watch videos with sound off.
  • InMail – lets you send messages to your prospective audiences. This format works well if your goal is to build relationships with customers.
  • Conversation Ads – if you’ve ever played an RPG video game, this will feel familiar. These ads start conversations in which users progress by choosing from a set of available options. It’s a high engagement format, and a great way to learn more about prospects.
LinkedIn ads format selection.
LinkedIn ads format selection

5. Managing Your Leads (Download or via CRM)

Storing and cleansing data

The leads you get from your campaign need a place where they can be stored and segmented. An excel spreadsheet is good enough for small-scale operations, but anything bigger requires a CRM, ideally connected to your marketing automation platform. 

There are three areas in which specialized software can make your work easier – marketing automation, lead nurturing, and sales integration. We will discuss each of these in turn, but first a word on data quality.

As any statistician would tell you, junk data is a fact of life. We need to rely on methods to maintain a database that reflects reality – otherwise, we risk wasting money reacting to false information.

How can you ensure data integrity? By gathering it from a trusted source. Good news, data from Linked Lead Gen is generally quite reliable. You still might encounter some junk data, but not nearly as much as from other platforms. In addition, some CRMs offer tools that can help maintain a healthy database by:

  • Storing and organizing data on a unified platform. This includes records of conversations and interactions – phone calls, chat logs, emails, transactions, downloads, 
  • Creating persistent profiles in the database to rely less on impermanent identifiers such as cookies.
  • Removing duplicates.
  • Matching broken records into coherent sets, for example identifying that [email protected] who contacted you today is the same person as the anonymous visitor who browsed your offers yesterday.
  • Informing you and automatically updating records when an email sent to a lead bounces.

Read more: Email List Management Best Practices

Adding to these, here are a few best practices that will help your business maintain data integrity.

  • Store only the lead data you need, or expect to need in the foreseeable future.
  • Set a standard for data quality necessary to create new records in your CRM.
  • Automate mundane data entry where possible. 
  • Provide clear directions to employees who enter data into your system (salespeople will often quickly jot it down during calls) to always double-check the contact information they receive.
Lead gen form thank you message.
Lead gen form thank you message

Marketing automation and lead nurturing 

The best way to manage large datasets and interactions across multiple channels is to automate as much of the process as possible. Very small-scale operations are better off without automation, as setting it up is a time investment. As businesses scale, they increasingly rely on marketing automation.

Each action on your website can start a chain of preprogrammed reactions. To use an example, a new lead from LinkedIn might arrive on your website looking for more information. If your automation system, LinkedIn, and website are integrated, this visit would create a persistent record in your system with all the information from the lead form, IP, and insights about how the lead used your website – pages visited, time spent, clicks, downloads and more. 

Common solutions are offering an ebook to visitors, starting a personalized drip campaign for new subscribers, or opening the chat window after the visitor opened the page with deals.

Personalized email message example.
Personalized email message example

Each workflow can (and often should) branch into different, more personalized reactions as you learn more about each visitor. For example, if your target audience includes both independent professionals and small companies, you want to send them two different ebooks.

Sales integration

A clean, segmented contact database will not only help you with lead nurturing and remarketing, but all employees working with data will also work more effectively.

With a CRM, each salesman knows who was targeted, when, by whom, through what medium, and if there was a sale. They can leave notes, assign tasks, and rate the likelihood of future sales. You could even have a system that automatically assigns leads to the salesperson who is best equipped to deal with particular types of leads, for example, high-seniority decision-makers in IT companies could be contacted by a salesperson with additional technical expertise. 

Sales Navigator

If you’d rather not use a CRM, LinkedIn offers its own paid tool to manage contacts, called “LinkedIn Sales Navigator.” It gives you access to extended InMail features, custom lead lists, and real-time updates on leads.

Summary

Now you know everything you need to plan and execute lead generation campaigns and collect leads on LinkedIn.

Let’s bring it all together: 

  • Understand your audience, its needs, and how your product fits this context.
  • Ask only for the information you need. Respect customers’ privacy.
  • Use a conversational tone, focus on value Be consistent with your tone and message.
  • Spend your budget slowly at first, while you A/B test audiences, format, and copy to improve ROI. 
  • Set up a process to convert leads into sales, track interactions, and maintain relationships with customers.

So go ahead, launch your first LinkedIn Lead Form campaign today!

And if you’re looking for a marketing automation solution that’ll help you drive more business, check out how you can generate leads with GetResponse.





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May 31, 2021 at 02:03PM
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How to Guide: 19 Winning Employee Newsletter Ideas & Examples

5/31/2021

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How to Guide: 19 Winning Employee Newsletter Ideas & Examples

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The article was last updated in May 2021 to provide you with more inspiration and examples.

Although they’re “just” for your own staff and colleagues, employee newsletters shouldn’t be taken for granted. Once you learn how to do internal email newsletters best, they can be effective communication tools. It’s important to thoughtfully craft them as a strong employee newsletter can serve an important role inside the organization.

Below you’ll find the theory, pointers, and employee newsletter examples to inspire your future campaigns.

Table Of Contents

Employee newsletter

Your employee newsletter is a great place to provide your team with an important company update, nurture the relationship, and support the onboarding of new team members. Remember to keep the communication relevant and maintain an appropriate tone of voice to maintain attention.

Editor’s note: Want to give your email marketing a breath of fresh air? Start sending emails your employees actually want to receive. Try the GetResponse Email Creator and build beautiful emails with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor or one of the many ready-made templates that you can easily customize to match your branding. See the video below to watch it in action.

Objectives of employee newsletters

Before going into how to come up with excellent internal email marketing messages, it’s important to know what the objectives of these newsletters are and what elements define them.

Why do you want to send internal newsletters to your employees? These are the main reasons why employee newsletters are so popular in various departments such as Human Resources, Employer Branding, and organizations in general:

  • To inform. Email newsletters circulate in a company to distribute information intended for affected employees. The information included is relevant and useful for targeted departments and employees – even regardless of hierarchical rankings.
  • To break down silos. Aside from distributing relevant information to everyone in a company, email newsletters can also be used as tools to encourage camaraderie among employees, who normally don’t have a strong everyday belonging feeling as they might be separated by cubicles, team designations, or departmental assignments.
  • Provide framing and an external narrative. All employees also have their own families, friends, and social circles. So explaining why companies do things and giving them an easy way to be proud and spread the word, can be a very strong catalyst for word-of-mouth.
  • Reduce email overload. Instead of sending multiple notices, announcements, or acknowledgments to various departments and employee groups, a company can make use of internal email newsletters as a more efficient distribution of information.
  • Work together with other communication channels. Email newsletters can present company information as a reference alongside other channels. For instance, they can announce or acknowledge the achievements of a specific team or department. Where normally this would only be found on an intranet, slack or bulletin board posting.
  • Grease the wheels of employee onboarding. Getting new employees up to speed with everything that’s going on in the company is just as important for the new recruits as it is for the organization itself. You want your new employees to feel that they’re part of the team as quickly as possible. And not only because you need their help in your key projects. A highly effective onboarding process can improving employee commitment up to 18x as a recent study showed.
  • Get feedback and improve employee happiness. When you have teams working off-site, with a distributed team in various locations or even in one location but on different projects it is easy to lose touch.Internal emails can help you learn, engage and retain your employees for longer. Ask feedback through employee email surveys. It is important to not just say you care about employees – but show action on points raised. Email can be one piece to aid in getting feedback and improving happiness and retention.
employee survey email
An internal email from GetResponse, asking for feedback in a survey form.
  • Improve your products and services. In your internal newsletters, you can tickle your employees. Tickle them to give back fresh ideas through surveys – encourage them to participate in different innovation places. Workgroups, Brainstorms or Hackathons. Solutions to the challenges your company is facing are often found by anyone in the company. Email as a firestarter to get valuable feedback from people across all departments. This includes employees who are not as prone to speak up by themselves or hard to meet in the corridor.
Employee Onboarding Email for New GetResponse Team Membrs
Example of an onboarding employee email newsletter sent to newly recruited members of the GetResponse team

Employee engagement with your email doesn’t happen overnight. For that to happen, you need to communicate with them regularly and make your emails interesting. Have a bit of an edge too.

To make sure your emails get opened and read, it’s best if you have a few “golden topics”, but also switch it up every once in a while.  Employee newsletters aren’t strictly business-related only.

Here are 19 employee newsletters examples and ideas to get the internal communication juices running. Most of them you can use as standalone mail or a segment in your company newsletter.

Company-focused newsletter content ideas:

  1. New team member announcement
  2. Commendable feats and milestones
  3. Personal anniversaries and other celebrations
  4. Recommendations and must-sees
  5. Team spotlight
  6. Team party
  7. Special day events
  8. Competitions and contests
  9. Surveys
  10. New job openings
  11. Training opportunities
  12. Doing good and giving back
  13. Important industry updates and news
  14. Product and service development updates
  15. A (personal) message from the board or the CEO
  16. Changes in company leadership / people moving on
  17. Legislative or fiscal changes affecting employees
  18. Customer reviews and feedback from the frontline
  19. Just for fun

1. New team member announcement

Is someone new joining the team? Take this chance to present their profile and let them say a few words about themselves.

A new member intro shouldn’t read like a resume. Instead, a personal angle usually works better. Think about hobbies, an interesting book they’ve recently read, favorite music, or how they like to spend their free time.

This will help make a connection with colleagues. It is a conversation starter for the new recruit and get to know those who share similar interests.

internal newsletter introducing a new team member
Ada, GetResponse Blog Editor, introduced herself when she first joined the Marketing Team.

2. Commendable feats and milestones

Employees do extraordinary things all the time. Perhaps they’ve hit a milestone to be proud about. When a department or project team “achieves a commendable feat”, let everyone know through the internal newsletter and they can serve as an inspiration.

Whether they’ve been with your company for over 10 years or they’ve run their first ultramarathon, let others join in on the celebration. Also a great place to show “Employee of the Month” or “Employee of the Year” is in your internal newsletter.

Build up a team spirit, some additional likability and they are happy to cheer and congratulate each other on their achievements.

GetResponse email celebrating employee milestone.
GetResponse email celebrating employee milestone

3. Personal anniversaries and other celebrations 

You don’t have to offer cake or spa vouchers to celebrate your employees’ birthdays and other special events.

If one of your employees had a baby, got married, or it’s their birthday, you can send them your congratulations and best wishes.

It’s great seeing how team members’ lives are changing over the years, when they’ve received different kinds of those emails during their time in your company.

GetResponse email celebrating team member's new baby arrival.
GetResponse email celebrating team member’s new baby arrival

4. Recommendations and must-sees

It can be that some of your employees aren’t local. Maybe relocated to join your company or they’re working remotely and only rarely visit the company HQ.

A top recommendations on places, shows, or restaurants to visit could be a bit of a different topic – some companies do centrally organise outings to go see sporting events or a concert together with others from the company.

What if your office is in a small town and everyone knows everything there is to see?

Then you can focus on a different kind of recommendations. For example, books, movies, or interesting playlists.

This type of communication can help your team members plan their time outside of the company or start discussions on things they like to do in their spare time.

And who knows, they may even choose to organize a team get-away to catch a few drinks or visit a concert after hours?

5. Team spotlight

Team spotlights are more common in enterprise, but it’s not exclusive to big companies.

Introduce the team – whom it consists of, what they’re working on, and what others can reach out to them about. People usually don’t know what other teams are working on.

They may know something about their area of work, but not necessarily the details.

Newer employees often end up not knowing who to ask about certain projects or if something’s being developed.  Something an employee / project directory (They used to call that a Face Book, can you imagine?!) on an intranet could relieve if you’d go and actively search in it. Turns out, nobody is that active if they don’t know the details of the projects exist.

Including a team spotlight in your employee newsletter can help bridge that.

Additionally it gets a bit of coffee machine: “Hey weren’t you in the newsletter?” going and employees know where to turn if they have an issue in a given area.

6. Team party 

Company retreats, parties, and getaways are popular these days.

If your team’s relatively small, organizing them is pretty easy.

But if you have a few hundred employees, some of whom are working abroad, planning everything requires a lot of effort.

You can avoid some of that hassle by sending regular updates with details about what’s coming and what your team members have to do to join you on a trip.

It’s also useful to store all that information in one single space, like a company intranet, to which you’d point from all your emails.

If you’re planning this type of email communication, make sure to keep it going even some time after the event’s taken place.

Prepare a summary, send pictures and videos, and ask for feedback so that your next company retreat will be even better.

GetResponse team party invitation email.
GetResponse team party invitation email.

7. Special day events

You can’t organize team getaways all the time. But why not bring the party to the team. By that I mean organizing a special day at the office.

You can plan them around special dates, like the International Coffee Day, Star Wars Day, or Read a Book Day.

There are plenty of reasons to celebrate, there is a whole calendar with holidays and special days. Your special day events can be one-off, or something you run regularly.

For example, do a movie screening night, or a board game afternoons every couple of weeks. Slightly less frequently, team members are invited to have fun on various occasions like Pizza Day or Fry-Day.

GetResponse email inviting employees to celebrate Fry-day on Friday the 13th.
GetResponse email inviting employees to celebrate Fry-day on Friday the 13th

8. Competitions and contests

Everybody has that one (a bit too) competitive colleague. Some competitive spirit is always good though. And you will see that employees also have the same drive in their personal life. Why not channel that and invite employees to represent your company during a race or other type of contest. Or even plan competitions inside of your company.

Finding ideas shouldn’t be too hard either. You could plan it around sports – cycling, running, swimming, etc.

These could also be around some other hobbies. Cooking, baking, photography, or showing a good-doing.

You’d be surprised how involved people can get, especially it’s about something they really enjoy doing.

GetResponse employee contest winners announcement email.
GetResponse employee contest winners announcement email

9. Surveys

 Gathering feedback is fundamental in all areas of business to be able to thrive. Feedback is  an essential part of day-to-day team interactions and development plans. The addition of an email / online survey is that they are quick, structured and you can learn about your employees’ opinions.

Ask about anything: Company benefits, training opportunities, satisfaction with the workplace, or a recent company retreat. Or the more general “idea box”.

The thing you can do with online surveys, that you can’t in face to face is give an option for these to be anonymous. Just make sure people feel safe to share and aren’t judged by the outcomes.

Email inviting employees to share their opinion on the company culture.
Email inviting employees to share their opinion on the company culture

10. New job openings

Internal recruitment is a good way to progress, both for employees and the company.

It allows your employees to grow and develop new skills and reduces additional time and money on training new hires.

The counter argument? People from outside of your company can bring new skills, perspectives, and knowledge that’s often hard to develop internally.

Leaving that argument aside, it just makes sense to let your employees know first when there’s a new job opening. Not only because some of them might want to apply for the role. But because they might know of someone who’d fit the role perfectly and could recommend them to you.

We tend to surround ourselves with people who are similar to us. That said, if you’re happy about your employees’ attitude to work and their performance, the odds are their friends will have similar traits.

This is especially useful for recruitment processes in very competitive industries (e.g. IT Development) or where the access to experts is limited.

11. Training opportunities

Helping your employees grow, a list of training opportunities is great content when for your  employee emails.

This is a no-brainer if you’re already running workshops and trainings, that people can attend. But you can also tap into the knowledge inside the company. Start a new initiative and ask your team members to share their knowledge.

Example of a quiz / survey around employee training. Think about giving it as assessment (what is my level, do I need it?) and evaluation (What have I learned). 

Perhaps there are people on staff, who like to teach others about their skills, like something very specific like coding or more general “business skills” like creating kick-ass powerpoints / presentations skills. Your colleague just visited a  bootcamp or international event and can share their learnings with others.

Talk to your employees and invite them to talk about their areas of expertise. You’ll be surprised how many people enjoy sharing their knowledge with others.

It is also an opportunity for your team members to learn about new topics. some companies think takes the form of an AMA (Ask Me Anything), where one employee does a (short)  presentation and all attendees can discuss. And who knows, maybe this will motivate them to develop new skills and apply for one of your more-specialized roles?

12. Doing good and giving back

Many companies give back to the community. It is a part of corporate responsibility. doing good can take many forms:
* Volunteering
* Fundraising or donations to charity
* Sponsor sport, clubs and local associations
* Give back a day to do some good.

Whatever the cause is, let your employees know about it and encourage them to join in.

It’s good to know that the company you’re working for and spending a big part of your daily life in – shares some of its resources with those that need it.

I bet some of your team members would be happy to join and help out with the initiative. Sometimes it’s the absence of a “group” that’s stopping others from doing something good for the community.

13. Important industry updates and news 

Naturally, not all communication has to be about perks, benefits, or team parties.

You’re running a business after all.

That’s why internal email communication can also be around the things that affect your business and the industry you are in. If there are any legislative changes or there’s an interesting trend that can help your business grow, let your employees know about it.

14. Product and service development updates

A company should know what their products and services are if you want them to serve your customers effectively. Everyone in your team’s affected by your developments and it only makes sense to keep them informed about all the new cool stuff your teams have been working on.

Your Marketing Team needs to know what’s on the roadmap and what’s been launched. in order to best market your product.

Your Customer Service Team can help your customers better, if they know about the latest releases and services.

Your Sales Team will be able to sell better, if they have the answers or use-cases for your new features.

And that list goes on. It makes sense to let people know what the developments with products and services. It also signals respect that people don’t need to find out about changes from external news.

15. A (personal) message from the board or the CEO

 An internal newsletter is a chance to share company’s results, future plans, forecasts, and so on. Because If you want your employees to follow the vision, they need to know where the company’s heading. You can’t keep this locked in the boardroom, sharing the vision is a sign of effective leadership.

If your organization is large you won’t be able to have a 1 on 1 with everybody or even chat with them in the hallway, you’ll need to get it across in other way. In your employee newsletter for example.

But sometimes the news your CEO will have to share, won’t be positive at all, and time sensitive. If there’s something is affecting the company and its customers in a negative way, they better learn about it so they can get prepared and know what the correct narrative is. (internal PR).

Imagine a scenario where your customer data has been leaked or your company has been hit by a DDoS attack. Some other kinds of company problems. Your employees need to be quickly informed about them, so that is worth an internal (email) update.

16. Changes in company leadership / people moving on

Not all companies are comfortable talking about people are leaving. But in certain cases it makes total sense to do so, for example, when it is a retiree and send them off with a nice goodbye.

Or when it’s someone with a key function, beloved company evangelist / face of the company / that awesome intern.  When people are changing  positions or leaving the company, this is a good way to let the rest of the company know.

17. Legislative or fiscal changes affecting employees

In certain countries legislations and fiscal policies change regularly. But at least yearly new tax laws might come into effect. Although this isn’t necessarily an exciting topic, it’s important to keep your employees updated on things that might affect them.

An extreme example is, for instance, the case of Brexit.

If your company’s based in the UK, and employees are British, they might be affected by the potential withdrawal of the UK from the EU. People can have real worries about what is happening.

Similarly, should a country that your team members often travel to have changed their policies with regard to travel permits, they want to know.

It may not sound breaking news, such information can save employees from unnecessary hassle if they were planning to go on a business trip to a chosen country.

18. Customer reviews and feedback from the frontline

Some team members are on the frontline. They get to talk a lot to customers, hear their feedback, and know how people think about the company.

Others don’t have that same level of direct customer and market feedback. They don’t get to see how their work impacts customers every day. The good news is that you can change that. Share some of customer reviews and feedback, gathered directly or from social media, etc.

It is a great motivation to see that customers appreciate the work that is done.

19. Just for fun

Fun may not sound like it has place in a company newsletter, but maybe it makes more sense than anything else.

Adding jokes, puns, and trivia can brighten your employees’ day. If it’s done a regular basis, say biweekly basis, team members might open your newsletter just to see that one segment.

Picture this:

In the earlier days of GetResponse, one of the team members used to prepare a funny magazine with different stories including people in the office.

He’d mix them into the popular stories from the news or TV shows, comment on bigger projects that were being developed in the company, or simply write funny poems.

These magazines have been such a hit that for several years, they have been framed and presented by the entrance to the company’s main building.

If that doesn’t speak for company culture I don’t know what does.

Elements of effective employee newsletters

To write effective internal email newsletters, the following elements should be taken into account:

  1. Target audience.
    Internal newsletters have a fixed target audience – internal company employees. This sounds like one group, but often it isn’t. What do they want to hear about and are interested in? If you have a big company or very diverse interests represented, think about adding segmentation on the content. For instance segment on the departmental level.
  2. Content relevance.
    All email newsletters should be written to serve a purpose. So mix and match the content with the above-mentioned objectives. At the same time, readers shouldn’t feel that they wasted their time reading (and acting on) your email. Or the email marketing engagement will plummet a few newsletters in.
  3. Format and presentation.
    Adopt a consistent format to make newsletters familiar and easy to read/digest for everyone. It’s handy to keep a similar layout, style, and overall presentation for internal newsletters. Use a fixed but flexible email template. Why not do some grid style planning on it? Getting it right once will save a lot of time and effort.
  4. Tone of voice and style.
    Your tone of Voice and style to use depend mostly on what the company or organization stands for and sounds like. It’s important to pick a style that suits the company. Hitting the right tone will also make your newsletters engaging and appealing.A company like Red Bull  might want to pick a different tone than a Starbucks, and these differ quite dramatically from a law firm, non-profit, or governmental, for instance. It can be light-hearted or more stern and formal. We often speak about company culture, an internal newsletter is a tangible “representative” of company culture.
GetResponse employee newsletter template for boy’s day
Boy’s Day email precisely targeted at male team members. Such occasions are a great opportunity to come up with a completely new email template design.

Pointers for writing better internal newsletters

The objectives and elements  already give you an idea of what makes the most effective internal email newsletters. Keep them in mind while writing. Your goals will guide the writing of your internal email newsletters.

Naturally, don’t forget to follow the general rules of effective email marketing campaigns and email marketing best practices.

  • Ensure that information is complete. Readers shouldn’t feel like they are only being teased. Where a B2C sales emails might want to tease out engagement, you want to give enough info. Internal newsletters aren’t school books either: try to be complete – but not overcomplete. The amount of information needed is probably smaller than you expect!
    Linking to – for instance – an intranet for more info is great. Or a reference “ask X at department Y for more information” can be a good way to encourage interdepartmental contact and dialog.
  • Keep internal newsletters simple.There is no international award for brevity. But there should be! Make your newsletters short. Short. Have short sentences and short paragraphs. The point in making things concise and simple is avoiding that people skip the info altogether.
    Bear in mind that everyone in the company is (or should be?) busy and won’t always have the luxury of time to read wordy and long-winded newsletters.
    Most importantly newsletters should demonstrate a sense of fluidity so reading them appears natural. Especially think about rewriting that CEO musing. (they do love their long intros and columns!). Rewrite it a few times to make it better.
  • Make newsletters engaging and empowering. Employees should read the internal newsletters because they find them interesting or engaging. Not because the boss demands them to do so. There is nothing wrong in making the emails engaging enough to create a habit of reading them, but how?
    To make newsletters more engaging, use a conversational or casual tone. Unless it’s a company policy, it isn’t required to write in a formal tone. They are often not as strict as official company or organization correspondence so you have some leeway for making them interesting and engaging.
How to write newsletters that get opened, read, and clicked
  • Be creative or use humor. To make newsletters engaging, be creative or use a bit of humor. For example when putting on a reporter-hat about a recently held company event, don’t just yodel out the facts in straight journalistic powerpoint-to-bullet-point form. Try adding in some humor-laced comments along with candid photos. (You know what I mean, when I say just don’t overdo it.)When a department or project team “achieves a commendable feat”, as they say. Let everyone know and they can serve as an inspiration. Like you. Already read halfway through this huge blogpost. Well done, a “commendable feat”! You might feel a bit inspired already? More recommended internal newsletter topics coming up at the end of this article.
  • Use visuals images and photos if you can. Imagine a device that looks like a endless teleprompter of lengthy, non-stop blocks of grey text. Feeding line after line of boring text. The human is a visual animal.The reading experience with images is so much better. In fact, according to a recent study by GetResponse, emails with images have 43% higher click-through rates. Visuals are certainly recommended when writing about boring facts and corporate updates. Depending on your tone-of-voice, your own pictures (non-stock) featuring the in-house employees always do better.
  • Keep it appropriate. Creativity and some humor make newsletters better but always keep it appropriate. When reporting about layoffs or poor company performance, for example, humor is out of the question. It might go without saying, but it’s not right to make fun at times of unfortunate events and to make fun of a specific employee or department for the sake of making the newsletter engaging.
  • Keep improving. – A/B testing is a form of an experiment to determine tweaks that can enhance the results of a project or campaign. There are a number of other email newsletter tests you can consider. In doing internal email newsletters, think mostly about the subject lines and the type of topics. Of course, the changes or tweaks that received the most favorable KPI’s / statistics will likely be used for succeeding newsletters. But next to the numbers, quality feedback is also important. You can just walk up to your colleagues and ask, or do it in form of an employee questionnaire.
GetResponse internal newsletter informing new employees about an internal app
Internal email newsletter informing team members about a new mobile app they can use to make their days even sweeter

Your internal employee newsletter

In writing effective internal email newsletters, get the tone right. Find your mix of topics and share appropriate content that fits with objectives. it is good to have consistent format and an engaging and empowering tone. Internal newsletters are often different from your marketing emails. The internal newsletter objectives serve as a guide on what you should put in there.  They justify and answer the “why” you want to send those engaging newsletters.

Writing newsletters isn’t serious journalism or creative writing either, but when you are trying to engage the whole company, it’s inevitable to try doing different things every once in a while. Feel free to share in the comments how you plan your employee newsletters!

Looking for internal newsletter templates?

Brand your business with perfect design. Try GetResponse Email Creator that comes with tons of ready-made templates and create professional emails that encourage engagement with your campaigns.





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May 31, 2021 at 02:03PM
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Robotic Grippers Optimized with nTopology and Desktop Metal 3D Printing

5/31/2021

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Robotic Grippers Optimized with nTopology and Desktop Metal 3D Printing

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Our regular readers will know that Executive Editor Joris Peels is enthusiastic about application-specific 3D printing endeavors, seeing the benefits additive manufacturing (AM) can bring to everything from nozzles and heat exchangers to heat sinks and filters. Yet another specific use case has been demonstrated by Preziosa Francesco SRL, an Italian manufacturer of sheet metal cabinets, which has relied on nTopology’s software to optimize grippers for their robotic manufacturing operations.

The manufacturing process with 3D printed gripper. Image courtesy of nTopology.

To maintain an edge in their sector, the firm purchased a robotic cell and an automated press brake bending machine worth hundreds of thousands of euros. The Fanuc M710-iC robotic arm would load metal sheets onto an automatic press brake bender, then orient and hold the part as it was bent before placing the component into the proper basket for storage. However, the need to CNC machine custom robot grippers for specific jobs resulted in long lead times. For this reason, they partnered with Add-it and brought gripper production in-house with metal 3D printing from Desktop Metal.

Image courtesy of nTopology.

To produce the proper grippers, capable of precise positioning under high loading conditions, the engineers at Add-it sought to improve the traction pattern on the gripper. They incorporated a honeycomb-style perforation pattern onto the gripper that increased traction. Using nTopology’s Topology Optimization tools, they then created a slimmer design for the gripper, allowing it to reach the press brake in a safer and more repeatable fashion. By optimizing its geometry, the gripper maintained the same stiffness, grip force, and weight but with a more compact footprint.

Image courtesy of nTopology.

The grippers were ultimately 3D printed in 17-4 PH stainless steel using the Desktop Metal Studio System. The parts were produced in just four days, compared to the two weeks required for CNC’d variants. Weight was reduced from 32 to 40 percent, while costs were cut by 35 percent.

“If you don’t have a very repeatable process, you are forced to run production only during the day. It is very economically difficult to have these machines operate during day-shift only. Theoretically, you can have a very clever production system. But if it doesn’t work as intended because of a cheap part, an investment worth hundreds of thousands is at stake. nTopology allowed us to use robotic manufacturing our Desktop Metal Studio System to its full potential,” said Marco Preziosa, CEO of Preziosa Francesco SRL.

The 3D printed gripper parts alongside a traditionally manufactured component. Image courtesy of nTopology.

The benefits of 3D printing end effectors has already been explored by a variety of firms, with some specifically using the technology to create grippers for soft robotics. Now that nTopology has released the third major update for its software, however, there are sure to be more unique case studies for this and other applications.

Crucially, the update includes GPU acceleration that makes it possible to achieve a 10 to 100 times increase in performance for visualizing complex geometries. Design changes can be previewed in real-time, previously almost impossible in simulation-based software such as this.





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May 31, 2021 at 09:03AM
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3DPOD Episode 64: 3D Print Services with Clement Moreau Sculpteo Founder

5/31/2021

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3DPOD Episode 64: 3D Print Services with Clement Moreau, Sculpteo Founder

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Clement Moreau founded Sculpteo and led the 3D print service for ten years before selling it to BASF. In this episode, we follow his journey, discuss what made Sculpteo successful,... The post 3DPOD...

View the entire article via our website.



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May 31, 2021 at 08:33AM
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Upon Successful Live 3D Printing Event AMUG Announces Awards and Board Changes

5/31/2021

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Upon Successful Live 3D Printing Event, AMUG Announces Awards and Board Changes

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The Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) launched its first live event since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down such activities to great enthusiasm from its tightly knit community. Now, the group has announced a series of awards and some changes to its Board of Directors.

Among the honors given was the prestigious Distinguished INnovator Operator (DINO) Award, which is provided to AMUG members who have demonstrated a long history of additive manufacturing (AM) expertise, contributions to the industry, and support to the users group. This year, the newly inducted DINOs included:

 “There were many candidates that had the tenure required for this coveted award. However, that is just one criterion. To be a DINO, one must also give back to the industry and support AMUG. These four individuals rose above all others because of their actions and achievements,” said Carl Dekker, AMUG president.

(left to right) Shane Collins, Robin Van Bragt, Giles Gaskell and Ana Neves. Image courtesy of AMUG.

Over the course of its 33-year history, AMUG has only selected 174 DINOs, demonstrating the character of those award-holders. The organization gives out no more than 10 DINO awards per year. It will begin accepting nominations for 2022 DINO candidates October 1, 2021.

AMUG also chose two individuals to receive its President’s Award, Terry Hoppe and Vince Anewenter. Hoppe was formerly Stratasys‘ director of North American applications team and was given the award posthumously after he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the end of 2020. Therefore, Stratasys co-founder Scott Crump accepted the award on Hoppe’s behalf.

Scott Crump (right) accepts the President’s Award on behalf of Terry Hoppe; presented by Carl Dekker. Image courtesy of AMUG.

Terry Hoppe, formerly Stratasys’ director of North American applications team, received the award posthumously. Sadly, Hoppe succumbed to pancreatic cancer in December 2020. Scott Crump, co-founder of Stratasys, accepted the award on Terry’s behalf. Crump and AMUG representatives had numerous positive remarks to make about the 3D printing veteran, including the role he played in taking AMUG from a supplier-focused group to one that included AM more broadly.

Gary Rabinovitz, AMUG chairperson, was vice president and president during the transition years. He stated, “The future of AMUG was far from certain at that time, and sponsor support was minimal. Yet, we needed support from additive manufacturing companies representing a range of technologies to make the reinvented AMUG Conference work. And that is when Terry Hoppe’s contributions were pivotal.”

“The AMUG Conference is unique in that it is a forum for information exchange, but potential sponsors were evaluating it for its lead generation potential,” Rabinovitz continued. “We invited Terry as a guest of our event so that he could experience what we were trying to do. From that exposure, he became a believer and advocate. Terry took that conviction back to Stratasys and championed the AMUG way. He was effective; Stratasys became a foundational sponsor and has remained a strong supporter over the past nine years.”

As for Anewenter, of the Milwaukee School of Engineering, he has been AMUG treasurer for nine years. According to AMUG, he aided in growing the event attendance by ten times, all while remaining healthy from a financial standpoint. Rabinovitz said, “Starting with very little, Vince has guided and managed AMUG operations through transitions, growth, and challenges. And he has done that collaboratively…as part of the team… where he listens to others and works hard to satisfy divergent goals.”

Vince Anewenter (right) receives the President’s Award from Carl Dekker. Image courtesy of AMUG.

The President’s Award if even more selective than the DINOs, with only 10 recipients having been chosen over the course of the past 33 years.

Additionally, AMUG chose winners for its annual Technical Competition: Bill Braune of Dinsmore, Inc. and Vito Gervasi of Cadens LLC. Braune’s entry for the Advanced Finishing category was detailed scene inspired by the Darksiders video game series. He used Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis to 3D print the items in his scene before finishing them and applying 3D printing polymer powders to their surface to generate rough textures for the scene. Braune finally applied some 30 colors to his models with dry brushing, airbrushing and washes.

Bill Braune’s winning entry titled “Death: A Horseman’s Journey.” Image courtesy of AMUG.

Gervasi was awarded first place in the Advanced Concepts category for a one-tenth scale replica of a 3D printed turbine system. While parts of the full-size micro-hydro system was 3D printed on the Big Area Additive Manufacturing system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, the replica was produced with fused deposition modeling. The “BAAM Dam”, as it was called, demonstrated Gervasi’s belief that 3D printing can reduce the carbon footprint of the United States.

Bonnie Meyer, chairperson of AMUG’s Technical Competition committee, Meyer said of Gervasi’s work, “What grabbed the attention of the judges was the creative use of additive manufacturing to address the need for more renewable energy. Scale was also a factor. The replica Vito displayed spanned an entire tabletop. When the judges imagined a unit 10 times larger, ‘BAAM Dam’ took on a whole new dimension.”

Vito Gervasi’s winning entry titled “BAAM Dam. Leveraging Large Format AM for Community Hydroelectric Applications.” Image courtesy of AMUG.

Finally, AMUG has also announced its new Board of Directors for 2021 to 2022, which will begin their roles on July 1, 2021. Eight of the 10 members were elected by AMUG members at the 2021 conference. This group then selected two individuals to act as the Treasurer and Director at Large positions. Met-L-Flo’s Carl Dekker, previously a two-term Vice President, was appointed for a second term as President. ASTM International’s Paul Bates maintained the Past President position, while Andrew Allshorn, of AT 3D-SQUARED, was re-elected Vice President for a second term.

Top row (from left) Carl Dekker, Paul Bates, Andrew Allshorn, Vince Anewenter and Leslie Frost. Bottom row (from left) Bill Macy, Jordan Weston, Tim Bell, Tom Sorovetz and Gary Rabinovitz. Image courtesy of AMUG.

GE Additive’s Leslie Frost was re-elected Secretary, her third term in this position. The aforementioned Vince Anewenter was elected to continue his role as Treasurer. Thomas Sorovetz of Stellantis (recently formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group) maintains the newly renamed Director of Events and Hospitality position for the 28th year.

Four new director positions were also created, which will be filled by Bill Macy of Titan Robotics as Director of Membership, Jordan Weston of MSOE as Director of Education & Conference, Tim Bell of Siemens Digital Industries USA as Director of Business Development, and Gary Rabinovitz of Reebok International as Director at Large. All but Rabinovitz were elected to join the board for the first time. Rabinovitz previously served as Chairman for five terms, as well as President, Past President, Vice President and Board Advisor for five terms.

Macy will hold the position of Director of Membership. Weston, who has served as Chair of the Track Leader Committee for three years and has been a tracker leader for six years, will assume the Director of Education & Conference position. Bell will hold the position of Director of Business Development. Rabinovitz was appointed to the Director at Large position.

“We established a new management structure to better support AMUG’s growth. While much thought and deliberation went into the planning, I expect to find that the structure and individual roles will require some adaptation,” said Carl Dekker, AMUG President. “I am quite pleased with the incoming board’s mix of long-term service and first-time participation as we implement the new structure. We will have fresh ideas balanced by historical perspectives. I am looking forward to leading this team and instituting refinements as needed.“

The board will establish the program for the AMUG 2022 conference, which will be held in Chicago, Illinois from April 3 to April 7.





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May 31, 2021 at 08:09AM
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Sneakers Unboxed: Studio To Street at The Design Museum

5/31/2021

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Sneakers Unboxed: Studio To Street at The Design Museum

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The creative team behind Sneakers Unboxed: Studio To Street, the Design Museum’s much anticipated new exhibition which opened on 18th May 2021, highlights the importance of collaboration when it comes to successful design. Two London design teams came together to bring the exhibition to life; InterestingProjects handled the 3D design of the exhibition flow and installations, while Studio LP was in charge of all things 2D, including signage and infographics.

Covering everything from the evolution of the sneaker to a precious collectable, to more sustainable methods of production, the collaborators have created a unique experience that celebrates all facets of the global footwear phenomenon, whilst facing the challenge of working remotely from home during lockdown.

Initially briefed on the project in late 2019, the team were forced to delay due to the pandemic, and didn’t start again until early 2021. By this time the brief had evolved and the team were faced with the huge task of designing a show-stopping exhibition remotely. Unable to physically access the Design Museum space, they had to solely rely on site floor plans, elevations, and photos to create their designs. They even imaginatively improvised and created mock-ups in their homes to help plan the space, with signage print-outs pinned to door frames and walls, and house exteriors used to get a sense of heights.

The final exhibition space is divided into three areas, each telling a different part of the sneaker story. It opens in a large white space that pays homage to the sneaker and its cultural relevance in the world, with a design that harks to the architecture of a cathedral, highlighting the global cult of the sneaker in modern culture. White curtains, made from materials used in the fabrication of Puma sneakers, give a further nod to the religious, chapel-like concept.

The second area is all about style, tracing key moments in youth culture when trainers went from being functional sports shoes to style icons. Backdrops reference the cities of Los Angeles, New York City, and London where this evolution took place, and billboard-like displays and cement-like surfaces evoke their urban landscapes. This second section culminates with a display that highlights the shift in sneaker culture that emerged in Tokyo in the 1990s, when an explosion of limited editions and fashion collaborations elevated the sneaker from the street to a much-coveted collectable.

The third and final area focuses on performance and is designed to reference a science lab. Each island showcases a specific innovation in sneaker design, inviting the visitor into the detail of materials, sketches, and design constructions. The close of the exhibition is a “green room”, inviting the visitor to consider the carbon footprint of sneaker production and look at the more sustainable methods of fabrication being explored today.

This theme of sustainability was also a key factor in the exhibition design. Wherever possible the team incorporated materials that were sustainable and that could reused for future exhibitions. For example, 85% of the perspex cases used to display objects were reused from existing Design Museum stock, while labels were produced on EKOply, a material composed of 100% recycled plastics with a clean, polished surface.

Studio LP’s infographics nod to the construction, design, and production of sneakers, with colours that reflect and work seamlessly with the surrounding installation elements. Produced on suspended lightbox panels, they amplify the cathedral-like concept of the entrance space and add dramatic lighting throughout.

Design Museum Curator Ligaya Salazar commented: “Creating an entire exhibition from our homes was a challenge but thanks to a truly collaborative attitude and approach by everyone involved, we believe we’ve created a unique experience we are all very proud of. Now it’s exciting to see how people are reacting to and interacting with the exhibition, which is always the most satisfying part of the job.”

Sneakers Unboxed: Studio To Street
18th May – 24th October 2021
The Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG

Curator: Ligaya Salazar, The Design Museum
Design: InterestingProjects & Studio LP
Build: Central
Graphics: Puck Studio
Banner production: 4Sight

Photography credit: Felix Seller for the Design Museum





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May 31, 2021 at 05:10AM
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3D Printing Webinar and Event Roundup: May 30 2021

5/30/2021

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3D Printing Webinar and Event Roundup: May 30, 2021

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After an extremely busy two weeks that were jam-packed with webinars and events, both live and online, this week things will be a little bit calmer. To learn when you can attend a webinar about polypropylene, an event on 3D printing in hospitals, and more, read on for all the details!

SPEE3D Exhibiting at Land Forces 2021

3D printing has often been used for defense applications, and one Australian company in particular has seen its large-format metal AM technology used by the military many times. That company is SPEE3D, and it will be exhibiting at this week’s Land Forces Australia Indo Asia Pacific International Land Defence Exposition, held in-person at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Center from June 1st through 3rd. Organized by the Australian not-for-profit corporation AMDA Foundation Limited, with support from the Australian Army, the Australian Department of Defence, and the Defence Science and Technology Group, the event will be a showcase for manufacturers, systems integrators and maintenance and logistics specialists that operate across the full spectrum of land warfare, and highlight the many different platforms, equipment, technologies, and services in demand by the armies of the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

“The biennial LAND FORCES Exposition is a powerful forum for key decision-makers from throughout the region, enabling government representatives, defence officials, military procurement managers and senior army officers to network with defence materiel manufacturers, equipment suppliers and service providers. LAND FORCES will be a showcase for manufacturers, systems integrators and maintenance and logistics specialists operating across the full spectrum of land warfare for over 3 days.”

You can register for the event here. SPEE3D will be located in the Static Display Area, right next to the Media Box and Café Seating area.

GE Additive Discusses M Line Production Solution

The latest in GE Additive’s Webinar Wednesday series is taking place at 10 am EST this Wednesday, June 2nd, regarding “M Line – The Evolution of an Additive Production System.” Wolfgang Lauer, GE Additive Product Manager, and Johannes Strößner, GE Additive Sub Section Manager, will discuss the development and capabilities of the new Concept Laser M Line Additive Production System, including what procedures and processes were used to ensure material property considerations for part quality, consistency, and reliability.

“As metal additive manufacturing continues to mature, companies and industries are recognizing the benefit of industrializing the technology and making the leap from prototyping to production. For several years, GE Additive has been developing the Concept Laser M Line production solution. More than just a single machine, M Line is a system created specifically for metal additive production, developed around the ideas of safety, reliability, repeatability, and efficiency.”

You can register for the webinar here.

Polypropylene for Sinterit’s SLS 3D Printer

Later on June 2nd, specifically at 2 pm EST, Sinterit is having a webinar entitled “Polypropylene (PP) in the Sinterit SLS Solution,” about PP, which the company calls the “8th material for our compact SLS 3D printing system.” Sinterit’s Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer, Konrad Głowacki, and its US Head of Sales and Marketing, Tim Sheehan, will be hosting the webinar together.

The webinar will begin with an introduction by the two co-hosts, and then continue on to the first PP material dedicated for compact SLS 3D printers, and an explanation as to why Sinterit is introducing the material. Then they’ll move on to specifications, functions, potential applications, safety and maintenance, and cost comparison, before looking at the “widest material possibilities in compact SLS segment,” the variety of Sinterit powders, and finally discuss open parameters and how to test out new materials like PP, before opening it up to a question and answer session. You can register for the webinar here.

Materialise: 3D Printing in Hospitals Globally 

The latest virtual event by Materialise will take place all day on Thursday, June 3rd, called “3D Printing In Hospitals Around the World.” Starting at 2:30 am EST and going through 2:30 pm EST, the event includes sessions on topics like point-of-care (POC) manufacturing, advanced trends for 3D printing, understanding the quality and legal aspects of an in-hospital 3D printing lab, 3D printing in orthopaedics and craniomaxillofacial, and more. There will also be virtual lab tours, time for networking at round table sessions, and more.

“3D technology has been transforming healthcare for over 20 years. It’s been used in applications from designing and producing personalized devices, to planning complex clinical procedures, and training future medical professionals more effectively. And that’s just the start.

“We are creating the first virtual event of its kind — a gathering of the most inspirational minds working with 3D printing in hospitals around the world. Join our 12-hour virtual event at any time and have free access to a dynamic mix of live presentations, lab tours, interactive networking opportunities, and much more!”

You can register for the virtual event here; registrations will close at 11 am EST on Wednesday the 2nd.

TriMech Presents Top 3 New SOLIDWORKS 2021 Features

At 10 am EST on the 3rd, TriMech Application Engineer David Cano-Meija will discuss his “Top 3 New Features for SOLIDWORKS 2021” in a brief webinar. In 30 minutes, he’ll cover equations in custom properties, lightweight assemblies, detailing mode, the benefits of SOLIDWORKS Subscription Services, TriMech Technical Support, and more in the new SOLIDWORKS update.

“With every new year comes a new SOLIDWORKS update. This year’s update includes new tools and features that can be used by most SOLIDWORKS users. Are you ready to discover the improvements across all aspects of CAD modeling?

“David will walk through the changes to the capabilities of custom properties. He will show how they have been extended to include equations, how lightweight assemblies became easier to work with, and how Detailing Mode now supports the creation of more views. David will also highlight TriMech’s live technical support services and the benefits of SOLIDWORKS Subscription Services.”

You can register for the webinar here.

3DHEALS on 3D Printed Orthotics and Prosthetics 

The mission of the global 3DHEALS community is to educate, connect, and discover new things in the healthcare 3D printing, regenerative medicine, and bioprinting spaces. So, on June 3rd, 3DHEALS is holding its latest webinar, focused on “3D Printed Orthotics and Prosthetics,” from 1-2 pm EST and moderated by the company’s founder and CEO Jenny Chen. You can register for the webinar here.

This webinar will welcome four speakers with plenty of expertise in their related fields. Brent Wright is an ABC-Certified Prosthetist and BOC-Certified Orthotist with Eastpoint Prosthetics and Orthotics, as well as the Clinical Director of non-profit LifeNabled, which specializes in 3D printing new low-cost, high-quality prostheses. Jordi Tura is the CEO and founder of machine learning software company Xkelet, which creates personalized, 3D printed immobilizations (casts) for patients. Tim Fair is an FL-Licensed and ABC-Certified Prosthetist Orthotist, as well as the academic chair for the A.S. O&P Technology program at St. Petersburg College. Finally, Dr. Jorge Zuniga is the co-director of the Center for Biomechanical Rehabilitation and Manufacturing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Tangible Solutions COO Records Webinar for Virtual Education Series

Chris Collins

Our last webinar this week is a pre-recorded one by Chris Collins, the COO of Ohio-based contract manufacturer Tangible Solutions, which makes 3D printed titanium orthopedic implants. The webinar, “Model-Based Definition for Additive Manufacturing,” is for the Education Series by OMTEC, which is recognized internationally as an essential event for the orthopedic manufacturing community. The webinar includes a review of the current state of orthopedic implant manufacturing, and discusses the exciting developments happening in the design of model-based orthopedic implants.

“Traditional designs for orthopedic medical devices manufactured currently have been trabecular or organized lattices that have been limited either by engineering skills or the tools/software they are using. What I present in the OMTEC webinar is the next generation in orthopedic implant designs, utilizing highly advanced software programs and are mathematically driven. These tools make it possible to manufacture medical devices that match the model design,” Collins said.

You can view the webinar here, though the whole OMTEC Virtual Education Series, including the Tangible webinar, is available upon registration at the OMTEC Expo website.

Do you have news to share about any future webinars or virtual and live events? Please let us know!





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May 30, 2021 at 07:57AM
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3D Printing News Briefs May 29 2021: KINGS 3D GKN Aerospace Bastion Cycles Tufts University Apple

5/29/2021

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3D Printing News Briefs, May 29, 2021: KINGS 3D, GKN Aerospace, Bastion Cycles, Tufts University, Apple

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We’re starting with a little business in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, and then moving on to modes of transportation, before some materials news and a 3D printed Apple accessory.

KINGS 3D Receives Nearly $16M in Series B Financing

KINGS 3D’s largest SLA 3D printer, KINGS 2700Pro, with 2700 x 900x 800 mm build size

KINGS 3D, a high-tech enterprise in Shenzhen, China that’s dedicated to R&D and efficient 3D printing innovations, recently announced the completion of a Series B financing round of over 100 million RMB, which equals close to $16M. Rongyi Investment led the round, and was joined by several other institutions such as Jiafa Venture Capital, Furong Capital, Zhongwei Yihe Equity Investment Fund, Qingjue Capital, and previous shareholders Firstfortune Investment and SGT Capital. The company, which employs over 30, has applied for more than 130 patents over the years, and its SLA printers are independently developed and designed by the company in order to offer 3D printing solutions in multiple industries, including automotive, aerospace, medical and dental, architecture, footwear, and mechanical equipment. This new financing will be put mainly toward continuing R&D of SLA technology, in addition to ceramic 3D printing, metal printing for dental applications, new materials, and forming a global commercial network.

“Based on years of industry accumulation, Kings has a profound and unique understanding of the 3D printing industry and ecological chain. After 5 years of development, Kings has a mature full range of SLA printer manufacturing capabilities, and has been highly recognized by customers from various industries. In the field of technical product development, Kings will continue to increase investment in research and development, and strive to make breakthroughs in core technologies to provide higher-quality products to the market to serve customers’s needs. In 3D printing applications, KINGS 3D will continue to take strong foothold in shoe molds and prototypes and at the meanstime strive to explore applications in dental, medical, military aerospace, ceramic fields and so on. For the key markets, KINGS 3D will put efforts in domestic as well as international markets by taking advantage of offline and online multi-channel to promote its 3D printing solutions. On the basis of consolidating the existing market, Kings will focus on the growing markets,” said Zexing Jiang, Chairmen of KINGS 3D.

“I am very glad to be able to gain the trust of new shareholders and the support of old shareholders. Under the concept of “Faith will move mountains”, Kings will continue to make breakthroughs and innovations to create greater value for customers, and contribute to the development of the global 3D printing industry.”

GKN Aerospace Delivers First ICC to UltraFan Engine Demonstrator

Global company GKN Aerospace, a multi-technology tier 1 aerospace supplier with facilities in 13 countries, has delivered the first Intermediate Compressor Case (ICC) to the Rolls-Royce UltraFan engine demonstrator program. The UltraFan, which is a next-generation engine family, has a goal of offering a 25% improvement in fuel efficiency over the automaker’s first generation of Trent engines, and has a geared design and new engine core architecture. GKN Aerospace is a Core Partner in Clean Sky 2—Europe’s largest aeronautics research program and funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020—as well as in the UltraFan demonstrator program, and is responsible for designing and manufacturing the ICC, which is a structure located between compressor cases that carries the rotor gas loads to the engine casing and thrust mounts. In developing, manufacturing, and testing the ICC, GKN has validated several new technologies, including a sectorized fabrication concept with castings that uses a computer simulation-based welding method, 3D printing, optimized bleed system aerodynamics and acoustics, and more. The goal is to achieve full engine ground testing during 2022, followed by actual flight testing.

“The delivery of the UltraFan engine ICC to Rolls-Royce is a true milestone. It reaffirms the success of the Clean Sky2 collaboration programme and we are excited to have implemented our latest sustainable technologies in the ICC’s development,” stated Henrik Runnemalm, Vice President of GKN Aerospace’s Global Technology Centre in Sweden. “We are extremely proud to be a partner of the Rolls-Royce team and to contribute to this energy efficient aero-engine of the future.”

Bastion Cycles Introduces New 3D Printed Cockpit System

At the Handmade Bicycle Show Australia, custom bike builder Bastion Cycles revealed its new integrated cockpit system, which features a one-piece bar stem and clean internally routed fork and was made using 3D printed titanium and carbon fiber. It has three main parts: the fork, with its 3D printed titanium crown and dropouts, carbon fiber legs, and steerer tube; the bar stem, featuring a 3D printed titanium stem and drops with a one-piece carbon fiber crossbar; and the 3D printed titanium compression plug that’s bonded into the steerer, which lowers the risk of damage due to over-tightening. Bastion says the new cockpit system allows for increased ride quality and optimized handling, and the aesthetic is also much cleaner, as the system can hide all the usual hoses and wiring.

“We really tried to balance adding some aerodynamic benefits with the overall aesthetics and are extremely happy with where it has ended up. We definitely feel it achieves that optimal condition of satisfying both form and function,” said Bastion’s engineering director James Woolcock.

Thanks to 3D printing, the company can customize the dimensions of the integrated cockpit system for each rider in order to maximize aerodynamics, comfort, and efficiency.

Tufts Researchers Turn Silk into 3D Printable Leather

A small clutch purse demonstrates the utility of silk leather in manufacturing products

For many years, we humans have been using leather to make all kinds of products, from shoes and purses to vehicle interiors and saddles, due to its quality, reliability and the fact that it’s long-lasting. However, the only way this multi-billion dollar industry can keep up with the demand is by treating the skin of more than 3.8 billion cows a year, which is not at all environmentally friendly—the whole process leads to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, water and land overuse, and environmental pollution. But researchers at Tufts University School of Engineering say they’ve developed a 3D printable, leather-like material that is recyclable, less expensive, and actually comes from silk proteins, which is a much greener alternative. The Silklab research team, which published a study about their work, only needs to use mild chemicals at room temperature to convert silk fibers into the firmer, yet still flexible, leather-like material, which can be 3D printed into different textures and patterns.

“Our work is centered on the use of naturally-derived materials that minimize the use of toxic chemicals while maintaining material performance so as to provide alternatives for products that are commonly and widely used today. By using silk, as well as cellulose from textile and agricultural waste and chitosan from shell-fish waste, and all the relatively gentle chemistries used to combine them, we are making progress towards this goal,” said Fiorenzo Omenetto, Frank C. Doble Professor of Engineering at Tufts School of Engineering, director of the Tufts Silklab and corresponding author of the study.

3D Printing Combines Apple TV Remote with AirTag

So on the one hand, Apple has the Siri Remote, which is super unpopular because it gets lost really easily due to how slick it is. On the other hand, Apple also released something called AirTag trackers, which use local ultra-wideband tracking and a Bluetooth network of other Apple devices to help you find your missing Apple items, regardless of how far away they might be, thanks to a small speaker and UWB chip. But when Apple redesigned the Siri Remote, it didn’t include this chip so the remote could be tracked by other iPhone devices when it’s inevitably lost in your couch cushions, and that just seems like an ridiculous missed opportunity, especially since the company produces cases for most of its other products. Thank goodness for makers, who are busily creating 3D printed templates—available on Thingiverse, Etsy, and eBay for starters—for Siri Remote cases that can hold both the remote and an AirTag tracker.

“To be clear, this is the lamest workaround for the fact that Apple didn’t just put a UWB chip and a tiny speaker in its $60 remote. It can’t be a cost thing: AirTags have one and they only cost $30. Roku has been putting tiny speakers in its remotes to make them easier to find for years. There was even a strange message in Siri that seemed to hint at the possibility of finding a lost Siri Remote using the virtual assistant — but Apple removed the message a few hours later,” Chaim Gartenberg wrote for The Verge.

“As such, I cannot explain why Apple has refused to embark down this mind-bogglingly obvious path. But I am puzzled why Apple isn’t making a nicer version of this exact 3D printed concept (ideally out of nicer, more durable materials that actually match the rest of the hardware and would be more enjoyable to use on a daily basis).”





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May 29, 2021 at 07:21AM
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USPS proceeds with request for postal rate change

5/28/2021

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USPS proceeds with request for postal rate change

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May 28, 2021

With Commitment to Affordability and Financial Sustainability, U.S. Postal Service Proceeds with Request for Postal Rate Change

  • Pricing actions part of balanced approach under “Delivering for America,” the Postal Service’s 10-year plan for achieving financial sustainability and service excellence
  • Following rate changes, USPS prices to remain among the world’s most affordable
  • Rate changes also contribute to $40 billion of investments in people, technology and infrastructure over the next 10 years to modernize and improve the Postal Service’s operations and customer experience
  • Rate adjustments in accordance with Postal Regulatory Commission approvals, helping to address USPS operating losses exacerbated by declines in mail volume

WASHINGTON, DC — As part of “Delivering for America,” its 10-year plan to achieve financial sustainability and service excellence, the United States Postal Service filed notice today with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) requesting price changes to take effect Aug. 29, 2021 that are in accordance with approvals provided by the PRC last year.

The proposed price changes would raise overall Market Dominant product and service prices by approximately 6.9 percent. First-Class Mail prices would increase by 6.8 percent to offset declining revenue due to First-Class Mail volume declines. In the past 10 years, mail volume has declined by 46 billion pieces, or 28 percent, and is continuing to decline. Over the same period, First-Class Mail volume has dropped 32 percent, and single piece First-Class Mail volume — including letters bearing postage stamps — has declined 47 percent.

“For the past 14 years, the Postal Service has had limited pricing authority to respond to changing market realities,” said Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy. “As part of our 10-year plan to achieve financial sustainability and service excellence, the Postal Service and the Board of Governors are committed to judiciously implementing a rational pricing approach that helps enable us to remain viable and competitive and offer reliable postal services that are among the most affordable in the world.”

The proposed Mailing Services price changes include:

Product

Current Prices

Planned Prices

Letters (1 oz.)

55 cents

58 cents

Letters additional ounce(s)

20 cents

20 cents (unchanged)

Letters (metered 1 oz.)

51 cents

53 cents

Domestic Postcards

36 cents

40 cents

Flats (1 oz.)

Outbound International Letters
(1 oz.)

$1.00

$1.20

$1.16

$1.30

Under the current pricing model and the proposed rate change, the Postal Service still has some of the lowest letter-mail postage rates in the industrialized world and continues to offer a great value in shipping.

SINGLE PIECE LETTER-MAIL POSTAGE RATES, INTERNATIONAL

SINGLE PIECE LETTER-MAIL POSTAGE RATES, INTERNATIONAL

The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006 capped price increases for mailing services at the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The PAEA also required the PRC to evaluate the price cap system 10 years after the date of enactment and to modify or replace the system if it was not meeting the objectives of the law. The PRC recognized the price cap was a barrier to the Postal Service’s financial sustainability in December 2017, resulting in cumulative lost gross revenue opportunity of $55 billion. In May, the Postal Service reported a net loss of $82 million for the second quarter of 2021.

In November 2020, the PRC announced new rules on market-dominant prices, allowing above-CPI price increases on the basis of certain factors and allowing the Postal Service more flexibility in establishing prices for mailing services.

“November’s PRC ruling allows the Postal Service higher rate authority in establishing prices for mailing services,” said Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Joseph Corbett. “Aligning our prices for market-dominant products will allow us to grow revenue and help achieve financial sustainability to fulfill our universal service mission.”

With full implementation, the Postal Service’s 10-year plan is designed to reverse a projected $160 billion in operating losses over the next 10 years. The Plan’s growth and efficiency initiatives, including the proposed pricing changes, together with necessary legislation, should allow the Postal Service to make investments totaling approximately $40 billion over the next 10 years to modernize and improve our infrastructure to become more efficient and service responsive.

In 2020, the Postal Service delivered approximately 129.2 billion pieces of mail and packages to customers located in every state and territory, county, city, town and rural area in the nation.

The complete Postal Service price filings with prices for all products can be found on the PRC site at https://www.prc.gov/dockets/active/R. A fact sheet on the Postal Service’s rate change request is available here: https://about.usps.com/what/strategic-plans/delivering-for-america/#prc

The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

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May 28, 2021 at 03:13PM
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