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How to Guide: 19 Winning Employee Newsletter Ideas & Examples https://ift.tt/3wKGoDL 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 newsletterYour 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 newslettersBefore 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:
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 announcementIs 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. 2. Commendable feats and milestonesEmployees 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. 3. Personal anniversaries and other celebrationsYou 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. 4. Recommendations and must-seesIt 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 spotlightTeam 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 partyCompany 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. 7. Special day eventsYou 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. 8. Competitions and contestsEverybody 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. 9. SurveysGathering 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. 10. New job openingsInternal 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 opportunitiesHelping 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 backMany companies give back to the community. It is a part of corporate responsibility. doing good can take many forms: 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 newsNaturally, 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 updatesA 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 CEOAn 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 onNot 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 employeesIn 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 frontlineSome 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 funFun 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 newslettersTo write effective internal email newsletters, the following elements should be taken into account:
Pointers for writing better internal newslettersThe 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.
Your internal employee newsletterIn 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. Printing via GetResponse Blog https://ift.tt/2Xap2TD May 31, 2021 at 02:03PM
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