Despite the growth of other channels, email remains critical for internal communications. The right employee email newsletter templates can help you boost email engagement even further.
While employee apps, modern intranets, and platforms such as Teams and Slack have become increasingly popular for internal communications, email newsletters still generate great engagement. In fact, 73% of employees say that internal newsletters are an important source of company news and information according to one Ragan survey.
Yet the success of your internal newsletters can very much depend on the email template you use.
Why a good employee email newsletter template matters
A good employee email newsletter template is important because:
- It creates a consistent look and feel for your newsletters, which helps to build internal brand recognition and familiarity with your content.
- A professional and cohesive template can help to improve the readability and usability of your newsletter.
- It can encourage better engagement with your audience, especially when following the email newsletter design best practices discussed further down the page .
In turn, each of the factors above can help to support internal PR and strengthen your internal brand. When it comes to creating employee email newsletter templates, understanding the design and user experience (UX) principles that make the newsletter engaging will be crucial. Yet, while internal communicators possess many valuable skills, design, and UX aren’t always our strong points.
Employee email newsletter essentials
Essential elements of an engaging employee email newsletter
So, what should a winning employee email newsletter template include? Let’s run through the various elements that make up an engaging newsletter example.
An organized and functional layout
A busy and misaligned layout is difficult for audiences to process, meaning the information contained within the email will be hard to follow and digest.
It is best practice to organize the layout of your employee email newsletter using functional blocks like a magazine or newspaper.
A layout that is simple, clean, and flows logically will reduce the reader’s cognitive load and allows them to navigate the newsletter quickly, and easily, taking in the information as their eyes scan the content.
A clear header
A large title block – commonly referred to as a header – across the top of your employee email newsletter template should identify exactly what the purpose of the email is. Organizations that circulate employee newsletter emails typically choose a title that communicates a clear purpose, and it helps to be as literal as possible. For example:
- [Company name] Newsletter
- [Company name] Roundup
- Employee Newsletter
- Quarterly Company News
You might choose to give each edition its own number or date, (e.g, Employee Newsletter: Q4 Edition or Employee Newsletter: March). This helps employees to differentiate between the latest email and older editions.
Appending each edition’s title with a few references to the news that it contains can help to drive engagement. For example, the title for a newsletter that reports on a company merger, server upgrades, and a charity cookout among other news might read:
Employee Newsletter #1: Mergers, Servers & Juicy Burgers.
You could also even increase the fun factor by including an emoji that is relevant to one of the stories featured in your title:
Employee Newsletter #1: Mergers, Servers & Juicy Burgers
Adding a little levity to the email title can also inspire employees to open and read the newsletter, especially if your news stories are a little on the corporate side in that edition.
Eye-catching graphics
Including eye-catching visuals, such as images, vector graphics, infographics, gifs, and videos, in your employee email newsletter template is important because they can capture your readers’ attention and make content more engaging.
Images help to break up the text and create a more visually appealing layout, making it easier for readers to navigate and consume the information. Additionally, visuals can convey information more quickly and effectively than text alone, helping to increase the impact of your message.
By incorporating visuals into your newsletter design, you can create a more dynamic and engaging experience for your audience, encouraging them to read and interact with your content.
Concise text for each news item
Including minimal text for each news item in your employee email newsletter template makes the information easier to read and digest.
Readers are more likely to skim through an email newsletter than read it in its entirety, so it makes sense to summarize the key points for each item, or provide a brief introduction to each, and allow the reader to click on the item to read further content on your intranet.
Employee email newsletter essentials
Additionally, minimal text allows you to include more visuals, which can help to break up the content and make it more visually appealing. Focusing on the most important information can help to create a newsletter that is easy to read and understand, which encourages readers to engage with your content.
Clear CTAs
A Call to Action (CTA) is a specific instruction or suggestion that encourages the reader to take a desired action, such as clicking through from the newsletter to an intranet post with more detailed information. CTAs can also be used for other actions in your employee email newsletter template, such as directing readers to an employee survey, or a page containing a form.
Newsletter CTAs are typically included below the summary of each news item and they can take the form of clickable buttons, hyperlinks, or other visually distinct elements that stand out from the rest of the content. By including CTAs in your newsletter, you can encourage readers to take the next step and deepen their engagement with the latest company news and updates.
Manage employee email newsletters from within your intranet
When it comes to building an email newsletter, there are many solutions with pre-created and editable templates that communicators can use and customize. Using these communications tools may mean added cost for your organization, however, and another platform for you to learn.
Third-party email newsletter platforms may also require some design or coding experience if you want to customize existing templates or build your own from scratch.
What many communicators may not realize is that some intranet software can also be used to create and centrally manage communications across multiple channels, including email newsletters.
Interact customers can use our multichannel intranet software to create and deploy creative, original, and fully customizable employee email newsletter templates without relying on third-party email platforms. Within the CMS intranet, anyone with content author permissions can create a professional and creative employee newsletter template by simply dragging and dropping elements into place.
Users can customize the drag-and-drop design and populate blocks with content, without any coding or design experience. Once the email template has been created and each section has been populated with news content, the email can be sent from the intranet to the entire organization, or to selected audience segments, such as colleagues in specific teams, roles, or locations.
Using a multichannel intranet to create, send, and manage employee email newsletters is a great way to decrease the comms team’s workload, and reduce the number of platforms the organization relies on. But perhaps most importantly (for your CFO, at least), it may also help to reduce costs.
Employee email newsletter essentials
Boost engagement with an automated email digest
An email digest can help you to boost user engagement with an automated roundup of all the intranet content your employees may have missed. It can be delivered straight to their inboxes on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
The content featured within the email digest might include company news, upcoming events, training opportunities, and other relevant information relating to the organization and its culture. But when it comes to circulating your email digest, it’s worth tailoring the content for each employee, making it relevant to their roles and interests.
According to Deloitte, organizations with personalized communication strategies are 63% more likely to have engaged employees.
Modern intranets like those that run on Interact’s software can make the creation and deployment of personalized email digests effortless for comms teams through automation.
The appearance can also be tweaked with a range of design, color, and font options, whether you want to theme the digest differently each time you send it, or even theme it seasonally.
Email comms: still essential for internal communications
As organizations continue to adapt to communicating in the digital workplace, internal newsletters remain a critical component of effective internal communication strategies.
We hope these pointers help you to build engaging newsletters and digests for your workforce.
