Key takeaways
- Define clear goals and measurement before starting an internal newsletter. Don’t treat it as an afterthought.
- Keep content employee-focused: conversational tone, avoid marketing jargon and cover what staff need and want to know.
- Set a tone that reflects your organisation’s values and model the behaviour you want (quality, cooperation, professionalism).
- Keep items short (about a page or two total); consider more frequent issues if you have more to share.
- Use the newsletter to recognize employees and stay positive to boost morale and engagement.
- Solicit staff feedback and story ideas; invite managers or department heads to contribute occasional pieces.
Introduction
It’s well known that employees who are happy and engaged do better work and are more satisfied with their jobs. The trick is finding new ways to promote that level of satisfaction and engagement.
The tools of email marketing have some suggestions for engaging with internal staff as well as with customers, and one of them is with an internal newsletter.
A regular internal publication gives companies the chance to speak to all employees about broad company news and to express appreciation for what employees contribute to help the business succeed.
Internal newsletters can benefit all kinds of other organizations too, not just businesses. Volunteers at a charity, members of a club or fraternal organization, or all kinds of groups benefit from internal communications via newsletters.
An internal newsletter needs to be as carefully crafted and considered as any external marketing campaign if it is going to be successful. With that in mind, here are some tips to think about if you believe an internal newsletter could benefit your organization.
Define Your Business Goals
If you wouldn’t start a new marketing campaign aimed at customers without defining your goals and how you will measure them, don’t start an internal newsletter without the same thing.
You aren’t trying to sell your products or services to your employees, but there still needs to be some clear purpose behind the publication. Otherwise, the lack of purpose and clarity will quickly become apparent.
Sometimes internal initiatives take second place in a business, because the needs of customers or product development are so pressing.
This is exactly the wrong way to set about creating an internal newsletter, because it will give your employees the impression that they are not important enough to merit a quality product, even though they are expected to produce quality products for clients or customers.
If you recognize how important your employees are to the success of your organization, a high-quality newsletter is one way you can show them that.
Stay Employee-Focused
One big difference between an internal publication like an employee newsletter and an external campaign is that your employees know the score inside your company — in their areas of expertise, they probably know the score better than anyone else!
Use a conversational tone in writing the newsletter, and avoid buzzwords and marketing jargon. In choosing content, include information that your employees care about. Identify what they need to know and what they want to know more about, and focus your efforts there.
Some topic ideas to consider are product launches, bio pieces on new hires, major organizational and staff changes, department or staff highlights, and wider industry news that will impact your company.
Setting the Tone
An employee newsletter, as with any kind of organizational communication, is a chance to set the tone and expectations you want your entire organization to embrace. For example, if you insist on high quality and professionalism, produce a high-quality, polished newsletter.
If you want to encourage cooperation between different levels and departments in your company, take the opportunity to highlight what all of the different departments do and commend cooperative efforts.
Whatever values you want your company to reflect should be the values underlying your newsletter content and publication.
Keep it Positive
Use an internal newsletter as an opportunity to express appreciation and to inspire new effort, not to harp on problems or point out negative issues.
Your employees are busy working to fix problems already. Everyone needs to hear that their efforts are noticed and appreciated, and the newsletter is a prime opportunity to tell the entire company about great efforts and initiatives.
Doing so can boost morale and increase engagement among your employees, where negative stories generally have exactly the opposite effect.
Short and Sweet
A newsletter doesn’t need to be long to be effective. The people in your organization may not have time to read long pages of material, and they may also need to intersperse reading throughout their day as they also handle their responsibilities.
Instead of lengthy essays, keep the items short, focused, and full of great information. Don’t make the writing so short that it becomes sharp and impersonal in tone, but don’t fill up the newsletter with fluff either.
A publication equivalent to a page or two of material should be sufficient. If you find more information you want to share with employees, consider a more frequent publication schedule to break things up.
Solicit Feedback and Story Ideas
Since an internal newsletter is intended to be an employee-focused publication, listen to ideas from your staff. Ask them what kind of information they would like to read about.
Managers or department heads may be willing to write an occasional item to provide a different voice and perspective. Also accept feedback from your employees regarding whether the newsletter is meeting their needs and how it could be improved.
An internal newsletter gives you the chance to both share valuable information with all the members of your organization and to show your appreciation for the hard work they contribute to your organization’s success.
A well-crafted newsletter can help to bolster employee morale, keep everyone “in the know” about important company and industry news, and foster a greater sense of teamwork and engagement throughout the organization.
FAQ
An internal newsletter is a regular internal publication for sharing company- or group-wide news, recognizing contributions and keeping members informed. It benefits businesses, charities, clubs, volunteer groups and other organizations that need to communicate with and engage their people.
You should define goals and how you will measure them before starting so the newsletter has a clear purpose and doesn’t appear like an afterthought. Treat it with the same planning as a customer campaign to show employees they’re important and to ensure the publication meets organizational needs.
Use a conversational tone and avoid buzzwords or marketing jargon. Identify what employees need to know and what they want to learn more about, then prioritize that content. Keep items relevant to staff roles and interests rather than external marketing messages.
Include product launches, bios on new hires, major organizational and staff changes, department or staff highlights and wider industry news that will affect the organization. Focus on topics employees care about and need to know.
Let the newsletter reflect the values you want across the organization. If you demand high quality and professionalism, produce a polished newsletter. If you want more cross‑department cooperation, highlight different departments and commend collaborative efforts. Align content and presentation with those values.
Use the newsletter to express appreciation, highlight great efforts and initiatives and inspire new effort. Keep content positive rather than emphasizing problems, since recognition and positive stories help morale and engagement while negative stories can have the opposite effect.
Keep the newsletter short and focused. Roughly a page or two of material is sufficient. If you have more information to share than fits that length, consider publishing more frequently rather than producing longer issues.
Ask employees what information they’d like to read and accept their feedback on whether the newsletter meets their needs. Invite managers or department heads to write occasional items to bring different voices and perspectives and welcome story ideas from across the organization.
