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How Do You Write a Good Newsletter for Your Company?

Michelle Troutman

Knowing how to write a good newsletter for your company helps you connect with employees. A well-crafted company newsletter fosters a sense of community and keeps colleagues informed. But creating an engaging one requires careful planning.

If you struggle to create internal newsletters, consider my email marketing packages or get a free audit.

How Do You Create a Company Newsletter?

Define Your Goals: What do you hope to achieve? Common goals include clearer communication, higher employee morale, and promoting company culture.
Identify Your Audience: Tailor your content and tone to your employee demographics and interests. Beyond text, add video or interactive elements like quizzes or surveys.

What Are Some Fun Ideas for an Internal Newsletter?

Creating a content calendar for three to 12 months ahead keeps you organized and motivated.

Potential Content Ideas That Suit Different Companies and Communication Styles:

Company news and updates:
- policy changes; mandatory training/compliance
- events; holidays; milestones
Employee recognition:
- news (births, retirements, new hires, promotions, transfers, etc.); employment anniversaries; birthdays
- “employee of the month”
Company culture:
- employee stories or spotlights
- team-building or volunteer initiatives like clubs or charity drives
Work procedures/safety tips
Fun: memes, jokes, or funny stories build morale and interest and promote information sharing
Industry insights:
- news, trends, or research
- case studies showing how employees helped customers or vendors
Work-life balance:
- stress management; health and wellness; productivity hacks
- employee leisure activities or recommendations
Interactive content: Add polls, games, quizzes, or surveys to boost engagement and gather insights.

To make your newsletter useful, include employee stories, graphs or charts, or content customized to employees’ roles and interests.

To encourage participation, collaborate with employees via a meeting, a shared drive like Dropbox or Google Drive, or email. Collective content includes:

Contests, polls, or columns
Departmental spotlights: Rotate content creation among departments to show company-wide efforts. This personalizes the newsletter, making people stand out as names rather than faces.

“Involve different team members in content creation. Assign specific topics or sections to each member to share the workload and bring diverse perspectives.”
George Petropoulos, founder, Inoriseo

Beyond improving morale, company newsletters improve knowledge sharing and foster clear communication.

Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, work cultures have changed. Finding and retaining employees is also harder. Greater transparency, improving morale, and addressing problems is crucial. Add content that boosts well-being and fosters discussion about workplace issues.

When sharing information in company newsletters, it can be hard to find the right balance between being open and honest with employees while you protect confidential data.

What Are Some Company Newsletter Formats?

Email Newsletters: The most common and cost-effective format. Platforms like MailChimp or Constant Contact offer mobile-friendly, appealing, and easy-to-use templates.
Printed Newsletters: For office-wide sharing, print in-house or locally.
An Intranet or Internal Platform: Use platforms like SharePoint or Google Workspace for longer content, archives, and interactive features. With a shared drive, you can email everyone content throughout the year, like company holidays and resources. It could take less effort than creating a newsletter. Apps like Yourco let businesses send company-wide texts.

What is a Company Newsletter Layout?

A good company email newsletter template considers how the text and design will form an attractive message.

Visual Appeal: Use clear images, infographics, and layouts for easy reading and engagement. Enhance accessibility with descriptive alt text for images and text-based content equivalents. Follow WCAG guidelines, using contrasting colors and sans-serif fonts (12-16 points).
Branding Consistency: Design the newsletter to match your company’s branding, like your website.
Encourage Participation: Add clear calls to action for event participation, to share feedback, or visit links.

What Are Some Employee Newsletter Examples?

At a local freight company, I created a newsletter with company information and events. I formatted it in Microsoft Publisher and saved it in Adobe PDF (portable document file) format for email and printing.

Newsletter for Employees Example

As in this issue, industry newsletters can contain jargon familiar to staff, but which confuses outsiders. (In this case, “p&d” refers to “pick up and delivery.”

The simple two-column two-page format featured tips and advice and items of interest. Recognizing employees for efforts like a Christmas food drive boosted morale.

How Do You Write a Good Newsletter for Your Company?: Company Email Newsletter Examples

Ragan’s annual Employee Communications Awards recognizes internal communications campaigns and initiatives. Ragan recently celebrated Mower’s mental health employee communications campaign.

In 2023, Advocate Aurora Health won for their targeted e-newsletters sent to their 75,000+ team. Through storytelling, they connect employees to their purpose. Newsletters like “The Leader” and “Nurse Forward” are sent to different departments. They archive them on an intranet, achieving high open rates and improving internal communication.

Checking Company Newsletter Results

ContactMonkey, a Ragan Communications company, reports there are 15 email metrics to track. Their annual report features average email metrics for 20 industries. They include open, click-through, and click-to-open rates.

To check your e-newsletter performance, track any metrics available. Adjust the content as necessary based on feedback and engagement.

Industry	Open Rate	Click-through Rate	Click-to-Open Rate
consulting	79 percent	9 percent	10 percent
financial services	75 percent	13 percent	17 percent
hospital/healthcare	66 percent	10 percent	14 percent