How to create effective company newsletters

It’s undeniable – email overload has become a painful productivity killer. Yet despite overflowing inboxes, Ragan’s benchmark data shows 60% of companies leverage newsletters to connect employees and leadership. 78% cite it as a top internal communication channel.

Organisations that use newsletters strategically can cut through the noise. When integrated thoughtfully alongside existing channels like intranets and social channels, they fill critical engagement gaps.

Each platform serves specific functions:

• The company intranet offers a central hub for policies, documents, knowledge and collaboration.

• Instant messaging like Microsoft Teams facilitates real-time team talks.

• Mobile apps notify employees on-the-go.

• Social channels such as Viva Connection enable community building.

• Digital signage reinforces messages through visual displays.

Within this communication mix, the newsletter can play a unique role delivering important information right into employees’ inboxes.

Rather than removing newsletters because of too much email, smart integration with existing platforms amplifies value. Done right, they become an awareness lifeline versus another burden.

Of course, sending newsletters employees actually want to open is vital. Ensure they are well written, visual, succinct and meaningful. Following the optimization tips below will improve your newsletters’ impact.

Follow five key factors for engaging newsletters:

1. Strategy – Be intentional about your newsletter strategy. Think about when and how often to send based on reader habits.

2. Relevance – For large enterprises, personalizing newsletters to align with audience needs is vital. Pick and send content by job functions, departments, location, interests to create value for each group.

3. Brevity – Carefully pick top content that matters most. Avoid text walls. Lead with eye-catching graphics and clear headers that provide value upfront.

4. Cadence – Find the right balance between high value and too much volume. For example, send monthly for long reads and reflecting on past period, weekly or bi-weekly for digestible bites about current happenings.

5. Metrics – Continuously improve by tracking open rates, click rates, links visited and survey feedback.

Additionally, apply seven creative tips:

1. Make it branded: Follow the company’s visual identity and branding guidelines. Use your logo, color scheme, fonts, etc. to visually reinforce the organization.

2. Keep it scannable: Use short paragraphs, bulleted lists, headings and bolding to make the information easy to skim.

3. Craft compelling headlines: Use active language and emotional triggers to make titles employees feel compelled to click.

4. Lead with the most critical news: The top section should feature the most timely company announcements and updates employees need to know.

5. Mix informational and fun content: Balance the need to communicate news, updates, and achievements with providing value, inspiration, and entertainment. Your internal newsletter could feature a range of engaging content such as highlights of achievements, insights into the company’s ethos and principles, updates on developments within your industry, advice and tools for both personal and career growth, in addition to entertaining and interactive conetnt such as games, challenges or a video of the latest teambuilding.

6. Survey to optimize: Ask readers quick questions to learn what additions or adjustments would make it more valuable.

7. Use the right tool to streamline the creation and distribution of your newsletter. This saves you a lot of time.

Many companies pay for additional services to send customized newsletters, despite already using SharePoint. However, the Involv Newsletter unlocks that functionality directly within your intranet without the need for third-party tools.

Unlike SharePoint’s newsletter builder, Involv Newsletter makes it simple to:

• Easily transfer intranet content to newsletter items.
• Select to send from a custom email address.
• Apply corporate branding for a consistent, professional look.

And more capabilities are on the roadmap for the next version releases, including:

• New newsletter builder: even more intuitive and user-friendly experience

• Improved ability to create custom templates.

• Enhanced capability to style different content types.

• Integration of content not on the intranet (e.g., a link to an external website).

• Calendar for viewing and editing scheduled newsletters, among many others.

In other words, you maintain complete creative control – beyond SharePoint’s default capabilities.

The tool seamlessly incorporates intranet content – including news, events, FAQs, jobs, incidents, documents and SharePoint pages – into a polished company newsletter.

By tapping into Involv Newsletter, you can save money while skipping outside services. Unlock enhanced newsletter features directly within your existing SharePoint intranet.

Explore the future of intranet solutions with Involv. Learn how our team of experts can help you create an effective internal communications platform and tackle today’s business challenges.