Discover how to design an impactful internal newsletter that informs, engages, and unites your teams. From strategic planning to tools and KPIs, all key steps are covered.
As companies continue to digitize, the internal newsletter is becoming an essential communication tool. It allows important messages to be sent directly to employees’ inboxes without overwhelming them. This makes it an effective lever for disseminating company culture, ensuring a good level of information, and ultimately boosting employee engagement and performance.
However, to improve an organization's internal communication, a digital newsletter must be received, opened, read, and utilized by its target audience. In this article, Mozzaik provides the keys to creating an engaging internal newsletter and achieving this goal. Definition, purpose, and methods to set up your internal email: you'll learn everything you need to know.
What is an internal newsletter?
The newsletter is a digital communication tool often used by organizations to convert prospects into clients or retain their customer base. So, what is an internal newsletter and what are its specific goals? Let’s take a closer look.
Definition and role of an internal newsletter
An internal newsletter is a periodic information bulletin sent by a company to its employees via email. It is also referred to as an infoletter, internal email, or internal information letter.
The main role of this media, intended for members of the organization, is to efficiently convey important information without overwhelming them with data. It can relay a variety of content (industry news, HR updates, advice, etc.), tailored to each target audience (managers, field teams, decision-makers, etc.).
This internal communication solution is often managed by the Human Resources Department or the internal communications team. To implement a successful internal newsletter, these departments must build a true editorial strategy and choose the right newsletter distribution software.
Goals of an internal newsletter
By delivering reliable, clear, and structured information to employees on a regular basis, the internal newsletter enables:
Improved performance and reduced risk of errors, as employees can rely on updated objectives, knowledge, and procedures to do their jobs well;
Strengthened company culture and cohesion by sharing organizational values and maintaining continuous connection with employees;
Increased employee engagement and retention by ensuring everyone has a good level of information, which is a key factor in job satisfaction.
Why implement an internal newsletter?
There are several good reasons to create an internal newsletter for your company:
Facilitating access to important information
The internal newsletter is a powerful internal communication solution. It allows you to reach your employees through one of the communication channels they use most daily in a simple, structured, and targeted way. You can segment your audience and send a personalized newsletter to each internal group. As a result, field staff, headquarters employees, and managers receive the information that matters to them, without being bombarded with content.
Improving employee engagement
Your internal newsletter is an effective communication lever for informing your employees about your organization's strategic goals and boosting their engagement. You can use it to explain your policies or present upcoming projects. In doing so, you break down information silos and help each employee align with your organization’s key objectives.
Spreading company culture
Finally, your digital internal newsletter is an excellent way to strengthen your company culture. This communication medium allows you to showcase your visual identity and address topics that reflect your organizational values. If innovation is one of your guiding principles, for example, you can dedicate a section to it to bring it to life among employees.
Setting up an internal newsletter is relatively simple, provided you use the right method and tools. Here are the steps we recommend following to create an effective infoletter:
#1 Define the objectives of your newsletter
The first step in creating an internal newsletter is to define the objectives you want to achieve with it. These might include strengthening your company culture, aligning your teams with your organizational goals, or improving the employee experience to better retain talent. This step is essential for building your editorial strategy.
#2 Identify your target and segment your internal audiences
The second step in setting up an internal newsletter is to identify your target audience and then segment it into different sub-groups to offer each one tailored content. This approach allows you to send a personalized infoletter to managers, new hires, or field employees. By understanding the needs, expectations, and habits of your target audiences, you can adjust the topics, sending frequency, and design of your email for each group to make it more engaging.
#3 Choose the right content for the internal newsletter
The third step in successfully creating your company’s internal newsletter is to determine the types of content to include, based on your goals and the expectations of your target audience. This step is crucial. For employees to regularly read your infoletter, it must deliver high-value information.
Company news
Your internal newsletter can first include a section dedicated to news about your company and its industry. For example, you can discuss the state of your market, your competitors, product innovations, or share press articles about your company or testimonials from satisfied clients.
Employee profiles and interviews
Employee profiles and interviews are great content for breaking down information silos, humanizing your newsletter, strengthening internal cohesion, and of course, highlighting your staff. They allow readers to get to know their colleagues, better understand how the company works, and develop a sense of belonging to the team.
Practical advice and internal training
Your digital newsletter is an effective tool for circulating important information and knowledge internally. You can use it to highlight recommendations, tools, or useful resources for employees, such as expert articles published on your company’s wiki. It’s also the ideal medium to promote events to the relevant groups.
Quizzes, surveys, and interactive content
If you have a good internal newsletter tool, you can use it to engage employees and encourage upward communication. Your newsletter can feature quizzes, surveys, or other interactive content. These are useful for engaging your employees and collecting qualitative and quantitative feedback to gauge the team's sentiment and improve your decisions.
HR announcements
Of course, your newsletter is also an effective communication channel for distributing HR announcements in a timely manner to the relevant audiences. For example, you can use this tool to promote your employee savings plans or highlight job openings and support internal mobility.
#4 Determine the Frequency and Timing of Sending
The fourth step in creating an engaging internal newsletter is to identify the right frequency and timing to send your bulletin. Depending on your goals, resources, and the other communication channels you already have in place, you may opt for a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly publication. In any case, the chosen pace should be sufficient to create a connection with your readers and build loyalty, without overwhelming them. At the same time, to determine the ideal day and time to reach your target audience, explore their habits and conduct tests.
#5 Design an Attractive and Readable Layout
The design of your infoletter plays a key role in generating engagement from your employees (opens, clicks, reading, sharing, etc.). Several tips can help improve the user experience provided by your newsletter and ensure its success:
Respect Your Company’s Visual and Editorial Identity
To gain internal readers’ approval, your internal periodical must adhere to your company’s visual identity. When designing your template and drafting your newsletter, use your organization’s graphic charter (colors, logo, fonts, etc.) as well as its editorial charter (tone, style rules, values, etc.).
Polish the Layout and Information Hierarchy
To be read by its recipients, your internal newsletter must also be well-structured. To facilitate reading, keep your infoletter airy and create sections with catchy titles and short descriptions. Additionally, to grab readers’ attention, place the most important information first, ideally above the fold in the visible part of the email. Lastly, to encourage employees to click on links, insert clearly visible call-to-action buttons.
Optimize Display on Mobile and Desktop
Finally, to be comfortably viewed by all your employees, your newsletter must display correctly on all types of screens (computer, tablet, or smartphone). To make it responsive, avoid large files (images, videos, GIFs, etc.), use a legible font size, and above all, choose an emailing tool that offers responsive templates like Mozzaik365.
#6 Ensure Effective Distribution
The final step in setting up an engaging internal newsletter is to ensure it is distributed effectively. To this end, we encourage you to:
Choose a Tool Integrated into Your Work Environment
A newsletter tool integrated into your work environment simplifies the creation and distribution of your infoletter, and ensures consistency with your other communication channels. For instance, the Mozzaik365 Newsletter solution allows you to easily create and send beautiful newsletters without leaving your Microsoft 365 collaborative platform. With this tool, you can:
Target your audiences using your Microsoft 365 directory groups;
Customize your infoletter to reflect your brand’s visual identity;
Track key performance indicators (KPIs) to improve your newsletter.
Test and Optimize Sendings
To ensure the quality of your newsletter, don’t forget to preview it before sending it to your mailing list. Furthermore, to make your infoletter more engaging, perform A/B tests. The principle is simple: send two different versions of your periodical (e.g., different email subjects or call-to-action buttons) to two audience samples. Then, compare the performance of each variant (open rate, click rate, etc.). This will help you identify which elements work best for your audience.
Collect Feedback to Improve Your Newsletter
Beyond comparative tests, to optimize your newsletter, go directly to your target audience. Gather employee feedback about your newsletter by sending them a survey through it or via your company's communication platform. This qualitative and quantitative feedback will help you understand what readers enjoy, what they like less, and gather suggestions to better meet their expectations.
How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Internal Newsletter?
Key performance indicators (KPIs) and user feedback are essential data points to assess the success of your newsletter and make improvements.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The main communication KPIs that can help you measure the performance of your digital newsletter include:
Open Rate
The open rate of your newsletter is the percentage of recipients who opened it. A low open rate may indicate an unappealing email subject that doesn't entice employees to click and read the infoletter.
Click Rate
The click rate refers to the percentage of recipients who clicked on at least one link in your newsletter. To improve this metric, you could, for instance, redesign your call-to-action buttons to make them more attention-grabbing.
Average Reading Time
The average reading time assesses the average amount of time employees spend reading your newsletter. If it's low, it may mean that the content in your internal newsletter isn’t relevant to your target audience.
Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is a global indicator that allows you to understand your newsletter’s overall success. It measures the percentage of recipients who interacted with your infoletter (opens, clicks, shares, replies, scrolls, etc.).
Feedback and Qualitative Input
In addition to quantitative indicators, employee qualitative feedback is a good way to assess the success of your newsletter and identify levers for improvement. To understand your readers’ needs and expectations, you can submit a questionnaire or offer a suggestion box through your organization’s collaborative platform.
Internal Newsletter: Key Takeaways
A digital internal newsletter is a periodic digital bulletin sent by an organization to its employees to deliver important messages (industry news, HR announcements, etc.) in a concise and structured format.
The main goals of an internal newsletter are to improve individual and collective performance by sharing key information (guidelines, strategic goals, etc.), strengthen company culture by promoting organizational values, and engage employees by maintaining a connection with them.
To create an engaging internal newsletter that achieves the above objectives, you need to build a solid editorial strategy (target audiences, segmentation, content types, send frequency, design, etc.) and choose a good internal emailing tool.
Mozzaik Newsletter is a distribution solution integrated into your Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It enables you to easily create and send personalized, responsive infoletters that your employees can read on their computers, tablets, or mobile messaging apps. Click here to learn more.
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Internal Newsletter: Definition, Goals, and Best Practices
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