Best Practices for Creating a Company Newsletter

An employee newsletter is a regularly published internal communication tool designed to keep your team informed, engaged, and connected to the company. Think of an employee newsletter as a companywide digital bulletin board: It's a space to share important updates, recognize achievements, and foster a sense of community.

Employee newsletters are great tools for bringing your company culture to life. This guide breaks down the benefits of an employee newsletter and shows you how to create one for your small business.

What are the benefits of an employee newsletter?

The biggest benefit of an employee newsletter is it keeps your team informed. Nearly 75% of employees say they miss out on important company news. With team members working remotely or in a hybrid setup, it’s easy to miss important announcements. An employee newsletter is a simple yet effective way to ensure everyone is updated on company happenings.

Employee newsletters also help reduce communication overload (and meeting fatigue). A newsletter circumvents the need for an all-hands meeting, providing the information your team needs in a convenient format.

"You don't want to hold a meeting or even show a video that runs too long. You'll run the risk of having a restless bunch who don't even remember half of what you've shared," wrote Mailchimp.

Employees can read your newsletter and revisit the information when they have time to focus and digest the important points.

Finally, an employee newsletter can also be a tool for reinforcing your company culture. Newsletters can clearly communicate your company's vision and values, which help reinforce your brand. Not only can you use content to highlight achievements, but the design elements also reinforce your branding.

"Unlike plain text email, an employee newsletter conveys [the] employer brand both visually and textually. Your company brand and values shine through visual cues like internal newsletter design, colour schemes, and embedded media," wrote ContactMonkey.

[Read more: 5 Elements of a Great Small Business Newsletter]

What should you include in your employee newsletter?

An effective employee newsletter is both engaging and informative. Aim to strike a balance between fun, culture-building highlights, and mission-critical news that helps your team work collaboratively.

"One of the missions and benefits of sending employee newsletters is to help them feel connected, so make sure the email content is fostering that goal. Share fun facts about employees, higher-level leadership included," wrote Mailchimp.

The best employee newsletters include information such as:

• Industry news and events.
• Company announcements and updates.
• Employee recognition and success stories.
• Upcoming internal events and social activities.
• Employee benefits and perks.
• Job openings and career development opportunities.
• Fun and engaging content (such as puzzles, quizzes, employee-generated content).

You can also use your employee newsletter to conduct surveys, onboard new employees, and host giveaways. Experts recommend keeping your newsletter content 80% educational and 20% entertaining to get the best value for your investment.

Best practices for creating an employee newsletter

Starting an employee newsletter is more straightforward than creating one for your customers. For internal communications, less audience segmentation is needed: Ideally, you're sending one message to everyone.

Nevertheless, you want to make sure your email is fun to read and engaging. Include images, video, and other design elements. Make your template mobile-friendly for staff who work in the field or read on the go. Write an engaging subject line and use customizable fields so it looks like your emails are addressed to each individual.

Use formatting to highlight different sections and make your emails easily scannable. Bullet points and text formatting help employees access critical company resources quickly. Monitor your analytics and experiment with different styles and formats to find the best way to deliver information while still engaging your team.

[Read more: 4 Steps to Starting an Email Newsletter for Your Business]

Employee newsletter ideas and recurring sections teams will actually read 

Effective employee newsletters share news that matters for the reader, rather than topics that aren’t interesting or relevant to them. Try to find the right balance between nice-to-know and need-to-know content. Critical updates, such as deadlines, policy changes, or company news can make up the bulk of your content, along with fun segments to round out each missive.

Recurring sections are the “nice-to-know” element that keeps readers coming back for more. Employee spotlights, leadership Q&As, training or event announcements, anniversaries, or fun fact segments can boost engagement.

“Employee recognition newsletter examples and employee spotlight newsletter examples consistently drive engagement because they surface human stories. This might include a team of the month feature, a new employee announcement newsletter, or values in action recognition,” wrote ContactMonkey.

Simple additions like a birthday roundup, work anniversary shoutouts, or a peer-nomination section cost almost nothing to produce but go a long way toward helping employees feel recognized and appreciated. 

How to measure engagement 

Track the success of your employee newsletter with three metrics: the open rate (the percentage of employees who open the newsletter), the click-through rate (CTR) (which links resonated the most), and the read time (how long employees spent with the content).

The read time is especially telling — it distinguishes superficial clicks from meaningful content consumption, since knowing whether employees spend two seconds or two minutes helps gauge message clarity and relevance. Most email platforms used to send newsletters provide these numbers (including the click-through and open rates) automatically.

If you want to dive deeper into your email performance analytics, build interactive elements directly into the newsletter. Measurable elements like call-to-action buttons, pulse survey questions, emoji reactions, or videos turn the newsletter into a richer source of data. These elements act like breadcrumbs that help you track every step of your audience's journey, giving you a much better picture of what captivates readers versus what falls flat. 

As a rough benchmark, the average internal email CTR is around 8%; if you're consistently below that, it's a signal to experiment with different content mixes.

It takes time to get the right data on what’s working in your internal newsletter. Set a quarterly reminder to review which sections are getting clicks, which issues had the lowest open rates, and whether survey responses have shifted. That pattern over time — not any single data point — will tell you whether your newsletter is genuinely earning its place in your team's inbox.

Company newsletter and monthly content calendar template

Before hunting for a template, map out what you need to track: for instance, the send date, the issue theme, recurring section assignments, the person responsible for each piece, and a status column (drafted, in review, approved, sent).

You'll also want to flag key dates, including company milestones, product launches, or operational deadlines, so you can build relevant content around them rather than scrambling at the last minute. Once you know the information you need, it’s easy to build a simple spreadsheet — which is all most small teams need to start.

If you’re looking for a ready-made template, here are a few resources worth exploring: 

• Smartsheet has a variety of free content calendar templates to choose from.
• HubSpot has a free editorial calendar that syncs with Google Calendar.
• MailerLite has a specific email marketing content calendar template.
• ClickUp has a template that syncs with its project management software for easy deadline tracking.

Most email marketing platforms also have templates to choose from; if you use a tool like Mailchimp for your ad campaigns, it’s easy enough to do something similar for your internal stakeholders.

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