Best Employee Appreciation Email Templates & Tips
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Your employees keep your business moving forward. They put smiles on customer's faces, are great at making sales, and are central to your unique company culture.
But when was the last time you took a moment to express your gratitude? You can do this with a simple appreciation email. Start with this guide, where we provide appreciation email templates and tips to make the process quick, easy and effective.
An employee appreciation email is an internal email employers can send to their employees in recognition of their hard work and commitment to the company.
This is a quick, simple and straightforward task, yet many employers neglect it.
A simple “thank you” email goes a long way in improving trust, strengthening relationships, and fostering a positive culture in the workplace.
There are all sorts of times when you might send an appreciation email - from recognizing an employee’s great customer service to emailing a team to thank them for working well together.
If a team member doesn’t quite make “Employee of the Month” but you still want to show you appreciate them, this is a great email to consider.
People like to know their hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. Here are just some of the reasons an appreciation email to employees should be a central part of your internal communications strategy:
An appreciation email to employees doesn’t need to be long-winded, but there are some key points to hit each time.
Aim to include:
Pro Tip: You don’t always have to create appreciation emails from scratch! When you use an email builder, you can quickly and easily design highly engaging emails, and save them as templates for future use.
Whenever it’s time to write an appreciation email for good work, simply dip into your library, choose the relevant template and customize it for each employee.
This leads to professional, engaging emails every time, even if you’re not a designer or a coder.
Avoid overloading employees with emails; even “thank you” emails lose their appeal if received too often.
Here are some situations when it’s relevant to send an appreciation email.
Give recognition when an employee goes above and beyond their day-to-day role, or excels in a difficult challenge.
Honor a milestone your employee reaches, such as a work anniversary, a set number of sales or revenue made, or a promotion.
You can send an appreciation email to a team when they’ve collaborated well on a particular project.
To eliminate the need to write a different email to everyone in the team, use an email builder to design the email. Email builders have a drag-and-drop editor that’s easy to use. Plus, they’re packed with features that save time, reduce costs and boost engagement.
This includes an in-line image editor (that lets you crop and align images directly) and a multi-media library to save images and videos, and choose from over 2 million stock assets.
You can then send the email to the correct list of people via your preferred email-sending platform (ESP). Email builders then let you export designs to over 50 ESPs, including Gmail and Outlook, so the process is highly flexible.
Don’t forget to personalize each email by adding the person’s name, using your ESP’s specific merge tags. This means you only have to create the email once, but it will still feel like a one-to-one message.
When a customer gives a positive review or writes a letter of praise about a certain employee, highlight this.
The customer might give this praise proactively or as part of a feedback request email campaign.
Send an appreciation email to employees who come up with creative or innovative ways to solve problems. They’re a great asset to the team or organization as a whole, and this should be recognized.
You can write - and design - an appreciation email in minutes when you use an email builder.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to bring your email to life.
Email builders come loaded with a library of hundreds of pre-designed, engaging templates. You can filter these templates by purpose, to look for ready-made thank you emails, complete with ideal messaging and a great layout.
This saves the overwhelming task of creating a design from a blank page. Without an email builder, overcoming this task is time-consuming or, if you hire a designer instead, it can be expensive.
You can use the email builder’s drag-and-drop editor to make design changes to the email. For example, upload an image or your company logo from the multimedia library.
The email builder comes with a Brand Kit. This is a space to manage your brand’s assets, such as your logo, typography and color scheme. Upload your assets to the Brand Kit to easily transform every email so it’s on-brand. For example, use your Brand Kit to establish the fonts used for headings and paragraphs, so they’re automatically formatted in those fonts.
Once you’re happy with your customized email, you can save full templates and individual modules (such as CTA sections and headers), ready for future use.
Customize the template with your own copy, such as the person’s name, achievements, and how they have impacted the business. An AI writing assistant can help come up with some ideas and refine your words!
Save the customized template to your email builder library and export it to your email service provider, where you can send it to the employee.
We’ve pulled together some of the best employee appreciation email templates, so you can quickly find the right template for every occasion.
When an employee goes above and beyond, whether they surpassed their sales target or gave their time to mentor another employee, a simple appreciation email lets them know you noticed.
Dear [Employee Name],
I’d like to personally reach out to thank you for your outstanding performance and commitment to [Company Name]!
Your recent success with [project/task] impressed all of us. Your dedication to going above and beyond helps make this company what it is. Thank you for being an incredible role model to the rest of the team
Your ongoing excellence is highly appreciated and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for your future with us!
Keep up the great work,
[Your Name]
Milestones signal progress and growth. A simple email is a powerful way to acknowledge an employee’s achievements or loyalty to the business. A forgotten milestone is a bit like a forgotten birthday - it can leave a sour taste!
Hey [Employee Name],
Happy [x] year anniversary at [Company Name]!
From the bottom of our hearts, we’re so glad you’re part of the team and we value the loyalty, commitment and excellence you bring. (Not to mention the Friday cupcakes!)
We’re so excited to celebrate this milestone and look forward to another great year with you.
Have a wonderful day
[Company Name] Management Team
Celebrate collaboration or a successful team project with a quick email. As mentioned, address each email to the individual rather than sending a group “Hey Team” email. This makes it feel more personal and heartfelt.
To [Employee Name],
I want to take a moment to congratulate your role in the recent [Project].
Your hard work and positive attitude were key in driving the team to the finish line. It was a pleasure to watch you all collaborate so well, making this project a huge success!
Your commitment to supporting the team and the wider company hasn’t gone unnoticed, and I was particularly impressed with |Employee Specific Contribution To The Project|
I’ll finish with a big “THANK YOU” from all of us. We can’t wait to see you thrive in your next team assignment!
Best wishes,
[Your Name]
Happy customers are at the heart of a successful, long-lasting company. If a customer takes the time to let you know about an employee going above and beyond, it’s worth relaying this information to the employee. This helps keep them motivated to continue to provide the very best service.
Hey [Employee Name],
This is a quick email to say a massive “Thank you” for the customer service you recently provided.
You helped a customer with [Achievement] and they’ve provided glowing feedback about you. We’re all very proud and you should be, too!
You’re one of the reasons this company is going from strength to strength, and we love having you around!
Keep being a customer experience superstar.
Thanks again,
[Your Name]
Innovation and creative problem-solving are valuable attributes in an employee. Be sure to highlight and celebrate such an occasion.
Dear [Employee Name],
We just want to say how impressed we are with your recent innovative approach to [Problem].
Your creative mind is an asset to this company, and we appreciate everything you do here, day in and day out!
This is a quick email to say “Wow” and “Thank you”! We’re all so excited to see what’s next in your journey at [Company Name].
Have a great day!
The [Company Name] Management Team
You can be creative and add your company’s mark to appreciation emails, but there are a few best practice tips to help you create the most effective emails.
The best appreciation emails are brief and to the point, using clear and concise language. Avoid waffling but be specific about the achievement and what it means to the company.
Send the email as soon as possible after the achievement, milestone or good feedback. This helps to ensure the employee feels appreciated right away.
Use genuine words in your email. Exaggerations or insincere language undermine thank you emails.
Email builders are the best tools to help you quickly design professional, engaging emails.
They have many features that streamline and speed up the process, saving you time and money. For example, you can edit images in-line, directly in the editor. In other words, crop, move, re-size and align images without leaving the platform. With most other tools, you’d have to make changes to images in a separate platform, then continually re-upload it until the size and alignment are correct.
All designs you create with an email builder are backed by email-optimized code, which means they work well and look beautiful across every device and platform.
Your company’s identity should always be reflected, even in internal emails. Use the right tone, logos, fonts and brand colors. A Brand Kit in an email builder provides a place to store all of these assets, so you can make emails “on-brand” with just a couple of clicks. No more searching for Hex codes and re-uploading logos!
A simple employee appreciation email goes a long way, ensuring teams and individuals feel appreciated, strengthening company culture and encouraging further productivity and great achievements.
This valuable process doesn’t have to take up lots of your internal comms team’s time. The introduction of an email builder means the templates are ready to go, and customization takes just minutes.
