How to Start a Company Newsletter: Ultimate Guide
Try Publicate For Free Today
Start Now
Companies are always evolving and something is always happening within a business that’s worthy of sharing. To get your message across effectively to employees, its important for business leaders and HR personnel to use company newsletters.
The good news is that knowing how to start a company newsletter with the aid of an email builder is highly intuitive. We’ll share the best email newsletters and examples to help get you started.
An email newsletter is an email series that’s sent on a consistent basis for a defined purpose to an intended audience. The email newsletter can focus on an array of topics, including: product updates, policy updates, industry news, and sales, etc.
An email newsletter can either be created for an internal audience, such as stakeholders and/or employees or an external audience like clients. Depending on the audience, the content will vary based on the desired action you want your audience to take upon receiving and reading your email newsletter.
Whether you’re looking to boost sales, increase engagement, or keep your community informed (to name a few reasons), a company newsletter is highly valuable.
It’s a cost effective measure to be able to stay in constant communication with your audience so that you have one less touchpoint to worry about.
With an email builder, you can choose from hundreds of professional templates that are pre-built based on your desired message. Then use the drag-and-drop functionality to customize your newsletter, without any need for coders or designers.
A company newsletter can help to:
With free newsletter software, learning how to start your company newsletter is simpler than ever. Before we jump into the advantages of using an email builder, let’s walk through the steps so you will know everything you need for how to start a company newsletter.
You don’t just send a newsletter for no reason. It should serve a purpose and help to achieve your business goals. Most importantly, any newsletter you send should add value for the recipient.
When you’re getting started with your company newsletter, it’s helpful to begin before sending each subsequent email by defining your intention, such as promoting a new product, informing your employees about company updates, or placing a spotlight on new employees.
The content of your company newsletter is meant to be geared towards a specific audience. As such, you’ll want to segment your audience accordingly.
This way, you won’t be sending irrelevant messages to select people, in which case they will unsubscribe from your communications rather than read them.
You want your subscribers to remain with you for the long-term, so think about why they have opted-in in the first place and provide them with the content they seek.
An email marketing strategy will help you to stay on track, especially as your business, subscriber list, and content evolves.
When you’re designing your company newsletter for the first time, plan how often you want to send communications (i.e. weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.), who your audience is (segmentation), and your tone of voice (based on your brand identity).
Once you have your ducks in a row, so to speak, you can get to the execution phase. In order to execute properly, you’ll want to define your strategy. This includes who is responsible for creating and sending your company newsletters.
Everyone involved can have access to the master schedule and brainstorming doc, but you’ll want to ensure there is a person held accountable for its full execution.
With an email builder, this can technically be anyone within your organization because there’s no design, code, or technical knowledge required. The easy user interface and library of templates and features makes it usable for all.
Additionally, collaboration features enable your entire team to work seamlessly together in real time, offer feedback throughout the creation phase, and track approvals so you can send your company newsletters on time.
It’s best to create your content or have your plan in mind in advance so you aren’t left scrambling before sending it out.
A good rule of thumb is to have a content calendar laid out which lists the theme or subject of your newsletters. This way, you have a blueprint and central focus to create content around.
With your intended theme listed, it becomes seamless to find a newsletter template for that purpose.
For example, newsletter builders typically categorize their newsletter templates so you can source exactly the template you need for the type of message you wish to send.
Once you select your newsletter template, you can use the built-in content editor to adjust the content’s sequence, if you so desire. Or, you can leave it as is and input your own images using the image editor (to crop, align or resize) and multimedia content library (to add gifs, images, videos and files).
Make sure that your company newsletter adheres to regulations, such as CAN SPAM laws. A few provisions here include: not using deceptive subject lines, allowing recipients to opt-out, honoring unsubscribe requests, etc.
When you’re done editing your newsletter, it’s time to send it out. With the best email builders, you can rely on their integration with popular email service providers like Gmail and Outlook.
Once you’re done creating your beautifully designed newsletter, you can export it to your favorite email provider to send it.
And, you can rest assured that it will render as you wish across devices because the email builder has already performed the necessary due diligence and tested emails across devices and systems.
Rather than having to guess how your audience is enjoying and engaging with your newsletter, you can rely on an email builder’s trustworthy data.
The best email builders are equipped with timely analytics so you can assess open rates, click-through rates, and even view a heatmap that shows you what content performed the best.
Knowing how to start a company newsletter is just the beginning. Once you get started, it’s a continuous effort to improve your communications to boost engagement, increase sales, and promote your audience to take action based on your call-to-actions.
Use the analytics at your fingertips to improve your email newsletters with each subsequent send.
A company newsletter is a continuous and evolving animal. To grow your company newsletter once you’ve gotten going, consider these helpful recommendations:
A subject line is what provides the first impression of your company newsletter in any inbox. The subject line should not only represent what a reader can expect to glean from opening your newsletter, but it should also spark curiosity and excitement.
The best subject lines are short, to-the-point, and honest, but they don’t give it all away from the get-go. Rather, they prompt a reader to want to know more, and in turn, open the newsletter to learn more.
Consistency is key, as is good content. With a consistent send schedule, your audience will start to expect your newsletters, and in the best case scenario, they’ll look forward to receiving it.
Another solid way to boost hype around your company newsletter is to offer exclusive content to your subscribers.
For example, you can offer a discount code to new subscribers, behind-the-scenes content, or early access to new products. These are all incentives to get people to want to stay tuned for more.
Don’t forget to amplify the fact you have a newsletter on your social media channels and website.
You may even want to run paid ads to gain more subscribers. With an email builder, you can distribute your email content with the click of a button via email subscribers or to internal messagings apps like Slack or social media platforms, making amplification easy.
Perhaps the most important ingredient for how to start a company newsletter is to know what you will focus the content around!
Here are some company newsletter content ideas to spark your creativity:
Most people enjoy learning something new and being able to grow in their careers. You can start a career development focused newsletter that highlights success stories of those who have made it within your industry and share helpful resources to help others follow suit.
A tech newsletter is a great place to share new and emerging trends, especially if you’re in an industry that is highly impacted by new technologies (spoiler alert: most are).
If you have an aspect of your business that you’d like to dive deeper into, you can start a business newsletter. To share emerging business trends, you can consider featuring experts in the field to share their own opinions or content within your newsletter, which is a great value add for subscribers.
Another type of newsletter that is beneficial for every company is an internal communications newsletter. This is geared towards employees to provide important company updates, introduce new employees, promote events, and the like.
You’re now fully equipped with all you need to know about how to start a company newsletter. The ball is in your court to get going with your email communications endeavors and strategy.
And, don’t forget that with an email builder by your side, all the stress and hassle of creating and sending email newsletters melts away. This way, you can spend your time focused on the content itself, rather than having to worry about the design, implementation, or testing.
