Best Weekly Update Email Templates & Tips
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Projects have a lot of moving parts. From team members to outstanding tasks to budgets, keeping track of everything is important to stay organized and hit those deadlines.
Today, you’re going to learn why a weekly update email could be the tool you’re missing.
In this blog, we’re covering exactly how you can create and send engaging, helpful project updates to everyone who matters, with professional templates you can start using straight away.
A weekly update email is a message you send to team members, managers or clients to keep them in the loop about a certain project.
Essentially, the idea is to let your network know how the project is progressing. This includes achievements, details about how close you are to reaching your goal or end point, and any priorities or possible problems.
When sent as an internal communication email, this weekly summary creates accountability and helps gel the team. For external recipients, like clients and customers, it invites transparency into the process by sharing updates and opening a conversation about timelines, budgets, and anything else the customer wants to discuss.
When managers and employees are juggling ever-busy workdays, communication and accountability are key to a successful project.
Keep everyone in the know by writing a project status email each week, and see how it benefits the individuals working together, as well as the overall success of the project.
We like to set aside time every Friday to write up our summary of the week.
Carving out this time gives us an opportunity to reflect on the week and create a solid to-do list for the following week. This helps keep our focus in the right places; when Monday rolls around, everyone knows exactly what to work on.
Of course, practising flexibility on Monday is important (other priorities might crop up over the weekend!) but writing out 3-5 priorities is a great starting point.
You can use this email to establish accountability across the team.
If possible, summarize roles and priorities and keep an eye on the progress of every task. This helps everyone to avoid distractions and stay focused on their role, which is especially important for managers who often get pulled in multiple directions!
Weekly update emails can serve as a reminder of priorities and a way to share updates about aspects of the task. It’s an easy way to communicate details about progress to everyone, without having to talk to people individually (which takes a lot longer).
We’d love every project to go smoothly, but that’s not always the case.
A lot of the time, disruptions and curveballs throw off the pace and focus.
When writing your weekly update email, it helps to examine what you wanted to get done that week. Did the team tick everything off the list? If not, is there a reason why? What’s slowing you down?
Pinpointing issues early on stops them from becoming larger problems that slip through the net, which could affect the budget or timeline.
Showing you appreciate employees isn’t just a warm gesture.
It helps strengthen teams, builds better relationships between employees and management, boosts morale, and motivates employees to continue putting their best foot forward.
Keep a record of things the team has achieved as a whole, as well as individual achievements, and see how that helps push the project forward. This also acts as a great reminder when it’s time for any quarterly or annual performance reviews!
Keeping track of the project’s status, budget updates, and upcoming tasks is a surefire way to hit your targets.
Project status emails can be quick and simple to create (especially with the right tools – we’ll cover this more in the next section!) and they take your organization’s communication strategy to the next level.
Clients appreciate the transparency, and team members can all stay aligned, working toward the same goals.
Like all email newsletters, there are benefits as well as challenges.
As long as you’re aware of the challenges, you’ll be able to overcome them and write successful update emails, week after week.
Some common challenges include:
Pro tip: Use an email builder to overcome most of the challenges of company newsletters, like the project status email. Email builders let you design emails quickly and easily. And, thanks to a drag-and-drop editor and hundreds of customizable templates, you don’t need to be a designer to create professional, beautiful, engaging emails.
Simply choose a template, add your company branding using an in-built Brand Kit, and anyone on your team can customize that template with updates. With the help of an email builder, every weekly update email is formatted for engagement, and the build takes just minutes – so you never have to miss a week!
Weekly update emails vary depending on each project and its goals.
However, you can keep yours interesting and engaging by hitting the following key points.
Weekly update emails vary depending on each project and its goals.
However, you can keep yours interesting and engaging by hitting the following key points.
Make sure everyone immediately knows which project your email is about. It’s worth including the project name in the subject line. This sort of clarity helps get your emails opened.
Open the email with the ‘who’ behind the project.
Outline the end goal, including details about deadlines and proposed tangible results, if available.
Where is the project at right now? This could be anything from planning to testing to execution.
Outline tasks the team has completed since the last update.
List priorities for the upcoming week. You could assign each priority to an individual or team within the project.
Be honest about any challenges, roadblocks or disruptions you came across. Outline how you might overcome these challenges.
End the email on a positive note by listing milestones the team hit this week. Feel free to name individuals who have performed especially well, and use tangible outcomes (with figures) where possible.
Design the email with your brand logo, typography and color scheme, for recognition and trust building. The Brand Kit feature on email builders lets you save assets and automatically apply your saved styles to elements in newsletters, such as headings and paragraphs.
This ensures your emails are consistent across all teams, and protects your brand identity for both internal and external comms.
Don’t want to battle a blank page?
Writing email updates can be daunting, so we’ve rounded up some of the best project status update email examples to get you started.
Use these templates and simply update them with the correct project information for the fast, easy way to keep your team (and clients) in sync.
This weekly email template covers just about all the essential points.
It’s relatively generalized, so you can send it to everyone from clients to stakeholders, team members, and managers.
Hi [Name]
Here’s your weekly update on [Project Name]!
The [Department] Team has been working solidly all week. The following tasks are now complete:
- [Task]
- [Task]
That means we’re on track for a completion date of [Date].As we’re nearing the end of the testing phase of this project, we’ve got a busy week ahead. The priorities for next week are:
- [Task]
- [Task]
- [Task]
While we’re here, I’d like to commend [Team Member] for their impressive skills with [Task/Tool/Process]. They’ve helped us get real clarity to drive this project forward!
If you have any questions, please get in touch.
Best,
[Name]
Stay aligned with your co-worker(s) with a weekly update email that covers your progress and any outstanding jobs. You can also use this email to ask for an update on your co-worker’s progress, for more clarity across the project.
Hi [Name]
I hope you’ve had a great week - I know it’s been pretty crazy for us this week!
I just wanted to update you on the [Project Name] project, so we both know what we need to do next week.
Here’s what I ticked off this week:
- [Task]
- [Task]
This is what I plan to focus on next week:
- [Task]
- [Task]
- [Task]
Could you please reply with the same information for your side of the project? From your end, are we still on track for completion on [Date]?
Thanks,
[Name]
This email template keeps managers updated on the status of the project.
Keeping management in the loop means they can problem-solve if something isn’t going well, or there’s a delay. They can also relay details about the project to the client.
Hi [Name]
I wanted to give you an update on [Project].
Our team made good progress this week. We managed to complete the following jobs:
- [Task]
- [Task]
- [Task]
- [Task]
A special shout-out has to go to [Team Member Name] for their work on [Task]. Seriously impressive!
Next week, we need to work on:
- [Task]
- [Task]
If everything goes to plan, the project should be completed by [Date]. However, can we schedule a meeting next week to discuss [Challenge]?
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
[Name]
Let clients know when projects are going to plan, to give some reassurance at the end of each week.
If any issues arise, outline how you’ll handle them. Cover everything your client is most interested in, such as budget and timeline.
Hi [Name]
I hope you’ve had a great week!
I wanted to update you on the status of our [Project Name] Project.
We’re currently working toward a final deadline of [Date]. Right now, we’re on schedule to do that. However, we need to get approval from you regarding [Task] before we can proceed with that.
Our tasks for next week include:
- [Task]
- [Task]
- [Task]
We might need to increase the budget by [amount] to achieve [goal]. Happy to discuss that with you next week.
Rest assured everything is going very well so far!
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
[Name]
Following these best practices will lighten the load for you (making it fast and easy to build emails), and make your weekly round-ups an enjoyable read for every recipient.
Try to collect relevant information for your update email throughout the week. You can then use an email builder’s browser extension to pull content from Slack, Pocket or Feedly into your email builder library. All you need to do is save content with one click as you browse the web, and everything will be stored in your library for later.
This ‘always-on’ mentality will save time searching for updates and information when building your email.
Stick to the facts when writing this email.
Keep it warm and polite, but aim to be specific and only include the necessary details.
Designing emails with an email builder can help keep your content focused. Email builders let you create simple, clear modules and save them for later. For example, a cluster of elements, like a title, body copy, and image or graph.
This saves time and makes the process easier, as you don’t have to design each module from scratch.
Just find your saved modules, drag and drop them into your newsletters, and update them with the relevant information. So, for project status emails, one module might cover your priority list, for example.
Try it and see how structuring your emails becomes so much easier!
Present tasks and results in a visually appealing way. We want recipients to feel motivated to read the whole email. Short, digestible sections with large headings are the best approach.
An email builder can help you follow email design best practices, to maximize engagement. Choose from hundreds of templates, including weekly update email templates, and modify them in minutes with the relevant details.
You can save the template and reuse it for future emails. This means you don’t need to design every new email from scratch, and you can stick to the same structure each week, so recipients know what to expect and can easily follow each email.
Send project updates every week. Many organizations choose to send updates on a Friday, but the day is up to you. Just be sure to stick to that same day each week!
Luckily, with the help of templates and other time-saving features, like Brand Kits and reusable modules, email builders let you design each email in minutes. Sticking to a schedule is a breeze because the process doesn’t take up much of your day!
Creating emails from scratch can be time-consuming, tricky, or expensive. Overcome these problems with an email builder.
With this tool you can create beautiful, professional, engaging emails easily, and you can export your designs to over 50 ESPs, including Gmail and Outlook. Email builders also let you track the performance of your emails. With detailed analytics you can optimize your campaigns.
With metrics like open rate and click rate, plus visual performance using heat maps, you can get vital insights no matter which platform you send your emails from.
Strengthen relationships with clients and internal teams, while keeping projects on the right course, with a weekly update email.
With an email builder, this email is quick and easy to build, and delivers a stack of benefits for your business. So, you can save time when creating weekly emails and ensure you never miss an update. Thanks to hundreds of engaging templates and an easy-to-use editor, it couldn’t be simpler to display your news in a clear, engaging way.
