Picture this: Your team leader sends you a Slack message or sidles up to your desk and says, “We need a team newsletter. Can you take that on, please?” Inwardly you groan, but you put on a smile and respond that you’d be happy to. Your mind is spinning. Where do you start? What goes into a team newsletter? Will anyone even read it?
First, let me ease your mind: Team communication is critical.
A survey by 15Five revealed that 81% of employees would rather work for a company that values open communication.
Communication builds trust, and trust is the cornerstone of any healthy relationship. Newsletters can be especially valuable for keeping dispersed, remote, and global teams aligned, ensuring everyone receives the same content regardless of location and time zone.
I organize and write our own weekly internal newsletter at Cortico-X, called The Heartbeat. I inherited it from a coworker who had started it, and, as a former consumer of it and with input from my peers, I was able to reshape it into something even better. Here’s what I’ve learned from advising our clients on their internal communication efforts and from my own experience.
Lesson 1: Define the Purpose
It’s tempting to start with what the newsletter will look like. But before you start designing layouts, developing content, or selecting a tool, think through the purpose of the internal newsletter. Why does your team need one? What will be unique and complementary about the newsletter versus other communication channels?
The most common purposes are usually to:
- Share information within the team, either from leadership or among team members. Examples: project updates, initiative progress, best practices, company news.
- Reinforce transparency from leadership, including messages like strategic updates, change management communications, and policy changes.
- Build team culture, which is broad but could mean things like celebrating achievements and work anniversaries, reinforcing team norms, and recognizing teammates for performance that aligns with cultural values.
- Encourage connection among colleagues through sharing individuals’ human sides (e.g., fun personal facts, photos, achievements from outside of work).
- Consolidate messages that might otherwise come via multiple or other emails. In our Cortico-X Heartbeat, for example, we folded a regular business update email into our weekly newsletter.
Narrow in on the purposes that align with your particular newsletter and let those purposes guide what you include.
Lesson 2: Obsess about Content and Formatting
Once you’ve established the purpose, you’re ready to tackle the details. Your mission now is to design a newsletter that people actually want to read (and contribute to!). It sounds obvious, but the ways to do it aren’t always intuitive. Here are my top tips for making your newsletter appealing to readers:
- Use the purpose as a pressure test for content to include. Simple: If it doesn’t fit, don’t include it. I know, I know, it’s easy to say but much harder to do. Editing down is always a challenge. When in doubt, exclude something at first and bring the idea back later if it still resonates.
- Establish a realistic regular cadence – and stick to it. Your leadership may want a weekly newsletter – but is it really sustainable to come up with content that frequently? And will someone have to sign off on content or edit it? Will you even have enough new content that’s worth highlighting? Be intentional and realistic about what you can do successfully. You can always start with less frequent newsletters and speed up if you find that it’s manageable.
- Get buy-in from contributors ahead of time. If there’s a leadership update or a regular contribution from team members, make sure that they’re comfortable committing to the timeline and frequency. And be prepared to chase people down sometimes or exclude a section because it isn’t ready (no puppies will die!).
- Make it fun to read. If it’s not engaging, employees won’t bother to read it. Your newsletter needs a little… je ne sais quoi. In my experience, that means identifying good writers who will convey messages authentically. And have fun while you write it; your mood will come through in the writing.
- Leverage formats like images and video to make it more compelling. So often newsletters rely on long text blocks when a photo, image, or short video could convey more with less. According to a study from TechSmith, nearly 70% of employees who received visual communications absorb the information better than when they received text-based ones. If you’re experimenting with short-form video for employees, we have advice on that, too.
- Use formatting to enable scanning and easy reading. Text formatting like bold, bullets, and numbered lists can draw the eye to the most important content and enable a quick understanding of what’s in a section. And avoid overly wordy headings and body text; write concisely as much as possible.
Even with all these tips, you probably won’t get everything just right the first time. And that’s okay. Be prepared to rework and experiment. Scrap sections that aren’t valuable and try new ones. Ask the team for feedback and input.
Lesson 3: Prepare for Some Frustration
Owning a team newsletter, like anything, can come with all kinds of emotions: satisfaction upon completing an issue, worry when an author is late, amusement when you can work in humor, excitement when you hit “Publish.” I’ve also had my fair share of frustration – and you probably will, too. Here are the areas that have been most frustrating for me:
- Maintaining a regular newsletter can be a slog. Early enthusiasm will fade. There will be times when you don’t feel like doing it. That’s normal. Push through it because there is value in what you’re doing. Or revisit your purpose and evaluate whether you’re achieving it. If you’re not, consider pulling the plug. There’s no shame in that game.
- There’s no built-in validation. We’re conditioned by social media likes and reactions to want immediate affirmation. But emails are one sided; they disappear out into the ether. Unless a team member deliberately tells you how great the newsletter is, you won’t know whether teammates like it (and open rates and click-through rates only indicate readership, not enjoyment or appreciation). It can feel deflating sometimes. Ask for feedback – not just for your own validation, but to help you make the newsletter better, too.
- The tools are imperfect. We use a newsletter tool to enable easy composition and formatting, but, frankly, it’s buggy. Sometimes I can’t insert an image or format bullets correctly. Copying and pasting from emails causes weird text formatting. Some weeks half the team never receives their copies because of our corporate security and junk filters. But it’s still easier than formatting an email in Outlook.
Despite these inevitable frustrations, creating and maintaining a team newsletter is genuinely worth the effort. The impact may not always be immediately visible, but you’re building something valuable: a consistent touchpoint that keeps your team informed, connected, and aligned.
Remember, though, that a newsletter is just one piece of your internal communication puzzle. It works best when it complements other channels like team meetings, one-on-ones, instant messaging, and informal conversations. Think of your newsletter as a steady drumbeat in the larger symphony of team communication — it may not be the loudest instrument, but it helps keep everyone playing in rhythm. So push through those frustrating moments, celebrate the small wins, and know that you’re contributing to something bigger than any single email: a more connected, informed, and engaged team.
If you want help applying this advice to your newsletter or internal communication strategy, drop us a line. We’d love to help.
Adele Budovsky
is an Engagement Manager and Associate Principal at Cortico-X, bringing 20+ years of deep expertise in customer experience transformation, voice of customer programs, and digital experience optimization across industries.
