According to a recent survey, 32% of workers in manufacturing receive important company information via word of mouth. And the same survey found that 28% of employees want to be able to easily access communication from senior leadership teams.

For many businesses, this means a regular employee newsletter sharing important company news and more. But...

The sad truth: Your company newsletter probably ends up in the digital graveyard alongside unread expense reports and forgotten meeting invitations. But in fact most internal newsletters fail not because people don't care about their company, they fail because they're predictable, corporate, and forgettable.

Why most internal newsletters get ignored

Before we dive into solutions, let's acknowledge the problem. 

Your colleagues aren't ignoring newsletters because they're lazy or disengaged. They're ignoring them because most company communications make the same fundamental mistakes...

More often than not, they read like corporate press releases written by committee. Or, in todays era of AI, probably smashed out with a basic prompt in Chat GPT. Internal communications will often prioritize what the leadership team wants to say over what employees actually want to know. And they mistake "sharing information" for "creating value."

Yes, most of the information inside any company newsletter is usually very important for many reasons. Whether that's sharing important information about the company's mission, KPIs and business updates, or sharing individual employees success stories. But in many cases people simply skim over the content, find the information that's relevant to them and click away. Or, worse still, ignore the whole thing.

So... The real question isn't how to make people read your internal newsletter. It's how to create something worth their attention in the first place.

When you're next writing an internal newsletter, make sure to follow these key points.

The biggest mistake internal communicators make is jumping straight to content ideas. What should we include this month? Should we feature the sales team? Maybe add a photo from the office party?

Your newsletter needs a purpose beyond "keeping people informed." 

What are you trying to accomplish? Are you building connection across remote teams? Reinforcing your company culture? Helping people understand how their work contributes to bigger goals?

Define the goals of your comms first. Everything else flows from here.

Once you have that purpose, you can ask better questions: What stories support this? What information helps employees do their jobs better? What would make someone stop scrolling and actually pay attention?

TL;DR here: Define the purpose of your internal newsletter - and it isn't just keeping employees informed with developments in the company.

Nobody wakes up excited to read corporate announcements. People wake up interested in other people.

The most engaging newsletters understand this instinctively. The best internal communications might well feature information about more high level and important company news. But they don't lead with "Q3 Results" or "New Policy Update." They lead with stories about the humans behind the work.

Keeping employees engaged means putting names to the stories, or leading employee recognition in relation to the big company news before hitting the data.

One step could be to interview the engineer who solved that impossible problem. Feature the customer service rep who turned an angry client into a loyal advocate. Share the story of how an intern's suggestion led to a major process improvement.

These stories do something that company announcements never can - they make abstract concepts relatable. And more than that, they help to highlight and reinforce company culture. 

When you profile someone who embodies your company values, you're not just listing those values. You're showing what they look like in action and putting a human face to a business process. 

Corporate language is the enemy of engagement. You know the kind, where every sentence sounds like it passed through three layers of approval and emerged drained of personality. Or - worse still - like you literally copy and pasted it from Chat GPT (yes, EVERYONE NOTICED).

Write the way you'd explain something to a colleague over coffee. Use contractions. Start sentences with "And" or "But" if it feels natural. Ask questions. Break a few grammar rules if it makes your writing clearer.

Your newsletter shouldn't sound like a memo. It should sound like a conversation.

Specific details instead of vague generalities

On this last point, the corporate stuffiness of many company newsletters is one of the big contributors to newsletter blindness. Yes, you might be sharing corporate updates with your workforce, but keeping employees engaged does mean using language that they can relate to and understand without glazing over or needing to re-read three times. 

Another issue with corporate talk is that it does add to the sense of 'them and us'. So if you really want to increase employee engagement, use language that will appeal across the entire spectrum of your company workforce. 

For example, when you're tempted to write "We are pleased to announce that the implementation of the new system will commence on Tuesday the 25th of March," stop. Write "The new system launches next Tuesday", or "Get ready for launch! The new system goes live on Tuesday" instead.

4. Create content that people can actually use

Information alone isn't valuable. Context is valuable. Actionability is valuable. Insight is valuable.

Before including anything in your internal newsletter, ask: So what? Why should someone care about this? How does it make their work life better, easier, or more meaningful?

If you're sharing industry news, don't just link to articles. Explain what they mean for your company. Add a short TL;DR to the start of the article and give people the option to read more by clicking through to your intranet or blog pages.

If you're announcing a policy change, don't just announce the new rules. Help people understand the reasoning and explain what they need to do differently in simple steps - ideally using something like bullet points or a short listicle.

Quick wins: Simple tips or hacks that save time. These could be keyboard shortcuts, process improvements, or tools people don't know about. Make them immediately actionable.

Context that matters: Help people connect the dots between their daily work and company strategy. When leadership makes a decision, explain the thinking behind it. When you hit a milestone, break down what it took to get there.

Resources worth bookmarking: Curate genuinely helpful content. Maybe it's a guide to using your internal tools better. Maybe it's an article about managing remote teams. Whatever you share, make sure it's legitimately useful, not just "content."

Answers to real questions: Start tracking questions that come up repeatedly. Address them in your newsletter. People will appreciate not having to hunt for information they actually need.

You already know this, but: Most people won't read every word of your newsletter. They'll scan it, the same way you scan your messages for relevant information.

First of all, avoid a wall of text. Big sections of text are hard to read and usually result in much less information being extracted. Break up your text into two or three paragraphs at a time (much like in this blog post for example).

Be sure to use clear section headers that tell people exactly what they're about to read (again, like this blog post). Break up text with visual elements such as illustrations (photos, infographics, whatever helps to explain the context).

And make your most important points stand out through formatting or positioning. The goal isn't to trick people into reading more. It's to help them quickly find what matters to them. If someone can scan your newsletter in 30 seconds and grasp the key points, you've succeeded.

Keep your layout clean. Resist the urge to cram everything in. White space is your friend - it makes content easier to digest. If something doesn't fit, save it for next time.

And please, left-align your text. People read left to right. Don't make them work harder than necessary.

Your newsletter probably looks like every other company newsletter - logo at the top, three-column layout, stock photos of people shaking hands or laughing at laptops.

Give your newsletter a name that actually means something. Not "The COMPANY Update November 2025" or "Weekly Wire." Something with personality that hints at what's inside. Think about what would make you curious enough to open an email.

If in doubt, go ask your preferred LLM for suggestions. 

You should try to create a distinct visual identity for your company newsletter that signals "this is different from other corporate communications." 

It doesn't need to be elaborate. Sometimes a unique color scheme or consistent header style is enough to make it feel special.

Consider format too. Who says newsletters must be traditional email layouts? Could yours be a simple text email with links? A visual digest? A video roundup? Match the format to your content and audience.

The modern focus on employee engagement means that, more than ever, the best newsletters need to create dialogue, not monologue.

So, build in ways for people to respond. Include a quick poll about preferences for an upcoming decision. Add a suggestion box for future content. Ask for feedback on company initiatives.

You can also build in a strategy for employee generated content in your newsletters, for example asking for written contributions or guest writers. You could even rotate the focus to different departments for each company newsletter - which means that the entire company feels like it has stock in the production of internal communications.

Better still, more employee involvement will help to increase employee engagement in the whole process and build a sense of community around the process too. 

When people contribute, acknowledge it. Feature their ideas. Answer their questions publicly. Show that their input matters.

You can also source content from employees. Ask them to recommend books, share their favorite productivity tools, or nominate colleagues who deserve recognition. This accomplishes two things: it takes pressure off you to create all the content, and it makes the newsletter feel like it belongs to everyone, not just the communications team.

Frequency matters less than consistency. Whether you publish weekly, monthly, or quarterly, stick to a schedule. People should know when to expect your newsletter.

That said, consider when you send it. Monday mornings are crowded. Friday afternoons are ignored. Find the sweet spot when your audience is most likely to have a few minutes to engage. Apparently the best time to send a company newsletter is between 9am and 11am on a Tuesday.

Also think about length. Shorter isn't always better, but unnecessarily long is always worse. 

Every piece of content should justify its presence. If you're including something just to fill space, cut it.

Open rates and click-throughs are useful metrics, and you can track these in your newsletter CMS or on your intranet portal. But these stats don't necessarily tell the whole story. The real question is whether your newsletter accomplishes its purpose - and this can be a harder metric to measure.

When looking at the results of your internal newsletter, do you find that your people are better informed about whats going on? Do they better understand company strategy? Are they more engaged in their work? And perhaps most importantly, are they more connected to each other? 

While these outcomes are harder to measure, you can track them through employee feedback and company surveys, informal conversations, or by noting when people reference newsletter content in meetings.

Also pay attention to which sections get the most engagement. What do people click on? What generates responses or questions? Double down on what works and rethink what doesn't.

The very nature of company newsletters means that you'll eventually need to communicate something difficult: Layoffs, major changes, negative feedback, bad news... Your newsletter shouldn't avoid these topics, but it does need to handle them with care.

The key thing is not to bury bad news behind cheerful updates. Address it directly and honestly. Explain what's happening, why it's happening, and what it means for people, and if possible try to include information about where they can get answers to questions.

Tone matters enormously here. Some tricks to really pull this off include:

Acknowledge difficulty in straight talk without wallowing too much. Avoid finger pointing or general negativity and instead try to suggest what the fix needs to be...

Keep language direct and straightforward - avoid excessive explanations, jargon or tangential information.

Show empathy and understanding while maintaining professionalism. It's likely everyone is trying their best, even if things haven't gone as planned - so managing employee morale will be key even when delivering unfavorable news.

With all this being said, sometimes, the right call is addressing tough topics outside the newsletter entirely. This might mean saving big news for your all hands or town hall meeting, or delivering department specific news in team meetings instead of across the company wide newsletter.

Every newsletter should balance immediate information with enduring value.

Include time-sensitive updates people need to know such as upcoming deadlines, event registrations and important changes. But also include content that remains relevant. Stories about your company culture, advice on common challenges, resources people can return to or even non-work based successes (Shannon from accounts ran a marathon? Thats a big win! Raj from production just had a baby? Share the great news).

This balance means your newsletter serves dual purposes. It keeps people informed about what's happening now, while building a library of content that stays useful.

12. Cross post key information on digital signage

Many modern businesses feature a mix of workers, from desk-based office employees to production line, warehouse or customer facing employees. In fact, with 80% of the global workforce being non-desk based, with limited access to a company computer or device, your internal communications can be lost if a huge portion of your company can't access it. 

Using digital signage screens in offices, warehouses, break rooms or production lines is one of the most effective ways to reach more workers and keep every team informed, whether they're desk based or not. 

Highlights from your employee newsletter can be shared on screens, with QR codes linking to the main company news page on your intranet portal or blog. 

The company newsletter is an important communication tool for modern business - but too often it goes ignored. Find out how to create a better internal newsletter bulletin.

Tips to Create a Company Internal Newsletter People Want to Read

Tips to Create a Company Internal Newsletter People Want to Read

Tips to Create a Company Internal Newsletter People Want to Read

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