You don’t need images to make your newsletter look good.Use memes, stats, videos, quotes, images-whatever you need to meet your audience where they are at. Talk to your audience in their language.You don’t need to make it more complicated than it has to be. Ditch the corporate talk and adjust to the literacy and knowledge level of your audience. Their style makes readers feel like the newsletter is just a candid conversation between friends. In every email, they shout out to all their subscribers who are celebrating career milestones and birthdays. Complicated news stories are broken down into the main takeaways and spiced up with cheeky copy that keeps people engaged. Their font choice, the story format and layout, and the headers make everything look well-put-together while still easy to read. From the simple illustration of a retro alarm clock to the hip green palette, they are targeting a very specific audience of females in their 20s and 30s-and doing it well. Their branding is obvious and on-point.Their snarky pop culture references make the news more interesting for those less inclined to read or consume the news daily.With over 6 million subscribers, they have over 1 million people opening their newsletter, including a bunch of high-profile celebs like Oprah, Sarah Jessica Parker, Trevor Noah, Shonda Rhimes, and Chelsea Handler. The Skimm, though controversial, boasts an open rate of over 40% (which is super high for an external email dontcha-know). U se headings and subheadings liberally–they help break up the design make the content more scannable.Keep the formatting consistent so people know what content can be found where, but also try different features and see how they perform. Besides the header image, which honestly, we rarely even look at, the Hustle has no images and is still the most engaging email in our inboxes. And use in-text links so people can do their own research if they want to learn more.

Pick just a couple of topics and ideas and explain them clearly and concisely. Making people laugh and think is the best way to get them engaged and hungry for your next newsletter. They are obvious and transparent when they are advertising, and they are always trying to improve their methods and content. You won’t find corporate jargon or back-patting here.

They always have us chomping at the bit and wondering what in the world is waiting for us in that email. They have the uncanny ability to condense complicated stories into just a couple of sentences that help you understand what the heck is going on in the world and why it matters. They have recurring content blocks like Friday Shower Thoughts, From Our Toolbox, and actually-fun-to-read sponsor pitches that you come to expect and always enjoy.They have unique calls to action that make you laugh and think while you share.Their format is easy to read (they make great use of headings, subheadings and plain text) with lots of in-text links for continued reading and story sources.The Hustle is great at sourcing what is relevant to their readers and focusing on just a few of the most important stories.And over 1 million subscribers feel the same way. I was able to convince our marketing team to subscribe and soon we were checking in with each other every day, eager to talk about what we’d read.Īre we engaged? No way-we are full-on hooked.

This was the first email newsletter I ever looked forward to seeing in my inbox every single day. In this post, I will walk you through my favorite external and employee newsletter designs, while highlighting what’s awesome about them, and what tactics you can implement right away in your own employee newsletter. Now, I’m going to convert you into a newsletter-lovin', hit-send-joyfully believer. I've also looked at how different organizations approach newsletter content-both for internal and external audiences. So needless to say, I’ve done my research.īut I haven't just looked at the best employee newsletter designs. In fact, I’ve proclaimed my love for email newsletters to communicators around the world at our Comms Labs events, trying to show internal comms pros the potential that this channel has. I think they are the smartest, coolest, most accessible communication channels ever. She knows that communication is where the magic happens and loves helping individuals and organizations engage and connect. Kyla is a sharp-shootin' word-slinger, who's got a huge crush on internal communicators.

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