Email design & more

Welcome to your go-to guide for all things email creation. Explore our collection of expertly curated articles, designed to empower you to create beautiful and engaging email campaigns that convert.

Color of the Year 2024: What It Is and How to Harness It in Email Marketing

Color of the Year 2024: What It Is and How to Harness It in Email Marketing

Elevate your 2024 email marketing initiatives by harnessing the influence of the Color of the Year. Beyond mere aesthetics, incorporating this dynamic hue strategically into your campaigns allows you to infuse contemporary flair into your brand communication.
Beefree team
Beefree team
Feb 21, 2024

This year, Pantone celebrates its 25th year of its unique and inspiring Color of the Year program. While many people find the Color of the Year to be simply an entertaining announcement, for marketers, this color can be a gateway toward better connecting with your customers and audiences.

Let's discuss how email marketing pros can stay ahead of the trends and effortlessly infuse the Color of the Year 2024 in your email campaigns.

What Is the Color of the Year 2024?

Each year, Pantone selects a "Color of The Year" that depicts and illustrates the state of the current culture and recent trends. This year's color is Peach Fuzz, Pantone 13-1023.

Source: https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-of-the-year/what-is-peach-fuzz

According to Pantone's reasoning for selecting the color Peach Fuzz, they state that it serves as an expression of the kindness, tenderness, warmth and togetherness that our culture is seeking and driving for in 2024. As Pantone explains, “Pantone 13-1023 Peach Fuzz captures our desire to nurture ourselves and others. It’s a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.” For many, this color embodies a vintage feel, creating a sense of honoring the past while welcoming the opportunities of the future.

How is the Color of the Year chosen?

For Pantone, choosing the Color of the Year is a long and comprehensive effort. Its team of color experts is continuously at work observing the global culture and the expressions of color across fashion, art and design, lifestyles, travel destinations, imagery on media platforms, and so on.

The Color of the Year is both an expression of our present culture at the dawn of a new year and a result of trend forecasting for colors, attitudes, and social movements that will be pervasive in the year ahead. It’s decided by the emerging popularity of the color itself as well as the emotions and concepts associated with the color.

Why does the Color of the Year matter in email marketing?

The Color of the Year can be an excellent asset to your email marketing (and your other 2024 marketing channels) in multiple ways. First, this color is representative of the present culture, which means it’s likely relatable to your present-day audience. It embodies a mindset that your consumers are likely to share - one of warmth, wellness, and interpersonal kindness - which fosters the connection between your brand and the consumers.

Second, the Color of the Year is in keeping with current color and fashion trends. By incorporating this color into your email marketing, your brand looks to be trendy and up-to-date. Even if consumers don’t know what the Color of the Year is, they notice that your emails have a modern, on-trend look.

Ways to use the Color of the Year 2024 in your email marketing

As we step into the vibrant realm of 2024, the Color of the Year takes center stage as a powerful tool for marketers seeking to infuse their strategies with contemporary flair.It serves as a language of its own, capable of communicating emotions, evoking reactions, and establishing a unique visual identity for brands. By incorporating the Color of the Year into marketing initiatives, businesses can align themselves consumer sensibilities, fostering a connection and positioning themselves as forward-thinking.

Use imagery with the Color of the Year 2024

Peach Fuzz doesn’t have to be the core color of your email design for you to benefit from it. When selecting images to include in your

email campaigns, consider looking for images that have Peach Fuzz or a similar color. For example, this royalty-free images from Unsplash each contain peachy hues that have the same mood and essence as the Color of the Year 2024. You’ll notice that the color isn't too prominent, but still stands out and plays well with the other colors in the image. This is a great depiction how you can incorporate Peach Fuzz to pair well with your brand identity.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/low-angle-photo-of-white-and-orange-concrete-building--T0La6F_WrE

Align your messaging with the Color of the Year 2024

As we’ve noted, the Color of the Year isn’t just a color; it’s a concept and an embodiment of our culture. You can use this to inform the messaging in your email marketing. In the case of Peach Fuzz, infuse your messaging with a sense of kindness, compassion, and warmth to speak to our current culture and appeal to your audience’s mindset in the present time.

Add the Color of The Year to your seasonal and trendy campaigns

By infusing the Color of the Year into seasonal and trendy campaigns, you not only stay relevant and timely but also capitalize on the cultural and emotional resonances associated with the chosen color, creating a dynamic and engaging experience for your audience. Here are some ideas:

Align the color with changing seasons

Embrace the changing seasons and incorporate the Color of the Year into your email campaigns that align with specific times of the year.

Source: https://beefree.io/template/feel-the-holiday-cheer

Capitalize on fashion and design trends

Stay attuned to fashion and design trends that feature the Color of the Year. Incorporate the color into email campaigns that showcase how your products or services align with current style preferences. Additionally, highlight new arrivals or product collections that prominently feature the trending color, catering to the fashion-forward interests of your audience, such as the template below:

Source: https://beefree.io/template/color-of-the-year-collection-email

Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity

Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity by tying the Color of the Year to limited-time promotions or exclusive offers. Use the color to highlight special discounts, early access to products, or exclusive content, encouraging your audience to engage promptly with your email campaigns.

Sourcehttps://beefree.io/template/color-of-the-year-collection-announcement

Develop themed content and storytelling

Develop themed content around the Color of the Year, telling a story that resonates with your brand and the significance of the color. The email template below serves as a perfect starting point to share share narratives, testimonials, or behind-the-scenes content that emphasizes the emotional and cultural aspects associated with the color of the year.

Source: https://beefree.io/template/how-to-design-with-pantone-peach-fuzz

Does the 2024 Color of the Year suit your brand?

Evaluating whether the 2024 Color of the Year suits your brand involves a nuanced exploration of the color's characteristics and your brand identity. Begin by examining the psychological and emotional associations of the chosen color. Peach Fuzz has a warm, welcoming, and peaceful air that can align well with many brands’ voices and messaging. Consider the values, personality, and messaging of your brand; does the color align with these elements, or does it pose a potential contrast that could enhance visual appeal and captivate your audience?

If the color resonates with your target demographic and aligns with your brand's narrative, it may offer an opportunity to play around your visual identity. However, remember that a balance between staying on-trend and maintaining a unique brand identity is crucial.

Strengthening your 2024 email marketing with the Color of the Year

Embracing the Color of the Year in your email campaigns is more than just a visual choice; it's an opportunity to remain competitive and provide users with something new. By strategically incorporating the Color of the Year, you can create visually appealing and emotionally resonant emails that stand out in crowded inboxes.

The easiest way to experiment with the color of the year in email campaigns is to start with a pre-designed template. Beefree’s "Color of The Year" template collection is a perfect place to start. Our user-friendly email editor makes it easy to customize all templates with your brand identity and effortlessly make a few simple changes to bring Peach Fuzz into your design.

Get started with Beefree - it's free!

How To Utilize Gamification For Your Next Email Marketing Campaign

How To Utilize Gamification For Your Next Email Marketing Campaign

Transform your email marketing strategy with the innovative use of gamification. Delve into actionable insights and strategies to captivate your audience, enhance engagement, foster brand loyalty, and elevate the success of your next email campaign.
Beefree team
Beefree team
Feb 20, 2024

Today, digital interactions dominate, and gamification has emerged as a powerful tool to capture and maintain audience attention. More than 70% of businesses included in the Global 2000 have adopted gamification as a key strategy.

In this article, we'll explore the significance of gamification in email marketing, understand its core concepts, delve into the psychology behind it, and provide insights on implementing and overcoming challenges in your gamified campaigns.

The psychology behind gamification in email

At its core, gamification in email marketing revolves around incorporating game-like elements to enhance user engagement.

This strategy involves understanding human behavior and motivation and leverages the psychological aspects that make games inherently appealing, such as competition, achievement, and rewards. Together, these insights help email marketers determine the best use of gamification to help drive engagement and shape consumer responses.

Here are the 3 key psychological drivers in gamification:

Intrinsic motivation

Gamification triggers users' desire to participate by incorporating challenges, rewards, and competitions. As a result, this creates a sense of achievement in users brought on by the idea of "winning" and reinforces positive engagement.

Operant conditioning

By strategically designing gamified elements that reward specific actions, marketers create a positive association between user engagement and valuable incentives. This conditioning strengthens the likelihood of users repeating desired behaviors, establishing a cycle of ongoing engagement.

Cognitive biases

Leveraging cognitive biases like scarcity bias allows marketers to prompt quicker responses by offering exclusive rewards or limited-time promotions.

In short, by appealing to individuals' inherent need for achievement and recognition, gamification becomes a powerful tool for capturing and maintaining their attention.

How to use gamification in email marketing

The concept of rewards and incentives helps amplifies the gamification strategy. Offering tangible benefits like exclusive discounts or access entices users to not only engage with emails but also to seek out additional interactions. Let's delve deeper into how you can use gamification to create a competitive edge and engage users in your next email campaign:

  • Points, Badges, and Leaderboards: Creating a competitive edge by rewarding users with points, badges, or leaderboard positions based on their interactions with your emails. This not only helps promote a feeling of accomplishment in users, but also helps foster a sense of community and competitiveness that leads them to climb leaderboards and stand out.

  • Rewards and Incentives: Offering tangible benefits such as discounts, exclusive access, or special promotions to incentivize user participation. This exclusivity makes users feel valued and special, fostering a stronger connection with your brand.

  • Interactive Elements: Enhancing user experience by introducing interactive features like quizzes, polls, or challenges within email content. These elements not only enhances engagement but also provides valuable insights into customer preferences, helping you tailor future content and offerings.

By tapping into users' motivations, whether it be competition, a desire for recognition, or the pursuit of exclusive benefits, you can create dynamic emails that help build a loyal and active audience for your brand.

Benefits of gamification in email marketing

Gamification transforms the user experience from a passive act of scrolling through emails into an interactive and dynamic journey where each click or purchase brings them closer to a tangible reward.

Increased customer engagement:

By turning the email experience into a game-like, subscribers are encouraged to engage with the content, spending more time exploring and interacting with the messages. This heightened engagement not only improves the chances of users absorbing the information presented but also creates a memorable and enjoyable experience, setting the brand apart in the minds of the recipients.

Enhanced brand loyalty:

One of the significant benefits of gamification is its ability to create deeper connections between a brand and its audience. When users consistently engage with gamified email content, they become active participants in a brand experience, leading to stronger brand-customer relationships and increased loyalty.

Higher conversion rates:

Gamification can be a powerful motivator for users to take desired actions. Whether purchasing, sharing content, or subscribing to newsletters, the gamified elements provide incentives and rewards for these actions. This motivational aspect drives increased participation, as users are more inclined to interact with emails, complete tasks, and actively engage with the brand, contributing to a more dynamic and participatory audience.

Improved data collection and analytics:

Gamification allows valuable user data collection through interactions and participation. Users willingly provide information while engaging with challenges, quizzes, or other gamified elements. This enriches your customer database and provides insights into user preferences and behavior. Improved analytics enable marketers to tailor future campaigns based on a better understanding of their audience.

5 Best practices for using gamification in email marketing

Embarking on a successful gamified email marketing campaign requires meticulous planning and strategic considerations. The following strategies and tactics can transform your email campaigns into immersive and rewarding journeys, making a lasting impression on your audience and optimizing your marketing efforts.

  1. Define campaign objectives: Clearly outline the goals of your gamified campaign to align with your overall marketing strategy. Use data-driven insights to identify the objectives and strategy for your emails. This means regularly tracking key metrics such as open rates and click-through rates. Once your campaigns launch, assess the effectiveness of your gamification elements to refine future campaigns.
  2. Identify target audience: Personalization is key to creating a more engaging experience. Understand your audience's preferences and tailor gamification elements to their interests. By leveraging data and what you know about your unique audiences, you can create better segmented gamified content that tailors to individual preferences. This includes personalizing challenges, rewards, and interactions, making the entire experience more relevant and appealing to different audiences.
  3. Choose appropriate gamification elements: Select elements that resonate with your brand and align with customer preferences. Ensure rewards align with audience interests. Go beyond generic incentives by offering enticing and meaningful rewards such as exclusive discounts, early access, or special promotions. It is crucial to adhere to data protection laws, like GDPR and CCPA, in your gamification practices. Communicate clearly how user data will be used and ensure compliance to build trust with your audience.
  4. Integrate gamification into email design: Ensure a smooth transition to gamified content for an intuitive and enjoyable experience. This means visually appealing emails with a user-friendly interface that offers a seamless transition from the email to the gamified elements.
  5. Develop clear calls-to-action (CTAs): Encourage user participation by crafting compelling CTAs that drive desired actions. Clearly communicate what action you want the user to take and highlight the benefits of doing so. Whether it's clicking a link, participating in a challenge, or making a purchase, the CTA should be persuasive and aligned with the gamification goals.

Overcoming challenges in gamified email marketing

When using gamification in email, it is important to find the right balance between gamification elements and the core message of the email. It's essential to integrate gamified features seamlessly without overwhelming or distracting recipients from the primary content. This lack of harmony brings forth two main challenges:

User fatigue

With the increasing use of gamification in various digital platforms, users risk experiencing fatigue or disinterest in engaging with gamified content. If not managed carefully, this fatigue can decrease overall participation and effectiveness.

Mitigation Strategy: To counter this, marketers should introduce variety and novelty in gamified content, keeping users engaged with fresh challenges and incentives. A/B testing is a great way to experiment with different gamification elements to identify what resonates best with your specific audience.

Lack of brand recognition

Maintaining consistency and alignment with your brand image while implementing gamification can be challenging. If gamified elements feel disconnected or misaligned with your brand identity, it may create confusion or a lack of authenticity among your audience.

Mitigation Strategy: Regularly analyze performance metrics and gather user insight to continuously improve your gamification strategy. Actively seeking insights from your audience about their preferences and perceptions allows you to adapt and iterate on your gamified content.

Unleashing the power of email gamification with Beefree

In an era where consumer attention is a prized commodity, the integration of gamification has emerged as a dynamic strategy to captivate and engage audiences within the realm of email marketing. It's important to remember that the essence of success in this area is rooted in persistent experimentation and creative thinking. Embrace the opportunity to try fresh gamification techniques in your email campaigns to maintain a competitive edge.

No-code solutions like Beefree simplify this process by providing an intuitive and user-friendly solution that empower marketers to seamlessly incorporate interactive and gamified elements into their email designs.

So, create a free account and start infusing some fun and interactivity into your email marketing efforts. Here's to the exciting gamification journey – may it bring you great results and enjoyment!

Innovative Leap Day Email Marketing Ideas for 2024

Innovative Leap Day Email Marketing Ideas for 2024

Step into the extra day of the year with innovative Leap Day email marketing ideas that defy the ordinary and captivate your audience. Explore our innovative Leap Day email marketing ideas to take a leap toward exceptional customer engagement and brand recognition.
Beefree team
Beefree team
Feb 13, 2024

We have a unique holiday on the horizon that doesn’t come around often: Leap Day. This special occasion only comes up every four years, and it’s simply a fun and quirky holiday that your customers enjoy celebrating. Getting in on the fun with them is an excellent way to connect with your customers through a shared experience.
But how? Explore these creative ideas for Leap Day email marketing campaigns.

Why Leap Day is a special occasion for Email Marketers

The origins of Leap Day are purely practical. We align our yearly calendar with the sun’s orbit around the sun, but it actually takes 365.25 days for that orbit, not 365 days. Adding a day every four years puts us back on track. Leap Day started showing up on calendars as early as 45 BC with the calendar Julius Caesar introduced.

The beauty of Leap Day is that it’s a holiday everyone can agree on. It’s not related to or excluding any religions or cultures, it doesn’t have painful or negative historical origins - it’s just lighthearted and fun. Sharing this experience with your customers through festive email marketing can help you grow your emotional connection with customers. These customers spend twice as much on brands they’re emotionally connected to, so Leap Day can be a lucrative opportunity.

Creative Leap Day campaign concepts for B2B marketers

Targeting businesses with your Leap Day email marketing campaigns? Try these ideas for campaigns that can build your relationship with customers and appeal to their bottom line.

Run the Numbers

Use enticing statistics in your emails about how businesses will benefit if they sign on with your services, using Leap Day as a vehicle. For example, perhaps you have data that your customers save an average of $100,000 per year when they use your services. Use messaging such as: “By the next Leap Day, you could have saved $400,000 if you sign up today.”

On the flip side, you could also use this as an opportunity to express gratitude for their support over the past four years. Highlight how much your revenue has grown since the last Leap Day and thank them for being part of this growth.

Help Them Appeal to Their Customers

Your customers are businesses and they want to take advantage of Leap Day as a revenue opportunity too. Depending on the product or service you offer, launch a campaign that tells them how you can help them reach their own customers for Leap Day. For example, if your business is a print shop, encourage them to print flyers or signage for a special Leap Day sale.

Feature Testimonials

Trust is paramount in B2B sales, with 92% of B2B buyers saying they’re more likely to buy from a brand after reading a trusted review. For Leap Day, grow your customers’ trust by highlighting the most compelling reviews and testimonials you’ve received in the past four years.

Engaging B2C Leap Day campaigns that stand out

While there are plenty of ways to appeal to B2B customers on Leap Day, it’s a rich opportunity for B2C sales too. Engage your audience with these fun Leap Day email campaign ideas.

Appeal to Tradition

There aren’t a lot of traditions that are specific to Leap Day, but there is one that’s well-known: women proposing to their boyfriends. This unique flip on the convention of men proposing to women can be a vehicle to have some fun with your audience. You could center your campaign on the concept of women taking charge or on the ideas of proposals and commitments.

Offer a Themed Sale

Leap Day gives your consumer an extra day in their year, so help them take advantage of it by offering a one-day-only sale. You could offer them a free gift with their purchases or a free trial for their “free” day. Or, you could offer promotions based on the number 4 or the number 29.

Play with Words and Images

It might seem simple, but simply having fun with the holiday in your messaging and imagery can be endearing to customers. Make a play on the word “leap,” like leaping puns or images and gifs of dancers leaping through the air. Frogs are associated with Leap Day too because they leap and jump, so have fun with cute frog imagery too. As simple as this might be, it shows you have a sense of humor, and 49% of consumers say funny content is the most memorable and interesting content.

Innovative Strategies for Leap Day

Technology has come a long way since the last Leap Day or two, so use it to your advantage! Check out these advanced strategies for your Leap Day email marketing.

Go interactive

Interactive content garners 52.6% more engagement than non-interactive content like text and images. There are plenty of ways you can harness the power of interactivity in your Leap Day emails.

For example, you could include a poll asking how people are spending their Leap Day (try offering an incentive for them to engage too, like a discount for those who complete the poll). If recipients are familiar with your staff, you could even take a poll of who they think can leap the farthest and then reveal the winner at the end of the day.

Use personalized nostalgia

Leap Day is a great opportunity to appeal to customers’ nostalgia because it’s been four years since the last Leap Day…and a lot can happen in four years! Try including snapshots of some of the products the customer was buying four years ago as a fun way to connect. You could also do a non-personalized version of this by highlighting the products that were your best sellers four years ago.

Offer a discount for a quiz

Invite consumers to win a discount on Leap Day by scoring points on a themed quiz. Make sure it’s information they can’t just Google, like how many new customers your company has brought on in the last four years, how many 5-star reviews you’ve gotten in these four years, or what your top-selling product was four years ago.

Designing captivating Leap Day emails

The ideas above can get you started with your Leap Day campaigns, but how do you pull them off in the most impactful way? Check out these design tips.

Start with a professionally designed template

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel for your next email campaign. Beefree’s template library is packed with over 1,600 templates that span a wide range of styles and structures. Each one is designed by a professional and is easy to customize with your messaging and branding. You can expect a more efficient email design with a professional look every time.

Connect your marketing channels

Email marketing is a strong marketing tool in its own right but you can take it a step further by integrating it with your other marketing channels. For example, include links to your social media profiles or call-outs of your Leap Day social media posts. Or, embed a video you’ve posted on your YouTube channel. Any of these will invite customers to engage further with your brand.

Make sure it’s not a Leap for customers to convert

Whatever your Leap Day campaign’s goal is (making a purchase, filling out a contact form, signing up for a trial, etc.), make it as easy for consumers as possible. Have a clear and simple call-to-action button that leads to a matching landing page on your site where they can make that conversion quickly and easily. Pro tip: Beefree has matching templates for emails and landing pages so you can do this quickly.

Measuring your Leap Day campaign’s impact

How do you know if your marketing campaign hit the mark? It all comes down to metrics. To gauge how successful your Leap Day campaign is, look for these metrics:

  • Open rate - shows whether your subject line was enticing people to open the email
  • Clickthrough rate (CTR) - shows how many of your recipients were compelled to engage with your content
  • Conversion rate - shows how many recipients made a purchase, requested a consultation call, or whatever your conversion is
  • Sharing/forwarding rate - shows how many recipients sent the email along to someone else
  • Return on investment (ROI) - compares the revenue you brought in from campaign recipients vs how much you spent

Kicking Off Your Leap Day Email Marketing Campaign

Ready to turn this Leap Day into a revenue-making opportunity? Now that you have all the ideas you need, get the tools you need from Beefree. Sign up for free to experience this advanced email design tool.

Color of the Year 2024: What It Is and How to Harness It in Email Marketing

Elevate your 2024 email marketing initiatives by harnessing the influence of the Color of the Year. Beyond mere aesthetics, incorporating this dynamic hue strategically into your campaigns allows you to infuse contemporary flair into your brand communication.
Beefree team
Beefree team
21 Feb
2024

This year, Pantone celebrates its 25th year of its unique and inspiring Color of the Year program. While many people find the Color of the Year to be simply an entertaining announcement, for marketers, this color can be a gateway toward better connecting with your customers and audiences.

Let's discuss how email marketing pros can stay ahead of the trends and effortlessly infuse the Color of the Year 2024 in your email campaigns.

What Is the Color of the Year 2024?

Each year, Pantone selects a "Color of The Year" that depicts and illustrates the state of the current culture and recent trends. This year's color is Peach Fuzz, Pantone 13-1023.

Source: https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-of-the-year/what-is-peach-fuzz

According to Pantone's reasoning for selecting the color Peach Fuzz, they state that it serves as an expression of the kindness, tenderness, warmth and togetherness that our culture is seeking and driving for in 2024. As Pantone explains, “Pantone 13-1023 Peach Fuzz captures our desire to nurture ourselves and others. It’s a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.” For many, this color embodies a vintage feel, creating a sense of honoring the past while welcoming the opportunities of the future.

How is the Color of the Year chosen?

For Pantone, choosing the Color of the Year is a long and comprehensive effort. Its team of color experts is continuously at work observing the global culture and the expressions of color across fashion, art and design, lifestyles, travel destinations, imagery on media platforms, and so on.

The Color of the Year is both an expression of our present culture at the dawn of a new year and a result of trend forecasting for colors, attitudes, and social movements that will be pervasive in the year ahead. It’s decided by the emerging popularity of the color itself as well as the emotions and concepts associated with the color.

Why does the Color of the Year matter in email marketing?

The Color of the Year can be an excellent asset to your email marketing (and your other 2024 marketing channels) in multiple ways. First, this color is representative of the present culture, which means it’s likely relatable to your present-day audience. It embodies a mindset that your consumers are likely to share - one of warmth, wellness, and interpersonal kindness - which fosters the connection between your brand and the consumers.

Second, the Color of the Year is in keeping with current color and fashion trends. By incorporating this color into your email marketing, your brand looks to be trendy and up-to-date. Even if consumers don’t know what the Color of the Year is, they notice that your emails have a modern, on-trend look.

Ways to use the Color of the Year 2024 in your email marketing

As we step into the vibrant realm of 2024, the Color of the Year takes center stage as a powerful tool for marketers seeking to infuse their strategies with contemporary flair.It serves as a language of its own, capable of communicating emotions, evoking reactions, and establishing a unique visual identity for brands. By incorporating the Color of the Year into marketing initiatives, businesses can align themselves consumer sensibilities, fostering a connection and positioning themselves as forward-thinking.

Use imagery with the Color of the Year 2024

Peach Fuzz doesn’t have to be the core color of your email design for you to benefit from it. When selecting images to include in your

email campaigns, consider looking for images that have Peach Fuzz or a similar color. For example, this royalty-free images from Unsplash each contain peachy hues that have the same mood and essence as the Color of the Year 2024. You’ll notice that the color isn't too prominent, but still stands out and plays well with the other colors in the image. This is a great depiction how you can incorporate Peach Fuzz to pair well with your brand identity.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/low-angle-photo-of-white-and-orange-concrete-building--T0La6F_WrE

Align your messaging with the Color of the Year 2024

As we’ve noted, the Color of the Year isn’t just a color; it’s a concept and an embodiment of our culture. You can use this to inform the messaging in your email marketing. In the case of Peach Fuzz, infuse your messaging with a sense of kindness, compassion, and warmth to speak to our current culture and appeal to your audience’s mindset in the present time.

Add the Color of The Year to your seasonal and trendy campaigns

By infusing the Color of the Year into seasonal and trendy campaigns, you not only stay relevant and timely but also capitalize on the cultural and emotional resonances associated with the chosen color, creating a dynamic and engaging experience for your audience. Here are some ideas:

Align the color with changing seasons

Embrace the changing seasons and incorporate the Color of the Year into your email campaigns that align with specific times of the year.

Source: https://beefree.io/template/feel-the-holiday-cheer

Capitalize on fashion and design trends

Stay attuned to fashion and design trends that feature the Color of the Year. Incorporate the color into email campaigns that showcase how your products or services align with current style preferences. Additionally, highlight new arrivals or product collections that prominently feature the trending color, catering to the fashion-forward interests of your audience, such as the template below:

Source: https://beefree.io/template/color-of-the-year-collection-email

Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity

Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity by tying the Color of the Year to limited-time promotions or exclusive offers. Use the color to highlight special discounts, early access to products, or exclusive content, encouraging your audience to engage promptly with your email campaigns.

Sourcehttps://beefree.io/template/color-of-the-year-collection-announcement

Develop themed content and storytelling

Develop themed content around the Color of the Year, telling a story that resonates with your brand and the significance of the color. The email template below serves as a perfect starting point to share share narratives, testimonials, or behind-the-scenes content that emphasizes the emotional and cultural aspects associated with the color of the year.

Source: https://beefree.io/template/how-to-design-with-pantone-peach-fuzz

Does the 2024 Color of the Year suit your brand?

Evaluating whether the 2024 Color of the Year suits your brand involves a nuanced exploration of the color's characteristics and your brand identity. Begin by examining the psychological and emotional associations of the chosen color. Peach Fuzz has a warm, welcoming, and peaceful air that can align well with many brands’ voices and messaging. Consider the values, personality, and messaging of your brand; does the color align with these elements, or does it pose a potential contrast that could enhance visual appeal and captivate your audience?

If the color resonates with your target demographic and aligns with your brand's narrative, it may offer an opportunity to play around your visual identity. However, remember that a balance between staying on-trend and maintaining a unique brand identity is crucial.

Strengthening your 2024 email marketing with the Color of the Year

Embracing the Color of the Year in your email campaigns is more than just a visual choice; it's an opportunity to remain competitive and provide users with something new. By strategically incorporating the Color of the Year, you can create visually appealing and emotionally resonant emails that stand out in crowded inboxes.

The easiest way to experiment with the color of the year in email campaigns is to start with a pre-designed template. Beefree’s "Color of The Year" template collection is a perfect place to start. Our user-friendly email editor makes it easy to customize all templates with your brand identity and effortlessly make a few simple changes to bring Peach Fuzz into your design.

Get started with Beefree - it's free!

How To Utilize Gamification For Your Next Email Marketing Campaign

Transform your email marketing strategy with the innovative use of gamification. Delve into actionable insights and strategies to captivate your audience, enhance engagement, foster brand loyalty, and elevate the success of your next email campaign.
Beefree team
Beefree team
20 Feb
2024

Today, digital interactions dominate, and gamification has emerged as a powerful tool to capture and maintain audience attention. More than 70% of businesses included in the Global 2000 have adopted gamification as a key strategy.

In this article, we'll explore the significance of gamification in email marketing, understand its core concepts, delve into the psychology behind it, and provide insights on implementing and overcoming challenges in your gamified campaigns.

The psychology behind gamification in email

At its core, gamification in email marketing revolves around incorporating game-like elements to enhance user engagement.

This strategy involves understanding human behavior and motivation and leverages the psychological aspects that make games inherently appealing, such as competition, achievement, and rewards. Together, these insights help email marketers determine the best use of gamification to help drive engagement and shape consumer responses.

Here are the 3 key psychological drivers in gamification:

Intrinsic motivation

Gamification triggers users' desire to participate by incorporating challenges, rewards, and competitions. As a result, this creates a sense of achievement in users brought on by the idea of "winning" and reinforces positive engagement.

Operant conditioning

By strategically designing gamified elements that reward specific actions, marketers create a positive association between user engagement and valuable incentives. This conditioning strengthens the likelihood of users repeating desired behaviors, establishing a cycle of ongoing engagement.

Cognitive biases

Leveraging cognitive biases like scarcity bias allows marketers to prompt quicker responses by offering exclusive rewards or limited-time promotions.

In short, by appealing to individuals' inherent need for achievement and recognition, gamification becomes a powerful tool for capturing and maintaining their attention.

How to use gamification in email marketing

The concept of rewards and incentives helps amplifies the gamification strategy. Offering tangible benefits like exclusive discounts or access entices users to not only engage with emails but also to seek out additional interactions. Let's delve deeper into how you can use gamification to create a competitive edge and engage users in your next email campaign:

  • Points, Badges, and Leaderboards: Creating a competitive edge by rewarding users with points, badges, or leaderboard positions based on their interactions with your emails. This not only helps promote a feeling of accomplishment in users, but also helps foster a sense of community and competitiveness that leads them to climb leaderboards and stand out.

  • Rewards and Incentives: Offering tangible benefits such as discounts, exclusive access, or special promotions to incentivize user participation. This exclusivity makes users feel valued and special, fostering a stronger connection with your brand.

  • Interactive Elements: Enhancing user experience by introducing interactive features like quizzes, polls, or challenges within email content. These elements not only enhances engagement but also provides valuable insights into customer preferences, helping you tailor future content and offerings.

By tapping into users' motivations, whether it be competition, a desire for recognition, or the pursuit of exclusive benefits, you can create dynamic emails that help build a loyal and active audience for your brand.

Benefits of gamification in email marketing

Gamification transforms the user experience from a passive act of scrolling through emails into an interactive and dynamic journey where each click or purchase brings them closer to a tangible reward.

Increased customer engagement:

By turning the email experience into a game-like, subscribers are encouraged to engage with the content, spending more time exploring and interacting with the messages. This heightened engagement not only improves the chances of users absorbing the information presented but also creates a memorable and enjoyable experience, setting the brand apart in the minds of the recipients.

Enhanced brand loyalty:

One of the significant benefits of gamification is its ability to create deeper connections between a brand and its audience. When users consistently engage with gamified email content, they become active participants in a brand experience, leading to stronger brand-customer relationships and increased loyalty.

Higher conversion rates:

Gamification can be a powerful motivator for users to take desired actions. Whether purchasing, sharing content, or subscribing to newsletters, the gamified elements provide incentives and rewards for these actions. This motivational aspect drives increased participation, as users are more inclined to interact with emails, complete tasks, and actively engage with the brand, contributing to a more dynamic and participatory audience.

Improved data collection and analytics:

Gamification allows valuable user data collection through interactions and participation. Users willingly provide information while engaging with challenges, quizzes, or other gamified elements. This enriches your customer database and provides insights into user preferences and behavior. Improved analytics enable marketers to tailor future campaigns based on a better understanding of their audience.

5 Best practices for using gamification in email marketing

Embarking on a successful gamified email marketing campaign requires meticulous planning and strategic considerations. The following strategies and tactics can transform your email campaigns into immersive and rewarding journeys, making a lasting impression on your audience and optimizing your marketing efforts.

  1. Define campaign objectives: Clearly outline the goals of your gamified campaign to align with your overall marketing strategy. Use data-driven insights to identify the objectives and strategy for your emails. This means regularly tracking key metrics such as open rates and click-through rates. Once your campaigns launch, assess the effectiveness of your gamification elements to refine future campaigns.
  2. Identify target audience: Personalization is key to creating a more engaging experience. Understand your audience's preferences and tailor gamification elements to their interests. By leveraging data and what you know about your unique audiences, you can create better segmented gamified content that tailors to individual preferences. This includes personalizing challenges, rewards, and interactions, making the entire experience more relevant and appealing to different audiences.
  3. Choose appropriate gamification elements: Select elements that resonate with your brand and align with customer preferences. Ensure rewards align with audience interests. Go beyond generic incentives by offering enticing and meaningful rewards such as exclusive discounts, early access, or special promotions. It is crucial to adhere to data protection laws, like GDPR and CCPA, in your gamification practices. Communicate clearly how user data will be used and ensure compliance to build trust with your audience.
  4. Integrate gamification into email design: Ensure a smooth transition to gamified content for an intuitive and enjoyable experience. This means visually appealing emails with a user-friendly interface that offers a seamless transition from the email to the gamified elements.
  5. Develop clear calls-to-action (CTAs): Encourage user participation by crafting compelling CTAs that drive desired actions. Clearly communicate what action you want the user to take and highlight the benefits of doing so. Whether it's clicking a link, participating in a challenge, or making a purchase, the CTA should be persuasive and aligned with the gamification goals.

Overcoming challenges in gamified email marketing

When using gamification in email, it is important to find the right balance between gamification elements and the core message of the email. It's essential to integrate gamified features seamlessly without overwhelming or distracting recipients from the primary content. This lack of harmony brings forth two main challenges:

User fatigue

With the increasing use of gamification in various digital platforms, users risk experiencing fatigue or disinterest in engaging with gamified content. If not managed carefully, this fatigue can decrease overall participation and effectiveness.

Mitigation Strategy: To counter this, marketers should introduce variety and novelty in gamified content, keeping users engaged with fresh challenges and incentives. A/B testing is a great way to experiment with different gamification elements to identify what resonates best with your specific audience.

Lack of brand recognition

Maintaining consistency and alignment with your brand image while implementing gamification can be challenging. If gamified elements feel disconnected or misaligned with your brand identity, it may create confusion or a lack of authenticity among your audience.

Mitigation Strategy: Regularly analyze performance metrics and gather user insight to continuously improve your gamification strategy. Actively seeking insights from your audience about their preferences and perceptions allows you to adapt and iterate on your gamified content.

Unleashing the power of email gamification with Beefree

In an era where consumer attention is a prized commodity, the integration of gamification has emerged as a dynamic strategy to captivate and engage audiences within the realm of email marketing. It's important to remember that the essence of success in this area is rooted in persistent experimentation and creative thinking. Embrace the opportunity to try fresh gamification techniques in your email campaigns to maintain a competitive edge.

No-code solutions like Beefree simplify this process by providing an intuitive and user-friendly solution that empower marketers to seamlessly incorporate interactive and gamified elements into their email designs.

So, create a free account and start infusing some fun and interactivity into your email marketing efforts. Here's to the exciting gamification journey – may it bring you great results and enjoyment!

Why Beefree is the Preferred Email Editor for Businesses of All Sizes

In the intricate landscape of digital communication, where one size rarely fits all, Beefree's emerges as the preferred email editor for businesses of all sizes Whether you're a startup looking to establish a brand presence or a large enterprise managing complex marketing campaigns, Beefree's toolkit provides the necessary flexibility to address your unique challenges.
Emily Santos
Emily Santos
Feb 14, 2024

In its unwavering mission to democratize content design, Beefree has consistently fostered a new era of creative freedom. In 2023 alone, a remarkable 180,403 new Beefree users, spanning freelancers, startups, SMBs, and large-scale enterprises, joined our community. Additionally, we supported the creation of a staggering 1,704,600+ emails and landing pages, showcasing Beefree's widespread adoption and impact.

As we look back on the accomplishments of Beefree, we celebrate how our users harnessed our email editor to optimize their email marketing efforts, leading to unprecedented success. This blog explores why and how Beefree stands out as the preferred email editor for businesses of all sizes, delving into the reasons behind its popularity and the tangible benefits it offers in the realm of digital communication.

How Beefree Users Transformed Objectives into Achievements

Due to Beefree's versatility and advanced features, our community is composed of a dynamic range of businesses. While these organizations are vastly different in size and workflows, they shared common objectives they need to meet for their email marketing efforts:

By integrating Beefree into their everyday email creation process, these businesses have propelled their email marketing efforts and thrived in an ever-evolving landscape. But don’t take our word for it - let’s dive into the data-driven insights and compelling testimonials that showcase the tangible results achieved within our vibrant Beefree community.

Under the influence of Beefree's versatile features, our community has evolved into a dynamic mix of businesses, ranging widely in size and workflows.

These organizations, despite their differences, share common objectives for their email marketing endeavors, including:

  • building trust, recognition, and standing out in a competitive space;
  • allocating their resources to help them do more with less time; 
  • streamlining team collaboration and efficiency.

By seamlessly integrating Beefree into their daily email creation processes, these businesses been able to effortlessly thrive in an ever-evolving landscape. Rather than taking our word for it, let's delve into the data-driven insights and compelling testimonials that vividly demonstrate the tangible results achieved within our vibrant Beefree community.

The following exploration encapsulates how Beefree users transformed their objectives into remarkable achievements, showcasing why Beefree has become the preferred email editor for businesses of all sizes.

Objective #1: Strengthen brand trust, recognition, and consistency

An increase in the importance of lasting first impressions and competition in the inbox has influenced marketers to prioritize standing out. For many, their first instinct is to experiment with design, layout, and elements in order to stand out. While we’re huge advocates for exploring creative solutions, many forget that while experimenting, staying on brand and being easily recognizable is king.

Crafting engaging and personalized content while staying on brand requires a balance of design flexibility and design systems to capture attention without compromising the established brand identity. 

For many of our users, maintaining this balance is a breeze. Beefree offers tools, options, and features to ensure brand consistency across all designs. Similarly, our platform allows for unbound design flexibility to encourage users to explore new and innovative engagement strategies. 

In a recent survey, 85% of our users stated to have improved the creation of on-brand assets by at least 50%, here's how:

1. Easy-to-build design systems 

Users leverage the platform's robust features to create email design systems that ensure their messages consistently reflect the company's identity, regardless of who designs them. 

Within just a few minutes, Beefree users can effortlessly incorporate brand elements such as logos, color palettes, icons, social links, fonts, and more into their Workspace’s Style Settings to make the creation of new and on-brand emails and pages a breeze, ultimately contributing to a stronger brand presence and increased engagement.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/8918QDXZ

Saved and Synced rows, specifically, are a powerhouse when it comes to email design systems. Saved rows are content blocks created once and then saved for reuse in all of your designs.

Synced rows take this one step further and allow you to “sync” a specific row so any changes you make in one place auto-populate in all other designs where that row lives.  

2. A builder with no limits  

Because our users feel secure that all their designs are on-brand, they're able to experiment with their engaging elements more often.

While email builders in many CRMs and ESPs are limiting and force you into one design philosophy, Beefree's no-code, drag-and-drop, and flexibility empowers users to create truly unique designs. This freedom ensures that email recipients are always deligted with interactive elements or multimedia campaigns.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/7148PTKQ


3. WYSWYG: What you see is what you get

Sometimes, sending emails can feel like the wild wild west, particularly when uncertainties arise regarding how your emails will render across various devices and email clients. This is especially true when it comes to experimenting with new designs and striving to maintain brand consistency. 

Beefree helps mitigate these concerns with responsive design capabilities that bring users peace of mind by offering the ability to ensure that their emails adapt seamlessly to diverse screen sizes and resolutions. Our email and page builder provides an interface that permits users to design emails and pages directly for “desktop” and “mobile versions” to create unique experiences specific to each device. 

Mobile Design Mode allows you to change the font size, alignment, padding, and the ability to display elements specifically for mobile devices for successful and worry-free email campaigns.
 

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/2607BAIW

4. Extending their reach beyond email marketing 

For our Beefree-proficient users, boosting trust and staying ahead of the competition spans beyond email marketing. When looking for ways to maximize the impact of their content across multiple touchpoints, Beefree becomes a valuable asset to increase their outreach, engage a wider audience, and maintain a unified and recognizable brand presence. 

Within the Beefree builder, users effortlessly repurpose their visually compelling email content for various digital channels, such as social media, websites, and landing pages. 

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/9094AVIH


Objective #2: Elevating campaign performance to new levels 

At the core of our philosophy is the belief that exceptional design comes with high-performance results, a principle our users have experienced firsthand. We've designed solutions that empower our users to dedicate more time towards refining their email campaign designs, exploring innovative design strategies, and fortifying their brand image. As a result, they have been able to elevate their campaign performance to previously unprecedented levels within a short timeframe.

Beefree users have witnessed a notable surge in both CTR and ROI, attributable to visually captivating and responsive campaigns that connect with the intended audience.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/app/testimonials/6040

1. Maximizing Click-Through-Rate 

While Beefree makes no guarantees of increased Click-Through-Rate (CTR), many users do see a positive impact in this metric after integrating our tool into their everyday email creation workflows. In fact, Beefree users have seen an average increase of 24.96% increase in Click-Through-Rates since using our builder. 

source: https://app.userevidence.com/app/content_assets/13942

Although CTR is influenced by various factors, including content relevance and send timing, the primary driver is often the design itself. The platform's user-friendly interface allows for the seamless incorporation of interactive elements, such as surveys, polls, compelling GIFs, videos, and clear and bold calls to action. 

As a result of on-brand communications and highly interactive design, users notice an increase in user engagement and conversions through improved click-through rates.

Additionally, Beefree users strategically optimize their CTR through A/B testing, effortlessly creating and exporting different versions of an email to identify the most effective combinations and further enhance campaign performance.

2. Increasing return on investment 

73% of Beefree users have seen a swift ROI within just three months of adoption. This financial metric highlights not only our builders' ability to deliver significant and quantifiable outcomes for email marketing but also its contributions to overall business growth and success. 

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/3968JQAM

Objective #3: Doing more with less time

In a fast-paced environment such as email marketing, saving time and optimizing resources is crucial for maintaining agility, reducing costs, and increasing overall productivity. 

Beefree users have embraced our tool to improve their efficiency while remaining nimble in adapting to evolving industry trends, ensuring sustained success in the dynamic realm of email marketing. In fact, 82% of Beefree users say our tool has allowed them to create emails and landing pages much faster. One of our users shares: 

"Within 1 hour creating a full compatible newsletter, ready to be send. Reduce my developing time with 50% and compared to other e-mail marketing tool 100% better. More flexible, more options and always pixel perfect.''

Here are some of the Beefree capabilities that have allowed users to save an average of almost 13 hours per month on designing.  

1. Easy integration to popular sending platforms 

Although Beefree is agnostic in nature, our users benefit from the ability to seamlessly export emails to their favorite sending platforms like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Salesforce, and more. In 2023 66,487 emails were sent using the “export to sending platform” feature, allowing a smooth transition from design to deployment.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/6475ZMRI

2. AI Assistant that makes writing engaging copy seamless

For many users, Beefree enhances the creative process with its AI Assistant, an invaluable companion that expedites the creation of compelling copy. Whether starting from scratch, revising existing copy, optimizing for SEO, or translating copy for multiple languages - our AI Assistant aids users in bringing their creative visions to life effortlessly.

3. 1,600+ email and page templates for every occasion

Our extensive collection of 1,600+ email and page templates provides users with a strong starting point for their email and landing page campaign creation. All Beefree templates are designed for conversion and offer diverse options to meet various industries, styles, and purposes.

By reducing the need to start from scratch, users can accelerate their design process and focus more on fine-tuning and customizing their campaigns rather than investing extensive hours in initial design research and creation. 

262,697 emails and pages were created using our templates in 2023, allowing hundreds of users to craft visually stunning and impactful email campaigns with unparalleled ease and efficiency, regardless of their design expertise or experience level.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/9921CTHL

Objective #4: Streamlining team communication and collaboration 

As organizations navigated challenges and pursued their objectives of optimizing their email marketing efforts, Beefree played a pivotal role in strengthening team communication and collaboration to ensure everyone was aligned. 

Beefree offers a suite of features that cater to the unique needs of teams of varying sizes and multiple email design projects. From facilitating review processes to organizing workspaces and managing user roles and permissions, Beefree optimizes collaboration, particularly with the commonality of remote work and the need for global connectivity.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/6721XILT

While we offer a myriad of options for collaboration, here are some of our standout features: 

1. Design Import Link 

The Design Import Link feature in Beefree proves to be a game-changer for collaborative efforts, making it easy for organizations to share designs across teams, external agencies, or clients.

This feature eliminates the need for cumbersome file transfers and offers a swift and secure method for sharing designs. Moreover, the design import link ensures efficient organization management, making transitions, such as account changes and Beefree onboarding, smoother and more effective.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/5164YHSO

2. Review for Approval

For Enterprise plans, our Review for Approval flow eliminates the need for users to juggle multiple tools for design and approval, saving users valuable time. Additionally, this streamlined and efficient process contributes to the delivery of high-quality, compliant, and on-brand final emails and pages. 

When paired with the ability to leave design-specific comments and collaborate on designs simultaneously, Beefree truly becomes a seamless all-in-one solution for finding inspiration, designing, collaborating, and beyond.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/5967OUSE

3. Workspaces 

As our users’ teams grow, so do their needs for better organization and management of assets.

Workspaces allow growing teams to create dedicated areas where different departments can work simultaneously on projects that support their unique initiatives. Each workspace has its own centralized location to store and share newsletters and pages and ensures that creating on-brand designs is effortless. 

Additionally, you can copy your pre-defined Style-settings into a new workspace, along with any folder, projects, or templates essential to email creation.

Whether managing client-specific designs or organizing campaigns by department, Workspaces ensures users can efficiently collaborate and navigate their projects, fostering a more productive workflow within Beefree.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/2487SAUG

3. User Roles & Permissions 

User roles and permissions are a great way to ensure that all team members are aligned. User roles and permissions are unique to each Workspace allowing cross-departmental collaboration to still happen, but within the confines of that Workspace permissions.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/app/testimonials/31302

Unleash Your Email Marketing Potential: Beefree Academy

Recognizing the diverse needs of our users, we've established the Beefree Academy as a comprehensive resource to bridge the gap between potential and proficiency. This centralized learning hub is more than just a collection of tutorials; it's a tailored educational experience crafted to empower businesses of all sizes.

Whether you're a startup, an SMB, or a large-scale enterprise, the Beefree Academy provides the tools and knowledge needed to maximize your email marketing efforts, ensuring that our email editor becomes an invaluable asset in achieving your business objectives.

Lastly, what has stood out the most for users is Beefree’s ability to meet them where they’re at. Our “upgrade as you grow” pricing stands as a testament to our commitment to accessibility and scalability, and the success stories we share today support its effectiveness.

If you think Beefree might a right fit for you, consider this your formal invitation to join our growing community of 322,232 freelancers, SMBs, and enterprise users. The best part? It's completely free. Happy Designing! 

Emily Santos
Emily Santos
Nov 22, 2023

In our latest blog post, we explored the importance of email newsletters and the value that they can bring to your organization. In short, they serve as a way to ensure consistent and timely communication between businesses and their diverse audience. While many factors influence the outcome of your email newsletters, there are a few tried and true strategies and steps for creating newsletters that we suggest following to ensure their success.Whether you're a seasoned marketer or a small business owner venturing into the email marketing realm, this step-by-step guide, enriched with tips and insights, will illuminate the path from conceptualizing your newsletter to hitting that send button and beyond.

What is the Purpose of a Newsletter?

The purpose of email newsletters is often condensed to brand awareness, promotion, education, and retention, but what's underneath that:

  • Brand Loyalty: By providing useful content, tips, or insights, you can add unimaginable value to your audience that, in turn, will make you the go-to brand for your audience in your specific niche.
  • Stronger Relationship: Sending consistent, cohesive, and timely communications keeps your audience engaged and helps nurture a relationship between your brand and its followers.
  • Traffic: If your content resonates with your audience, they'll want to learn more. This helps drive traffic to your social, website, and any other resources linked in your email newsletter. 

A step-by-step guide to creating an email newsletter

Navigating through the nuanced newsletter creation process, we'll explore a 10-step journey that marries strategic thinking with creative execution. Each step, from defining your newsletter’s purpose to meticulously tracking its performance, serves as a crucial milestone, ensuring your message not only lands but also captivates and engages your audience.

Step 1. Define Your Newsletter Goal

Embarking on the newsletter creation journey without a clearly defined goal can make defining your email's content, design, and overall strategy a challenge. Whereas a clearly defined goal helps harmoniously align each element towards a singular purpose.Let’s delve into a few examples of newsletter goals to spark your inspiration:

  • Engage and Inform: Keep your audience abreast of the latest industry news, trends, and insights.
  • Drive Sales: Promote new products, offers, or discounts to boost sales.
  • Increase Participation: Encourage participation in events, webinars, or surveys.
  • Build Community: Foster a sense of community among subscribers by sharing user-generated content or stories.

In addition, your goal should also take into consideration the following:

  • Who is your audience? Identifying your audience's demographics, preferences, and behaviors will help tailor the goal to an action you know your readers will take. For example, you wouldn't promote events in New York if most of your audience is based in Australia. 
  • What's the primary value of this email? Every newsletter delivers something of value - be it knowledge, discounts, or entertainment.
  • What are our business goals? Internally, what is your organization trying to achieve, and what is your current focus? 

Step 2. Build a Newsletter Subscriber List

Building a robust, engaged subscriber list is paramount to ensuring your newsletter’s voyage is fruitful and impactful. A subscriber list isn’t merely a collection of email addresses; it’s a community of individuals, each with their unique interests, preferences, and needs, all uniting under the banner of your brand.Here are a few tips to guide you in building your subscriber list:

  • Craft Compelling Sign-Up Forms: Ensure your newsletter sign-up forms are visible, accessible, and enticing across your digital platforms.
  • Leverage Multiple Channels: Utilize your website, social media, and other digital channels to promote your newsletter sign-up.
  • Offer Incentives: Entice potential subscribers with exclusive content, discounts, or insights available only to newsletter crew members.
  • Ensure Ease of Subscription: Make the subscription process as seamless and straightforward as possible to encourage sign-ups.

Step 3. Segment Contacts and Create Lists

As your subscriber count grows, understanding and organizing them becomes pivotal to ensuring that your newsletters resonate and engage with your unique audiences. Segmenting your contacts allows you to tailor content to their specific interests, allowing for highly personalized experiences. This action helps build a deeper connection between your brand and its audience. Here are some tips for audience segmentation:

  • Understand Subscriber Preferences: On your sign-up form, ask questions beyond the simple "name and email address" to understand their interests. For example, something as simple as a job title can provide much insight. 
  • Monitor and Adapt: Continually assess the effectiveness of your segments, and their actions will help you make necessary changes to optimize your email newsletter's design, content, and overall strategy.

Step 4. Select an Email Newsletter Tool

Finding the right tool for you and your team can be a formidable quest. Yet, it’s a pivotal step in ensuring your newsletter engages and delights your audience.When embarking on the selection of an email newsletter tool, consider the following key features:

  • User-Friendliness: Find a tool that allows anyone on your team to seamlessly craft, edit, and visualize your newsletter without too big of a learning curve. Complex tools can often result in a loss of productivity. 
  • Deliverability: Your email newsletter tool should ensure your emails are rendered beautifully regardless of email client or device to ensure your newsletters reach the inbox, not the dreaded spam folder.
  • Template Variety: Mostly, every email tool offers templates to help you kick-start your email newsletters. Before committing, ensure those templates align with your brand, audience, and needs. Extra points if the platform allows you to create, save, and reuse your own

PRO Tip: Find a tool that allows collaboration to happen within the platform to minimize juggling between multiple tools and further increase your team's productivity.Now, an email newsletter tool is not to be confused with an email-sending platform or an email marketing platform. While these may overlap, an email newsletter tool is often an additional tool added to help optimize your email design process. Because of this, it is important that the email newsletter tool you choose should seamlessly integrate with your existing sending platforms like HubSpot, Mailchimp, or Gmail.A great example of this is Beefree.

Beefree: Email creation without limits.

Beefree is an intuitive email builder whose agnostic nature allows easy export to your sending platforms of choice. Its collaborative features allow for decentralized teams to work together on email newsletters and campaigns effortlessly. With a catalog of 1,600+ email templates, we pride ourselves in having something for everyone, and our drag-and-drop editor makes the learning curve a breeze.

Step 5. Start From Scratch or Use a Template

You have two choices when it comes to creating a newsletter: to personalize an existing template or to craft your own from the blank canvas of possibility. Both paths, while divergent, lead to the creation of a newsletter that is uniquely yours. Let’s explore these two options, ensuring your newsletter is not only a reflection of your brand but also a beacon that resonates with your subscribers.

Option 1: Personalize an Existing Newsletter Template

This path allows you to embark on your newsletter journey with a sturdy vessel crafted by experts and ready to be infused with your unique brand essence. This option comeswith its own range of benefits:

  • Efficiency: Save time and resources by starting with a pre-designed structure.
  • Consistency: Ensure your newsletters maintain a consistent, professional appearance.
  • Inspiration: Draw inspiration from expertly crafted designs.
  • Flexibility: Adapt and modify the template to align with your brand and message.

As mentioned, Beefree’s newsletter template library offers thousands of free options, ready to be molded, adapted, and transformed into a newsletter that speaks your brand’s language and connects with your audience.

Beefree's free email newsletter tempaltes

Option 2: Start with a Blank Newsletter Template

The "start from scratch" approach allows you to build your newsletter from the ground up, ensuring every element, from layout to content, is meticulously curated and distinctly yours. This path unveils its own unique advantages:

  • Unbridled Creativity: Experience the freedom to explore your creativity without being bound by pre-designed constraints.
  • Unique Design: Develop a newsletter that is distinctly yours, ensuring it stands out in the crowded inbox.
  • Full Control: Maintain comprehensive control over every component, ensuring each aspect aligns perfectly with your brand.
  • Tailored Experience: Design a user experience that is meticulously tailored to your audience’s preferences and journey.

Step 6. Must have elements to have in your email newsletters

Let's get to work designing your newsletter with Beefree, where designing your newsletter becomes a seamless blend of creativity and functionality. While the ensuing steps are crafted with Beefree’s email editor in mind, these are all elements that any email newsletter must have to ensure your newsletter design is visually compelling and effectively communicates your message, regardless of the tool you choose. Let’s dive into the meticulous art of newsletter design.

Carefully Crafted Layout

Whether you're starting from scratch or using a template, the content sections needed will be determined by the purpose and goal of your newsletter. Ask yourself: "What is the information that my readers need to know to be enticed to complete the desired action?"The layout of your emails should be placed in a manner that is easily digestible and helps guide and engage the reader through the newsletter. This can be done by maintaining a balance between text and visual elements.Tips for adding content:

  • Maintain Consistency: Ensure your content aligns with your overall message and brand voice.
  • Be Concise: Craft your message to be clear and to the point, respecting your reader’s time and attention.

With Beefree, drag and drop your content blocks, such as text, images, and buttons, into your email. If you're starting with a template, our first suggestion is to first assess the email and see if any sections don't align with you. Like we did for our template below:

Beefree drag and drop email editor to build email newsletters

Regardless, a well-crafted layout is has a balance of text and visual elements, ensuring your content is both engaging and easily digestible.

Visual Elements

Long gone are the days of text-only emails. Images, videos, and GIFs are visual anchors in your newsletter, capturing attention and enhancing your narrative. They also help provide balance in your emails to help guide and break up text-heavy sections.Tips for including images:

  • Quality Matters: Ensure your images are optimized for emails viewed on desktop and mobile. 
  • Alignment: Your images should be visual representations of your brand and the message that you are trying to convey in the email. Otherwise, they might distract the reader from your message rather than engage. 

If you're starting with a template on Beefree, you can easily change the images by clicking on the image and clicking "change image" on the sidebar. If you're starting from scratch, you can navigate to the “Content” tab and simply drag the “Image” content block into your template. You can upload your own images and store them using our File Manager to retrieve them for future use.Beefree also offers a stock image and GIF library to incorporate visual elements into your newsletters easily.

Beefree drag and drop email editor to build email newsletters: adding images

Brand Elements

Infusing your newsletter with your brand elements ensures that your emails are recognized immediately by your readers. Brand elements include your logo, brand colors, pre-defined fonts, icons, etc.Tips for adding brand elements:

  • Consistency is Key: Ensure all elements, from colors to fonts, are consistent with your brand guidelines.
  • Visibility: Ensure your logo is placed prominently, ensuring immediate brand recognition.

Within Beefree, you can easily set your style guidelines to ensure everyone on your team can design on-brand messaging. You can also save content blocks that are frequently used to save time when building your emails.All of these are better known as "email design systems," which are built to help you save time, resources, and cohesiveness in all of your communication efforts.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCmxbuk4PRA&t=56s

Prominent CTA Buttons

CTA buttons should be influenced by the goal you want the reader to take. They should be placed throughout the newsletter to ensure the reader can take action at any time.Tips for creating CTA buttons:

  • Stand Out: Ensure your CTA is visually prominent. This means not hiding them in between elements, adding ample spacing around the CTA, and ensuring the color of the button doesn't blend in with its background. Although it should stand out, it should still remain harmoniously integrated into your overall design.
  • Concise Text: Use clear and concise copy that clearly communicates the action you want the reader to take. Do not leave any room for interpretation.

In Beefree, you can create pre-defined CTA buttons that align with your most frequently sent emails. Adding new buttons is as easy as dragging the “Button” content block into your email.

Beefree drag and drop email editor to build email newsletters: adding buttons

Step 7. Make Sure Your Newsletter is Legally Compliant

Navigating through the realm of email marketing also involves ensuring that your newsletter adheres to the various legal standards and regulations that govern digital communication. Ensuring legal compliance is not merely a step but a fundamental pillar that upholds the integrity and legality of your email marketing endeavors. From adhering to data protection regulations to ensuring transparent communication, legal compliance safeguards your brand, reputation, and the trust that your subscribers place in you.Here are some general suggestions to ensure your emails are compliant:

  • Adhere to Regulations: Ensure your newsletter complies with regulations such as GDPR or CAN-SPAM, safeguarding both subscriber data and communication.
  • Transparent Opt-In: Ensure that your subscription process is clear, transparent, and provides adequate information regarding the nature of your newsletters.
  • Easy Opt-Out: Provide a clear and straightforward process for subscribers to opt out of your newsletters anytime.
  • Protect Data: Ensure that subscriber data is stored, processed, and protected in adherence to relevant data protection regulations.

In addition, email footer requirements are upheld by email-sending platforms. In Beefree, under "Rows," you will see various footer options that adhere to HubSpot and Mailchimp guidelines ready for use. If you use a different ESP, be sure to build your footer with their unique requirements in mind.

Step 8. Preview and Test Emails

In the final stages of our newsletter creation journey, previewing and testing stand as crucial waypoints, ensuring that your crafted message is not only visually appealing but also functionally flawless across various email landscapes. This step involves scrutinizing your newsletter through the lenses of different devices and email clients, ensuring that each subscriber, regardless of their digital window, experiences your message in its full splendor.

Beefree "preview mode"

Beefree "preview mode"Here are a few tips to ensure your previews and tests lead to a standing ovation in every inbox:

  • Multi-Device Testing: Ensure your newsletter shines across all devices, from desktops to smartphones.
  • Different Email Clients: Verify that your design and functionality remain intact across various email clients, such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.
  • Link Functionality: Ensure all your links, from CTAs to social icons, are functioning and leading to the correct destinations.
  • Spelling and Grammar: A final check on the language, ensuring that your message is not only clear but also error-free.

Step 9. Track Performance and Create Iterations

This final step involves diving into the analytics, exploring how our subscribers interacted with our newsletter, and uncovering triumphs and areas ripe for enhancement.This step is crucial for ensuring that each newsletter is a stepping stone towards deeper engagement and connection with our audience.Here are some navigational tips when it comes to tracking performance:

  • Analyze Engagement: Dive into metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and engagement with specific content.
  • Subscriber Feedback: Pay attention to any direct feedback or responses from your subscribers.
  • Iterate and Enhance: Use the insights gained to refine and enhance subsequent newsletters, ensuring continual improvement.
  • A/B Testing: Consider employing A/B testing in future sends, exploring what content, design, and strategies resonate most.

Start Creating Your Own Newsletters Today

The path to creating your own successful newsletter lies ahead! We hope that with the knowledge, insights, and tools shared, you feel equipped and ready to start forging connections, telling stories, and engaging your audiences in a way that is unique to you!If you need somewhere to get started and inspired, browse through our extensive catalog of free templates. We guarantee you'll find something that fits your needs ;)Happy designing!

Improving your email accessibility with Beefree

In this blog post, we will explore how Beefree can help you improve your email production process and enable you to build beautiful, responsive, and accessible emails. We'll demonstrate how this intuitive drag-and-drop email builder empowers marketers to create emails faster, ensuring they meet accessibility standards and best practices.
Andrew King
Andrew King
Oct 19, 2023

Email marketing is a powerful tool for reaching your audience, but it often comes with its fair share of challenges.

One of the most common dilemmas that marketers face is the need to create visually appealing and accessible emails without the support of a skilled HTML developer.

This challenge has led many marketers to resort to image-only emails, which may look great but often lack when it comes to accessibility. For instance, screen readers can’t read text that is contained within an image, rendering much of your email content inaccessible to those with visual impairments.

Fortunately, there's a solution: Beefree.

In this blog post, we will explore how Beefree can help you improve your email production process and enable you to build beautiful, responsive, and accessible emails. We'll demonstrate how this intuitive drag-and-drop email builder empowers marketers to create emails faster, ensuring they meet accessibility standards and best practices.

Why Marketers Resort to Image-Only Emails

Here are some common reasons why marketers might choose image-only emails:

Visual Appeal: Image-only emails can be visually striking. Marketers may believe that a well-designed, image-heavy email will capture the recipient's attention and leave a memorable impression.

Simplicity: Creating image-only emails can be straightforward. For marketers without HTML coding skills, using an image as the main content is an easier and more efficient option.

Design Control: With images, marketers have more control over the design, layout, and aesthetics of their emails. They can create visually appealing content without relying on complex coding.

The downsides of image-only emails

While sending image-only emails may have certain advantages in terms of design, they can pose several issues and drawbacks, which can negatively impact your email marketing efforts and give some users a poor experience.

Here are some of the key issues associated with sending image-only emails:

Accessibility Concerns: One of the most significant issues with image-only emails is that they can be inaccessible to recipients with visual impairments or those who rely on screen readers. Since the email content is embedded in images, it cannot be read aloud by screen-reading software, effectively excluding a portion of your audience.

Reduced Engagement: Image-only emails may have lower engagement rates compared to emails with a mix of text and images. Because images don’t always render properly or are compatible with screen readers, recipients may be less likely to engage.

Spam Filters and Deliverability: Many spam filters and email clients view image-heavy emails suspiciously. Sending image-only emails may increase the likelihood of your messages ending up in recipients' spam folders or being flagged as potential spam.

Mobile Responsiveness: As mentioned above, image-only emails may not be mobile-responsive. This causes them to display poorly on smartphones and tablets, leading to a poor user experience and decreased engagement.

Slow Loading Times: Emails consisting of large images can take longer to load, especially for users with slower internet connections. Slow-loading emails may lead to frustration and decreased reader patience, which can cause a bad brand reputation.

Lack of Fallback Content: In cases where images fail to load for some recipients (due to email client settings or other factors), image-only emails provide no fallback content, leaving the email effectively blank.

It's advisable to use a balanced approach in your email marketing campaigns to address these issues. Incorporate HTML text, alt text for images, and a good mix of text and visuals to ensure your emails are accessible, engaging, and capable of reaching a broader audience.

Additionally, consider using responsive design techniques to optimize the email's display on various devices and screen sizes.

Introducing Beefree

Beefree is an email marketing game-changer. It's a user-friendly drag-and-drop email builder that empowers marketers to create stunning emails while adhering to best practices and accessibility standards.

Key Features and Benefits of Beefree

  • Drag-and-Drop Interface: Beefree's intuitive interface lets you build emails by simply dragging and dropping elements onto your canvas.
  • Responsive Design: Ensure your emails look great on any device with Beefree's responsive design capabilities.
  • HTML Text: Easily add HTML text to your emails for improved accessibility.
  • Bulletproof Buttons: Create CTA buttons that work seamlessly across all email clients, ensuring a consistent user experience.

Now, let's put Beefree to the test by recreating an image-only email with accessibility and best practices in mind.

The Experiment:
Recreating an Image-Only Email with Beefree

Step 1: Selecting a Sample Image-Only Email

To showcase the capabilities of Beefree, we've chosen a sample image-only email as our starting point.

For example, this email on Email Love from Last Crumb features some stunning photography and engaging content; however, the whole thing is made with images. While, the overall look and feel of the email could easily be recreated with HTML using Beefree.

The Last Crumb’s image-only email at least uses descriptive Alt text, but we think we can significantly improve the email’s accessibility with Beefree.

Step 2: Recreating It Using Beefree

  1. Extract the images from the original email

The first step in this process is to extract those delicious-looking cookie photos from the original email and any other elements that we want to keep as an image. In this particular email, most of the text can be easily recreated with HTML text in Beefree.

  1. Adding HTML Text for Improved Accessibility

One of the key improvements we’ll make is to add HTML text to our email. This ensures that the content is accessible to all recipients, including those who rely on screen readers. Once we have added our images, you can easily use the Paragraph content block to add your text. The text font, color, line height, and spacing can all be adjusted to replicate the look of the image-only email.

There are a couple of limitations when using HTML text over images. Firstly, Beefree offers a range of Google and Websafe fonts that will work in most email clients, but there were custom fonts used in this Last Crumb email that we could not exactly replicate. Last Crumb also uses multiple fonts in a single paragraph, which could not be replicated in Beefree – A small price to pay for improved accessibility.

  1. Incorporating Bulletproof Buttons

Next, we’ll replace the image-based buttons with bulletproof buttons that render consistently across all email clients. This ensures a better user experience for our subscribers.

Step 3: Comparing the Original and Recreated Emails

As you can see, the recreated email looks great and adheres to accessibility standards and best practices.

ACCESSIBILITY AND BEST PRACTICES IN EMAIL DESIGN

Email accessibility is a critical consideration for modern marketers. Beefree makes creating emails that everyone can access and enjoy easier than ever. This is how the Beefree email looks with images turned off—a significant improvement over the image-based email.

Our Tips for getting the most out of Beefree

  • Set Clear Objectives: Before you even start designing, clearly understand what you want the email to achieve. Whether it’s a promotional campaign, an announcement, or a newsletter, the content and design should align with your goals.
  • Use Templates: Beefree offers over 1000 templates! Start with these and customize them to match your brand rather than building from scratch. This can significantly reduce the time it takes to produce an email.
  • Drag-and-Drop Builder: Familiarize yourself with all the features and tools available. The more comfortable you are with the interface, the faster you can create emails. The key things to understand are how rows work, what you can do with content blocks, and how to customize the look and feel of your content. I recommend playing with Beefree’s padding and spacing features to make your emails look right.
  • Consistent Branding: Set and use a consistent color palette, font selection, and logo placement for all emails. This not only establishes brand consistency but also streamlines the design process. This can quickly be done in the settings of Beefree.
  • Mobile Responsiveness: Always preview and test your email on mobile devices. Your email may not stack correctly or your padding may make some parts of your email look strange. Don’t worry; Beefree enables you to show and hide content on mobile and desktop, so your email looks right across devices.
  • Use Custom Blocks: If you use a particular design or content block often (like a particular footer or header), save it as a custom block. This lets you quickly insert it into future emails.
  • Integrate with Other Tools: Beefree allows integration with numerous other platforms. Ensure that your email designs can be easily exported and used in your email marketing tool, whether Mailchimp, SendGrid, or others.
  • Images: Use high-quality images, and always optimize them for the web to ensure faster load times. Beefree provides tools to resize, crop, and adjust your images.
  • Test, Test, Test: Before sending out to your entire list, send test emails to yourself and a small team. Check for broken links, visual consistency, and any other issues that might arise. You can do this directly from Beefree.
  • Collaborate: If you’re working with a team, use Beefree’s collaboration features. Get feedback directly in the platform and streamline the review and approval process.

Make Accessibile Emails a priority with Beefree

Beefree has proven to be a great tool for email marketers with limited design and coding experience. It empowers you to create visually appealing, accessible, and best-practice-compliant emails without the need for coding skills. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or starting, Beefree can streamline your email marketing efforts and help you deliver better results to your subscribers.

Ready to supercharge your email marketing with Beefree? Sign up for free today and experience the difference for yourself. Your subscribers will thank you for it.

How to Craft Compelling Internal Company Newsletters

Beefree team
Beefree team
7 Mar
2024

It’s no secret that newsletters are a powerful aspect of successful and impactful marketing strategies. With 81% of marketing professionals stating that email newsletters are their go-to type of content marketing, deciding whether to create and send regular newsletters to your clients is a no-brainer.

But what about your staff? Could employee newsletters be as effective and compelling for your employees as they are for your clients? The answer is “yes”.

Before creating your first-ever internal company newsletter, read our guide. Here, we’ll reveal the benefits of internal newsletters, the key elements to include, and how to create an internal newsletter for maximum reach and engagement.

According to a study by Ragan Communications, 83% of employees prefer receiving company news and updates via internal email newsletters.

It’s important for businesses to invest in internal newsletters because they play an important role in employee engagement, encourage better communication, and promote trust within the company. They represent an efficient way to share information, endorse company culture, and encourage employees to learn from one another.

Here are just some of the things you can expect to achieve by writing great company newsletters:

Enhanced staff commitment, motivation, and retention:

By using newsletters and emails to regularly engage employees in company news, updates, events, and celebrating individual accomplishments helps employees feel like essential stakeholders in the success of the company. This is more likely to help them feel involved in the company's success and be more open to providing feedback and contributing to the company beyond the day-to-day responsibilities.

Higher productivity:

When staff feel more involved and engaged, productivity follows. Gallup reported a 21% increase in productivity from highly engaged teams. Put simply, engaged employees are prepared to go above and beyond to complete their goals.

Better collaboration:

Regularly keeping your entire workforce in the loop allows them to communicate and collaborate more effectively.

How to Craft Compelling Internal Company Newsletters

Understand your audience's preferences

Your workforce likely consists of a range of folks varying in expertise, backgrounds, age groups, and interests.

So, to make sure your newsletters are read and engaged by as many people as possible, it is important to offer something for everyone. Which is, of course, easier said than done. This is where surveys and questionnaires can help. Before you create your internal newsletter, send out surveys asking questions such as:

  • How often would you like to receive the newsletter?
  • What are the three most interesting/useful/important topics you’d like to read?
  • Would you be happy to be featured in the newsletter following a project accomplishment?
  • What are your interests?
  • Are there any resources you’d like for us to include in the newsletter to help support your everyday work? 

By involving your employees in creating your email newsletters, you can curate the newsletter specifically for their needs. Consider segmenting your audience and sending department-specific newsletters if you notice various interests and needs across departments. 

Craft relevant and engaging content

Now, for the most crucial bit: your newsletter’s content. We mentioned how vital it is to use simple, straight-to-the-point language. This, though, doesn’t mean that your content should be bland and dull. For your newsletter to hit the mark, it must include compelling, relevant, and insightful content that your audience loves to read.

Your content needs to not only provide information but also engage your audience if you want to develop a sense of community within your organization. It is also a good idea to seek feedback and revise your content strategy over time, as you want your content to stay fresh and captivating.

Align content with company values and goals

Whatever you decide to include in your newsletter must align with your company’s values, mission, and vision for the future.

Everything about your newsletter should be an extension of these aspects – from its tone of voice to its visuals. This can help reinforce your brand identity and help foster a strong company culture and sense of community among your readers.

Develop a budget for newsletter expenses

Who is going to manage your newsletter? Will you handle it internally or outsource it to an external party? Regardless of which you choose, there will be a varying degree of costs associated with it. To keep track of them, develop a detailed budget – preferably using automated tools. 

The exact budget will vary depending on your organization's size and requirements. You may have to factor in the costs of email marketing platforms, content creation, design, analytics tools, employee time, and potentially staff training. 

One highly effective option for budget management is to utilize budget management software. These tools are designed to streamline your expense tracking process, reduce the margin for errors, and allow you to effortlessly keep a close eye on your newsletter-related expenses.

By combining budget tools with other monitoring tools, you’ll get a good sense of how your internal communications affect your business. 

Make sure you look at various metrics to measure your newsletter's success. For example, quantitative results like open rate and the number of shares can be checked, as well as more qualitative metrics such as digital survey responses and feedback meetings. This will help you determine how useful your newsletter is and means you can create ROI benchmarks.

Managing the workload effectively

Did you choose to handle your company newsletters internally? Great, but you’ll need to ensure this doesn’t become too time-intensive. In all likelihood, the person (or people) assigned to create the newsletter will also handle other tasks.

With tools such as time and expense management software, you’ll be able to check exactly how much time your employee devotes to creating and running the newsletter. Does it seem insufficient, and the content is starting to suffer? Or are they spending too much time on it and not focusing on their core activities?

Tracking all this helps your employees work more efficiently, stay on top of content planning, and keep up with their other tasks.

Choose a format and posting frequency

If you’ve asked your employees how often they’d like to receive the newsletter, you should now know the ideal frequency. Suppose 60% of people said they’re happy with one monthly newsletter, while 40% would like to read it weekly. Go for a middle-ground alternative, such as bi-monthly.

You can use email marketing automation to send newsletters at optimal times, allowing for factors like employees working in different time zones. This allows your team to focus their energy on content creation.

The optimal time to automate your newsletters is midweek mornings, as Mondays can be hectic for workers catching up after the weekend, and on Fridays, they may be less engaged due to the upcoming weekend. Mornings are usually best, as that is when most people check their emails. 

Some things you’ll want to include in your newsletters are unpredictable, such as employee achievements. However, other company newsletter ideas can be planned and outlined in advance, such as details on training sessions, a new leadership team manager joining the company, and company events.

Consistency is extremely important when it comes to maintaining audience engagement. Creating a content schedule for planned content will allow you to deliver valuable information regularly and reliably.

Continuously refine based on feedback

Maybe you think you’ve been sending out the most amazing company newsletters using the best platforms, but how do your readers feel? Ask them! Your audience’s feedback is one of the most precious tools you have in refining and improving your company newsletters.

Whether it’s about the content, the frequency, or the length, keep asking for feedback, suggestions, and input. You can make this a fast and smooth process by leveraging automated feedback software, such as SurveyMonkey and Typeform.

Your audience will likely appreciate being asked for feedback as it will make them feel that their opinions are valued and that the content is being purposefully designed for them.  

Encourage reader interaction and sharing

A newsletter with a strong CTA can retain a lot of its potential. So, remember to include a clear and enticing call to action at the end of your email. This should encourage the reader to interact with the content, share it, and discuss it with their peers.

7 Key elements to include in an internal company newsletter

We’ve compiled a list of the 7 key elements you should include in your company newsletter. This will help you form the basis of your internal communications, which you can continue to reform as you explore what works for you and your employees.

1. Easy-to-understand messaging

When writing your internal employee newsletter, leave complexity out of it. Don’t use jargon. Speak clearly and straightforwardly, and try to appeal to as large an audience as possible. 

This is especially important if people from different departments with different backgrounds and interests read your newsletter.

2. High-quality images and graphics

The choice of imagery in newsletters takes on an important role. It's about capturing your audience’s attention and making employees feel seen and represented. When curating images and visual elements for your newsletter, it's essential to prioritize content that resonates with your diverse workforce. Including imagery that reflects a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can foster a profound sense of inclusivity and belonging among your employees.

Adding interactive elements to an email newsletter can help spark your readers’ interest and keep their attention longer. So, remember to give your newsletter design some thought and include hi-res images, graphics, and other visual elements such as video clips and GIFs. 

By including images from all teams and team members, you’ll ensure that your internal company newsletter informs and reinforces a culture of inclusivity where every employee feels valued and represented.

3. Company updates and project spotlights

To get your team’s attention, you’ll want your newsletter to discuss important updates and highlights. Did you recently win an award? Are you going to organize a fun work trip or social event? Have you appointed a new manager for your marketing team? Is there any industry news that might be relevant to your company? Whatever it is, make sure it gets a mention.

4. Training information and helpful resources

Another must-have in your internal newsletter is useful information. This could be anything from the date and time of your next DEI training session to helpful resources about remote work and guidelines on new product releases. Remote work has become increasingly prevalent, and providing guidance and support in this area can greatly benefit your employees' productivity and well-being.

5. Leadership messages and staff contributions

Messages from your company’s leaders and internal shout-outs are two other things you’ll want your newsletter to have. These are especially important if your company has recently gone through something significant or a specific staff member has distinguished themselves in a project.

6. Employee highlights and achievements

Speaking of staff members, regularly include your team’s achievements and highlights. You could refer to a team or department or mention a specific person – it’s entirely up to you.

This practice of highlighting and celebrating employees success is instrumental in making them feel acknowledged and appreciated. It reinforces their sense of value within the organization and contributes to overall morale and motivation.

7. Culture reinforcement and community involvement

Lastly, remember to include a sentence or two about your company’s culture and tie it with anything tangible your readers can do to help the community. 

For example, if your company values becoming greener and more sustainable, you could scout for relevant volunteering opportunities in the area and add them to your newsletters. Or, you could mention what your company is doing to lower its carbon footprint and encourage your employees to help you achieve this goal.

Designing impactful internal newsletters with Beefree

If it all sounds like a lot and you’re not quite sure where to start, then remember: you don’t need to do it alone! Elevate your company's internal communications by leveraging the power of Beefree to design newsletters that captivate and resonate with your team. With its intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can effortlessly create visually stunning layouts, incorporating eye-catching visuals and dynamic content.

Offering a broad spectrum of professionally designed templates, Beefree caters to various internal communication needs, including announcements, team updates, project milestones, and employee recognition. With easy customization options, you can effortlessly tailor these templates to align with your company's branding, tone, and specific messaging requirements.

Sign up for free and start designing! 

How to Write Effective Training Invitation Emails to Excite People About Learning

Want to truly excite your workforce about learning? Read our guide to creating effective training invitation emails that really work.
Beefree team
Beefree team
5 Mar
2024

A training invitation email is designed to concisely provide the important logistical information relating to a meeting, including the date, time, location, and agenda, while also providing a prompt for recipients to confirm their attendance. It will also inform attendees of any preparations they need to make ahead of the scheduled session.

There are many different types of training, such as employee onboarding, professional development, technical skills improvement, sales, safety, leadership, health and wellness programs, customer education, and specialized training. These are all designed to match specific learning goals and the needs of the organization.

It is well worth investing the time to get your invitational emails just right as they not only provide attendees with important information in a streamlined way, but they can also set a positive tone for the whole training experience.

That said, creating a truly effective training invitation email can be trickier than it looks. After all, your employees are busy people. They can’t always set aside dedicated time to attend every mandatory training session. 

That means you need to persuade them that doing so will be worthwhile. For some the effectiveness of your invitational email may be the difference between attendance and non-attendance, so getting the initial message right is paramount.

Here’s why.

Why do well-crafted training invitation emails matter?

There are many challenges that can impact the effectiveness of your training sessions. These can range from low attendance, a lack of commitment and engagement with the content, or confusion about the training logistics and what is required of attendees. 

A well-crafted training invitation email can serve as a powerful tool to address these issues. 

In the following sections, we will look into how important invitation emails can be in achieving higher attendance, reducing miscommunication, and also how they can support data analysis, simplify the registration process, and boost employee accountability.

With that in mind, let’s explore the power of invitation emails.

Improved attendance and engagement

According to Gallup, only 32% of employees were actively engaged in the workplace in 2022. Their study highlights the challenge companies are facing to make sure their employees are enthusiastic about their work and the organization.

This is a significant problem as a workforce who experience low job satisfaction, will in turn lead to lower levels of productivity. It can also result in a high staff turnover and a negative culture in the workplace. This can leave a company finding it difficult to meet their organizational goals and a loss of a competitive advantage.

It’s crucial to find ways to tackle the problem. When it comes to training, that means motivating people to make the most of learning opportunities. Training plays an important role in boosting employee engagement. When employees realize that their company cares about their professional growth and values their progress, it tends to spark motivation and enthusiasm towards their work and the organization as a whole.

If you are looking for ways to improve employee engagement, an event invitation email can motivate employees by communicating its significance and relevance to their roles. You can also highlight the personal benefits they stand to gain, such as the potential for improved career prospects and valuable networking opportunities. 

That said, you have to get it right and show that you’re invested in employees’ career growth and value them. Your email must explain:

  • Why you’re conducting the training
  • Why the training content is relevant to them
  • How it benefits their continuous learning

Minimizes miscommunication

Setting out the essential details guarantees everyone is on the same page. Event emails should incorporate the following:

  • Basic details: Include training date and time, location, and key learning outcomes.
  • Training topic: What is the primary training subject? What skills will the sessions cover?
  • Training platform: Will these be in-person interactive sessions? Or via the company learning portal? 
  • Deadlines: Highlight registration deadlines or a time period the training should be completed in.

Supports tracking and data analysis

Training invitation emails are useful for gathering data for analyzing.

For instance, you could include a link to a pre-training survey to collect feedback about employee expectations. Alternatively, you could track interactions, such as open rates, click-through rates, or completion of registration forms. All of these give you a clue as to how engaged your employees are in the process.

Simplifies the registration process

Staff are less likely to register for training if they feel it would disrupt their work or there’s not someone to cover for them. 

One approach is to use shift management software solutions. These tools make it easier to streamline staff schedules and find the best time for holding training sessions without leaving a gap in the workforce. 

Use your training emails to inform staff that their shifts will be covered. By effectively managing their schedule, you simplify the process for them, so all they have to do is confirm their registration.

With that in mind, keep the registration process itself straightforward. This is particularly important for remote and hybrid teams. Implementing regular training is an excellent strategy for boosting remote team productivity, but it’s crucial to handle it correctly.

Avoid asking people to email a particular person to confirm their attendance. Instead, include a registration link that automatically confirms their attendance or directs them to a form.

Boosts employee accountability

Sending out a training email that just provides basic information represents a missed opportunity. Devote time to the email creation process and message. Encourage staff to take accountability for their learning process and explain the impact it will have on others.

Highlight how the training program will help the employee make a direct contribution to the company’s success. Doing this can help foster a sense of community and remind employees that they have an important role to play in shaping not only their own future but also the future of their team.

6 steps for creating effective training invitation emails

So how can you create an excellent training invitation in practice? Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Create attention-grabbing and informative subject lines

Chances are your employees wade through masses of emails daily. So take a cue from tried-and-tested email marketing strategies, and create a punchy email subject line so it stands out in inboxes. Keep it informative and concise, for example:

Boost Your Communication Skills: Mandatory Training – October 12

This has all the basic information, including the date, training subject, and the fact attendance is compulsory.

2. Organize the email for easy navigation and clear information flow

It’s tempting to create a catchy email design. But you should still make sure it’s easy to read and informative. 

Open with a brief intro explaining what the training entails and the benefits. This will pique your employee’s interest from the beginning. 

Then, give step-by-step instructions for how to enroll. This is where you include relevant links for registration and tracking purposes.

Finally, thank the reader for their attention and reiterate the valuable insights they’ll learn. Add  contact information in case they have questions or want to arrange an alternative training time.

3. Tailor training invitation emails, especially for new employees

Before you create your email template, consider the tone you’ll take and who will send it out. For example, an email from the CEO will add a certain gravitas, which is helpful for vital compliance training.

When it comes to new employees, try to be more focused and weave the invitation into the onboarding process. You can set up predefined tasks specific to each new hire using HR onboarding software. For example, let’s say you onboard someone who needs to hone their negotiation skills. You can automatically enroll them in a relevant online course. 

If this is something you discussed during their interview or job offer, reiterate that in your email. Make sure they understand the benefits in the context of their professional development.

4. Request prompt attendance confirmation by providing a deadline

Including a deadline gives employees a nudge to take action. Place this near the end of the email as part of your call-to-action. At this point, the recipient has already digested the main message and is motivated to move to the next stage.

That said, be careful with the tone. You don’t want to come across as too pushy or demanding in case that elicits a negative reaction. A simple, polite one-liner like this works well:

Please respond to this invitation by [time, date] to confirm your attendance.

5. Offer incentives for early registration to drive engagement

Of course, there are ways to up the ante a bit, such as offering incentives for people who sign up early. This is especially helpful when the training date is relatively far off.

Here are a few options to consider:

  • Use an employee recognition platform to generate rewards for early birds.
  • Provide practical perks for the first 20/50/100 sign-ups. This might include a digital coupon/voucher or entry to a prize draw.
  • Offer access to priority list for other specialized role-relevant training.

6. Emphasize the tangible benefits for participating employees

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: make sure you highlight why the training will be valuable to your employees. 

Offering training is a terrific way of boosting employee retention. But only if there’s a clear rationale behind it that will make your employees feel valued.

Avoid conducting one-off sessions. Instead, make them part of a continuous learning program that will genuinely benefit your team. In addition, listen to their feedback and ideas for future sessions. You can then refer back to this feedback in other training emails so employees can see that you are actively listening.

Start designing effective training invitation emails with Beefree

Elevate your training program with Beefree, the ultimate solution for crafting compelling and effective training invitation emails. Whether you're organizing professional development sessions, workshops, or corporate seminars, Beefree provides a user-friendly platform to design visually stunning and engaging email invitations.

Start from scratch or start designing with one of our Human-Resource templates. Create your free account today

Beefree team
Beefree team
Mar 7, 2024

It’s no secret that newsletters are a powerful aspect of successful and impactful marketing strategies. With 81% of marketing professionals stating that email newsletters are their go-to type of content marketing, deciding whether to create and send regular newsletters to your clients is a no-brainer.

But what about your staff? Could employee newsletters be as effective and compelling for your employees as they are for your clients? The answer is “yes”.

Before creating your first-ever internal company newsletter, read our guide. Here, we’ll reveal the benefits of internal newsletters, the key elements to include, and how to create an internal newsletter for maximum reach and engagement.

According to a study by Ragan Communications, 83% of employees prefer receiving company news and updates via internal email newsletters.

It’s important for businesses to invest in internal newsletters because they play an important role in employee engagement, encourage better communication, and promote trust within the company. They represent an efficient way to share information, endorse company culture, and encourage employees to learn from one another.

Here are just some of the things you can expect to achieve by writing great company newsletters:

Enhanced staff commitment, motivation, and retention:

By using newsletters and emails to regularly engage employees in company news, updates, events, and celebrating individual accomplishments helps employees feel like essential stakeholders in the success of the company. This is more likely to help them feel involved in the company's success and be more open to providing feedback and contributing to the company beyond the day-to-day responsibilities.

Higher productivity:

When staff feel more involved and engaged, productivity follows. Gallup reported a 21% increase in productivity from highly engaged teams. Put simply, engaged employees are prepared to go above and beyond to complete their goals.

Better collaboration:

Regularly keeping your entire workforce in the loop allows them to communicate and collaborate more effectively.

How to Craft Compelling Internal Company Newsletters

Understand your audience's preferences

Your workforce likely consists of a range of folks varying in expertise, backgrounds, age groups, and interests.

So, to make sure your newsletters are read and engaged by as many people as possible, it is important to offer something for everyone. Which is, of course, easier said than done. This is where surveys and questionnaires can help. Before you create your internal newsletter, send out surveys asking questions such as:

  • How often would you like to receive the newsletter?
  • What are the three most interesting/useful/important topics you’d like to read?
  • Would you be happy to be featured in the newsletter following a project accomplishment?
  • What are your interests?
  • Are there any resources you’d like for us to include in the newsletter to help support your everyday work? 

By involving your employees in creating your email newsletters, you can curate the newsletter specifically for their needs. Consider segmenting your audience and sending department-specific newsletters if you notice various interests and needs across departments. 

Craft relevant and engaging content

Now, for the most crucial bit: your newsletter’s content. We mentioned how vital it is to use simple, straight-to-the-point language. This, though, doesn’t mean that your content should be bland and dull. For your newsletter to hit the mark, it must include compelling, relevant, and insightful content that your audience loves to read.

Your content needs to not only provide information but also engage your audience if you want to develop a sense of community within your organization. It is also a good idea to seek feedback and revise your content strategy over time, as you want your content to stay fresh and captivating.

Align content with company values and goals

Whatever you decide to include in your newsletter must align with your company’s values, mission, and vision for the future.

Everything about your newsletter should be an extension of these aspects – from its tone of voice to its visuals. This can help reinforce your brand identity and help foster a strong company culture and sense of community among your readers.

Develop a budget for newsletter expenses

Who is going to manage your newsletter? Will you handle it internally or outsource it to an external party? Regardless of which you choose, there will be a varying degree of costs associated with it. To keep track of them, develop a detailed budget – preferably using automated tools. 

The exact budget will vary depending on your organization's size and requirements. You may have to factor in the costs of email marketing platforms, content creation, design, analytics tools, employee time, and potentially staff training. 

One highly effective option for budget management is to utilize budget management software. These tools are designed to streamline your expense tracking process, reduce the margin for errors, and allow you to effortlessly keep a close eye on your newsletter-related expenses.

By combining budget tools with other monitoring tools, you’ll get a good sense of how your internal communications affect your business. 

Make sure you look at various metrics to measure your newsletter's success. For example, quantitative results like open rate and the number of shares can be checked, as well as more qualitative metrics such as digital survey responses and feedback meetings. This will help you determine how useful your newsletter is and means you can create ROI benchmarks.

Managing the workload effectively

Did you choose to handle your company newsletters internally? Great, but you’ll need to ensure this doesn’t become too time-intensive. In all likelihood, the person (or people) assigned to create the newsletter will also handle other tasks.

With tools such as time and expense management software, you’ll be able to check exactly how much time your employee devotes to creating and running the newsletter. Does it seem insufficient, and the content is starting to suffer? Or are they spending too much time on it and not focusing on their core activities?

Tracking all this helps your employees work more efficiently, stay on top of content planning, and keep up with their other tasks.

Choose a format and posting frequency

If you’ve asked your employees how often they’d like to receive the newsletter, you should now know the ideal frequency. Suppose 60% of people said they’re happy with one monthly newsletter, while 40% would like to read it weekly. Go for a middle-ground alternative, such as bi-monthly.

You can use email marketing automation to send newsletters at optimal times, allowing for factors like employees working in different time zones. This allows your team to focus their energy on content creation.

The optimal time to automate your newsletters is midweek mornings, as Mondays can be hectic for workers catching up after the weekend, and on Fridays, they may be less engaged due to the upcoming weekend. Mornings are usually best, as that is when most people check their emails. 

Some things you’ll want to include in your newsletters are unpredictable, such as employee achievements. However, other company newsletter ideas can be planned and outlined in advance, such as details on training sessions, a new leadership team manager joining the company, and company events.

Consistency is extremely important when it comes to maintaining audience engagement. Creating a content schedule for planned content will allow you to deliver valuable information regularly and reliably.

Continuously refine based on feedback

Maybe you think you’ve been sending out the most amazing company newsletters using the best platforms, but how do your readers feel? Ask them! Your audience’s feedback is one of the most precious tools you have in refining and improving your company newsletters.

Whether it’s about the content, the frequency, or the length, keep asking for feedback, suggestions, and input. You can make this a fast and smooth process by leveraging automated feedback software, such as SurveyMonkey and Typeform.

Your audience will likely appreciate being asked for feedback as it will make them feel that their opinions are valued and that the content is being purposefully designed for them.  

Encourage reader interaction and sharing

A newsletter with a strong CTA can retain a lot of its potential. So, remember to include a clear and enticing call to action at the end of your email. This should encourage the reader to interact with the content, share it, and discuss it with their peers.

7 Key elements to include in an internal company newsletter

We’ve compiled a list of the 7 key elements you should include in your company newsletter. This will help you form the basis of your internal communications, which you can continue to reform as you explore what works for you and your employees.

1. Easy-to-understand messaging

When writing your internal employee newsletter, leave complexity out of it. Don’t use jargon. Speak clearly and straightforwardly, and try to appeal to as large an audience as possible. 

This is especially important if people from different departments with different backgrounds and interests read your newsletter.

2. High-quality images and graphics

The choice of imagery in newsletters takes on an important role. It's about capturing your audience’s attention and making employees feel seen and represented. When curating images and visual elements for your newsletter, it's essential to prioritize content that resonates with your diverse workforce. Including imagery that reflects a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can foster a profound sense of inclusivity and belonging among your employees.

Adding interactive elements to an email newsletter can help spark your readers’ interest and keep their attention longer. So, remember to give your newsletter design some thought and include hi-res images, graphics, and other visual elements such as video clips and GIFs. 

By including images from all teams and team members, you’ll ensure that your internal company newsletter informs and reinforces a culture of inclusivity where every employee feels valued and represented.

3. Company updates and project spotlights

To get your team’s attention, you’ll want your newsletter to discuss important updates and highlights. Did you recently win an award? Are you going to organize a fun work trip or social event? Have you appointed a new manager for your marketing team? Is there any industry news that might be relevant to your company? Whatever it is, make sure it gets a mention.

4. Training information and helpful resources

Another must-have in your internal newsletter is useful information. This could be anything from the date and time of your next DEI training session to helpful resources about remote work and guidelines on new product releases. Remote work has become increasingly prevalent, and providing guidance and support in this area can greatly benefit your employees' productivity and well-being.

5. Leadership messages and staff contributions

Messages from your company’s leaders and internal shout-outs are two other things you’ll want your newsletter to have. These are especially important if your company has recently gone through something significant or a specific staff member has distinguished themselves in a project.

6. Employee highlights and achievements

Speaking of staff members, regularly include your team’s achievements and highlights. You could refer to a team or department or mention a specific person – it’s entirely up to you.

This practice of highlighting and celebrating employees success is instrumental in making them feel acknowledged and appreciated. It reinforces their sense of value within the organization and contributes to overall morale and motivation.

7. Culture reinforcement and community involvement

Lastly, remember to include a sentence or two about your company’s culture and tie it with anything tangible your readers can do to help the community. 

For example, if your company values becoming greener and more sustainable, you could scout for relevant volunteering opportunities in the area and add them to your newsletters. Or, you could mention what your company is doing to lower its carbon footprint and encourage your employees to help you achieve this goal.

Designing impactful internal newsletters with Beefree

If it all sounds like a lot and you’re not quite sure where to start, then remember: you don’t need to do it alone! Elevate your company's internal communications by leveraging the power of Beefree to design newsletters that captivate and resonate with your team. With its intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can effortlessly create visually stunning layouts, incorporating eye-catching visuals and dynamic content.

Offering a broad spectrum of professionally designed templates, Beefree caters to various internal communication needs, including announcements, team updates, project milestones, and employee recognition. With easy customization options, you can effortlessly tailor these templates to align with your company's branding, tone, and specific messaging requirements.

Sign up for free and start designing! 

How to Write Effective Training Invitation Emails to Excite People About Learning

Want to truly excite your workforce about learning? Read our guide to creating effective training invitation emails that really work.
Beefree team
Beefree team
Mar 5, 2024

A training invitation email is designed to concisely provide the important logistical information relating to a meeting, including the date, time, location, and agenda, while also providing a prompt for recipients to confirm their attendance. It will also inform attendees of any preparations they need to make ahead of the scheduled session.

There are many different types of training, such as employee onboarding, professional development, technical skills improvement, sales, safety, leadership, health and wellness programs, customer education, and specialized training. These are all designed to match specific learning goals and the needs of the organization.

It is well worth investing the time to get your invitational emails just right as they not only provide attendees with important information in a streamlined way, but they can also set a positive tone for the whole training experience.

That said, creating a truly effective training invitation email can be trickier than it looks. After all, your employees are busy people. They can’t always set aside dedicated time to attend every mandatory training session. 

That means you need to persuade them that doing so will be worthwhile. For some the effectiveness of your invitational email may be the difference between attendance and non-attendance, so getting the initial message right is paramount.

Here’s why.

Why do well-crafted training invitation emails matter?

There are many challenges that can impact the effectiveness of your training sessions. These can range from low attendance, a lack of commitment and engagement with the content, or confusion about the training logistics and what is required of attendees. 

A well-crafted training invitation email can serve as a powerful tool to address these issues. 

In the following sections, we will look into how important invitation emails can be in achieving higher attendance, reducing miscommunication, and also how they can support data analysis, simplify the registration process, and boost employee accountability.

With that in mind, let’s explore the power of invitation emails.

Improved attendance and engagement

According to Gallup, only 32% of employees were actively engaged in the workplace in 2022. Their study highlights the challenge companies are facing to make sure their employees are enthusiastic about their work and the organization.

This is a significant problem as a workforce who experience low job satisfaction, will in turn lead to lower levels of productivity. It can also result in a high staff turnover and a negative culture in the workplace. This can leave a company finding it difficult to meet their organizational goals and a loss of a competitive advantage.

It’s crucial to find ways to tackle the problem. When it comes to training, that means motivating people to make the most of learning opportunities. Training plays an important role in boosting employee engagement. When employees realize that their company cares about their professional growth and values their progress, it tends to spark motivation and enthusiasm towards their work and the organization as a whole.

If you are looking for ways to improve employee engagement, an event invitation email can motivate employees by communicating its significance and relevance to their roles. You can also highlight the personal benefits they stand to gain, such as the potential for improved career prospects and valuable networking opportunities. 

That said, you have to get it right and show that you’re invested in employees’ career growth and value them. Your email must explain:

  • Why you’re conducting the training
  • Why the training content is relevant to them
  • How it benefits their continuous learning

Minimizes miscommunication

Setting out the essential details guarantees everyone is on the same page. Event emails should incorporate the following:

  • Basic details: Include training date and time, location, and key learning outcomes.
  • Training topic: What is the primary training subject? What skills will the sessions cover?
  • Training platform: Will these be in-person interactive sessions? Or via the company learning portal? 
  • Deadlines: Highlight registration deadlines or a time period the training should be completed in.

Supports tracking and data analysis

Training invitation emails are useful for gathering data for analyzing.

For instance, you could include a link to a pre-training survey to collect feedback about employee expectations. Alternatively, you could track interactions, such as open rates, click-through rates, or completion of registration forms. All of these give you a clue as to how engaged your employees are in the process.

Simplifies the registration process

Staff are less likely to register for training if they feel it would disrupt their work or there’s not someone to cover for them. 

One approach is to use shift management software solutions. These tools make it easier to streamline staff schedules and find the best time for holding training sessions without leaving a gap in the workforce. 

Use your training emails to inform staff that their shifts will be covered. By effectively managing their schedule, you simplify the process for them, so all they have to do is confirm their registration.

With that in mind, keep the registration process itself straightforward. This is particularly important for remote and hybrid teams. Implementing regular training is an excellent strategy for boosting remote team productivity, but it’s crucial to handle it correctly.

Avoid asking people to email a particular person to confirm their attendance. Instead, include a registration link that automatically confirms their attendance or directs them to a form.

Boosts employee accountability

Sending out a training email that just provides basic information represents a missed opportunity. Devote time to the email creation process and message. Encourage staff to take accountability for their learning process and explain the impact it will have on others.

Highlight how the training program will help the employee make a direct contribution to the company’s success. Doing this can help foster a sense of community and remind employees that they have an important role to play in shaping not only their own future but also the future of their team.

6 steps for creating effective training invitation emails

So how can you create an excellent training invitation in practice? Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Create attention-grabbing and informative subject lines

Chances are your employees wade through masses of emails daily. So take a cue from tried-and-tested email marketing strategies, and create a punchy email subject line so it stands out in inboxes. Keep it informative and concise, for example:

Boost Your Communication Skills: Mandatory Training – October 12

This has all the basic information, including the date, training subject, and the fact attendance is compulsory.

2. Organize the email for easy navigation and clear information flow

It’s tempting to create a catchy email design. But you should still make sure it’s easy to read and informative. 

Open with a brief intro explaining what the training entails and the benefits. This will pique your employee’s interest from the beginning. 

Then, give step-by-step instructions for how to enroll. This is where you include relevant links for registration and tracking purposes.

Finally, thank the reader for their attention and reiterate the valuable insights they’ll learn. Add  contact information in case they have questions or want to arrange an alternative training time.

3. Tailor training invitation emails, especially for new employees

Before you create your email template, consider the tone you’ll take and who will send it out. For example, an email from the CEO will add a certain gravitas, which is helpful for vital compliance training.

When it comes to new employees, try to be more focused and weave the invitation into the onboarding process. You can set up predefined tasks specific to each new hire using HR onboarding software. For example, let’s say you onboard someone who needs to hone their negotiation skills. You can automatically enroll them in a relevant online course. 

If this is something you discussed during their interview or job offer, reiterate that in your email. Make sure they understand the benefits in the context of their professional development.

4. Request prompt attendance confirmation by providing a deadline

Including a deadline gives employees a nudge to take action. Place this near the end of the email as part of your call-to-action. At this point, the recipient has already digested the main message and is motivated to move to the next stage.

That said, be careful with the tone. You don’t want to come across as too pushy or demanding in case that elicits a negative reaction. A simple, polite one-liner like this works well:

Please respond to this invitation by [time, date] to confirm your attendance.

5. Offer incentives for early registration to drive engagement

Of course, there are ways to up the ante a bit, such as offering incentives for people who sign up early. This is especially helpful when the training date is relatively far off.

Here are a few options to consider:

  • Use an employee recognition platform to generate rewards for early birds.
  • Provide practical perks for the first 20/50/100 sign-ups. This might include a digital coupon/voucher or entry to a prize draw.
  • Offer access to priority list for other specialized role-relevant training.

6. Emphasize the tangible benefits for participating employees

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: make sure you highlight why the training will be valuable to your employees. 

Offering training is a terrific way of boosting employee retention. But only if there’s a clear rationale behind it that will make your employees feel valued.

Avoid conducting one-off sessions. Instead, make them part of a continuous learning program that will genuinely benefit your team. In addition, listen to their feedback and ideas for future sessions. You can then refer back to this feedback in other training emails so employees can see that you are actively listening.

Start designing effective training invitation emails with Beefree

Elevate your training program with Beefree, the ultimate solution for crafting compelling and effective training invitation emails. Whether you're organizing professional development sessions, workshops, or corporate seminars, Beefree provides a user-friendly platform to design visually stunning and engaging email invitations.

Start from scratch or start designing with one of our Human-Resource templates. Create your free account today

Emily Santos
Emily Santos
Dec 1, 2023

In an era where algorithms evolve and trends shift faster than we can catch up, one timeless strategy stands resilient for small businesses - email marketing.A well-crafted email newsletter has the power to transcend the virtual clutter, connecting businesses directly with their audience. Yet, the challenge lies not just in sending emails but in sending the right ones.

Is Email Marketing Good for Small Businesses?

For small businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time, email marketing serves as a reliable strategy to maintain consistent communication. Communication efforts that are essential for sustainable growth and building a loyal customer base. Let's dive into some of the benefits:

  • Personalized messaging:  According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to engage with a brand that offers a personalized experience. Unlike broad advertisements, emails allow you to connect with your customers on a personal level.
  • High ROI: The average ROI for email marketing, as stated by Constant Contact, is $36 for every $1 spent, making it affordable for businesses with limited funds.
  • Builds Relationships: Regular emails help nurture relationships, turning one-time buyers into loyal customers.
  • Flexibility: Whether it's newsletters, promotions, or updates, there's an email type for every message you want to convey.

If you're looking for a cost-effective way to make a big impact, then yes, email marketing is for you.

10 Engaging Email Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

In the dynamic realm of email marketing, standing out is the name of the game. For small businesses, this means crafting emails that inform, engage, and captivate their audience with visuals and impactful messaging. Here are 10 engaging email marketing campaign ideas to help you showcase your brand's personality, all while keeping conversion top of mind.

Highlight and Share Customer Testimonials 

There's a reason why word-of-mouth remains one of the most trusted forms of marketing. Hearing real experiences from real people carries a weight that no amount of traditional advertising can match. For small businesses, showcasing customer testimonials in emails is like sharing little nuggets of trust and authenticity with your audience.This email resonates because it's all about relatability. When potential customers see others vouching for your products or services, it builds confidence and credibility. It's like having a friend recommend their favorite restaurant; you're more inclined to give it a try.In the image of an email below, Cladwell includes two different customer testimonials. Both reviews share their love for the brand and support Cladwell's mission to help people get more out of the clothes that they own with a capsule wardrobe.

Cladwell small business newsletter example

By highlighting these experiences in your emails, you're not just showcasing your offerings but also building a community of trust around your brand. So, the next time a customer sings your praises, don't keep it to yourself—share it with your email subscribers and let the testimonials do the talking!

Send Birthday and Anniversary Promotions

Who doesn't love a little extra love on their special day? Sending birthday and anniversary promotions is a personal touch that goes a long way. In a simple way, this message says, "Hey, we remember you, and we appreciate you being with us!" Not only does this foster goodwill, but it also encourages sales. After all, who can resist a tempting offer, especially when it's wrapped up in birthday confetti?

But here's the real kicker: these promotions aren't just about sales. They're about building a bond. When customers feel valued and remembered, they're more likely to stick around. And in the world of business, loyalty is golden.

Read more: 10 Engaging Birthday Email Examples + Strategies 

Share Behind-the-Scenes Stories

Pulling back the curtain and giving a sneak peek into the day-to-day happenings can create a genuine connection. It humanizes your brand, making it more than just a logo or a product. It's about the people, the process, and the passion.

Here are some behind-the-scenes stories that can make a splash:

  • The Making of a Product: Showcase the journey from idea to final product. It's fascinating to see how things come to life.
  • Employee Spotlights: Introduce the rockstars behind your brand. Share their stories, hobbies, and why they love what they do.
  • Office Shenanigans: Do you have a fun office tradition or a quirky team-building activity coming up? Share it! It adds a touch of fun and personality.

Remember, every brand has a story. And sharing yours can make all the difference in building a loyal community.

Create a Brand Ambassador Program

A Brand Ambassador Program helps cultivate a community of customers who love what you do so much that they can't help but shout it from the rooftops.

As we mentioned earlier, word-of-mouth is powerful. Recommendations from friends or family hold weight. When someone raves about your product or service, their circle listens. And guess what? That's organic marketing at its finest.

Brand ambassadors also provide invaluable feedback. They're your frontline, interacting with your product or service regularly. Their insights can help refine your offerings, ensuring you're always at the top of your game. So, think of a Brand Ambassador Program as a win-win: your brand gets love and loyalty, and your ambassadors get perks and a sense of community.

Utilize Subscriber-Only Discounts

It's simple: everyone loves a good deal. And they love them even more when it's exclusive. By offering special deals just for your email subscribers, you're letting them know that you value their readership enough to offer them unique opportunities.

PRO Tip: Go the extra mile and put to use your segmented groups to use! Create personalized offers to make discounts more relevant to your unique audiences and their needs, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

In a digital world, it's easy for brands to come off as faceless entities. But here's a little secret: people connect with people, not logos. Taking the time to humanize your brand can be the difference between a subscriber who engages and one who hits the 'unsubscribe' button. It's about building trust, showcasing authenticity, and creating genuine connections.

Take Time to Humanize Your Brand

In a digital world, it's easy for brands to come off as faceless entities. But the truth is, that people connect with people, not logos. Taking the time to humanize your brand can be the difference between a subscriber who engages and one who hits the 'unsubscribe' button. It's about building trust, showcasing authenticity, and creating genuine connections.

Here's how you can add that human touch:

  • Share Your Origin Story: Every brand has a beginning. Share yours. How did you start? What challenges did you face? What's the passion driving you?
  • Celebrate Milestones: Did you hit a significant number of subscribers? Launch a new product? Celebrate with your email community. They're part of your journey.
  • Introduce Your Team: Put faces to the names. Share fun facts, birthdays, or even the office pet. It adds warmth and personality to your brand.

Remember, at the end of the day, business is about relationships. And relationships are built on trust, authenticity, and, most importantly, human connections.

Create a Monthly Newsletter

Newsletters are a chance to share updates, stories, and maybe even a few secrets. For small businesses, a monthly newsletter is a golden opportunity to keep your audience in the loop. It's a consistent touchpoint that reminds your subscribers, "Hey, we're here, and we've got some cool stuff to share!"

Why should you jump on the newsletter bandwagon?

  • Consistency is Key: Regular updates mean you're always on your subscribers' minds. It's a gentle nudge that says, "Remember us?"
  • Value-Packed Content: Share tips, industry news, or even a fun fact. It's not just about selling; it's about providing value.
  • Builds Community: A newsletter can foster a sense of belonging. It's a space where you and your subscribers can connect and engage.

Offer Exclusive Previews

There's something undeniably thrilling about being in the know, getting that first look before anyone else. For small businesses, offering exclusive previews to their email subscribers is a golden ticket to building anticipation and excitement. It's like inviting your most loyal fans to a VIP backstage pass, giving them a sneak peek into upcoming products, services, or events.

By offering these exclusive glimpses, you're not only rewarding your subscribers for their loyalty but also creating a sense of community and belonging. They feel valued, special, and more connected to your brand. And when people feel a part of something bigger, they're more likely to engage, share, and, most importantly, shop.

So, the next time you're launching something new, consider giving your email subscribers the first look.

How Do I Start Email Marketing For My Small Business?

While the journey might seem a tad overwhelming at first, with the right steps, you'll be on your way to crafting compelling campaigns in no time. Let's look at the initial stages to ensure you kick things off on the right foot.

Step #1 Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform

Before you send out your first email, you'll need a reliable platform to do the heavy lifting. An email marketing platform helps you manage your subscriber list, design emails, and track performance metrics.

  • Research Platforms: Look into options to see which platform is best suited for your needs.
  • Features Matter: Ensure the platform offers templates, analytics, and automation tools.
  • Ease of Use: Especially for beginners, a user-friendly interface can make all the difference.

Step #2 Segment Your Email List

Not all subscribers are created equal. Segmenting your email list allows you to tailor your content to different groups, ensuring it resonates and engages.

  • Demographics: Group subscribers based on age, location, or purchasing behavior.
  • Engagement Levels: Separate active readers from those who might need a re-engagement campaign.
  • Personalization: Use segments to send personalized offers or content, enhancing the subscriber experience.

Step #3 Start with a Template! 

The design of your email plays a pivotal role in capturing your subscriber's attention. While crafting a visually appealing email from scratch might seem daunting, a template does all the heavy lifting!

Beefree offers a vast collection of over 1,600+ email templates, made with conversion and engagement in mind. Whether you're looking for a minimalist design or something vibrant and colorful, there is something for everyone. 

Beefree's drag-and-drop intuitive builder also makes it easy for those with limited design experience to build beautiful on-brand templates with minimal effort.

Step #4 Analyze and Iterate for Continuous Improvement

Once your emails are out in the wild, the journey doesn't end there. It's essential to keep an eye on how they're performing. Are your subscribers opening them? Are they clicking through? Or perhaps, are they sending them straight to the trash?

  • Use Analytics: Most email platforms offer insights into open rates, click-through rates, and more. Dive deep into these metrics to understand what's working and what's not.
  • Feedback is Gold: Consider sending out surveys or directly asking for feedback. Your subscribers can offer invaluable insights into what they love and what could be better.
  • Iterate and Improve: Based on the data and feedback, make necessary tweaks to your content, design, or strategy. Remember, email marketing is a continuous process of learning and improving.

By adopting a mindset of continuous improvement, you ensure that your email marketing efforts remain effective and relevant, adapting to the ever-changing needs and preferences of your audience.

Additional email marketing tips for small businesses

While we've covered some essential steps to kickstart your email marketing journey, there are always more tricks up the sleeve to enhance your game. Here are a few additional tips to keep in mind:

  • Personalize Beyond the Name: Sure, addressing subscribers by their first name is great, but dive deeper. Tailor content based on their preferences or past interactions.
  • Avoid the Spam Folder: Ensure your emails are compliant with regulations and avoid spammy tactics. A high-quality email list and relevant content are your best allies.
  • Celebrate Special Occasions: Birthdays, anniversaries, or local holidays—these are opportunities to connect and offer special deals or messages.
  • Visuals Matter: Incorporate high-quality images and graphics that resonate with your brand and message.
  • Mobile-first: According to Litmus, 47% of email opens occurred on a mobile device, surpassing desktop opens. This makes having mobile-friendly emails not just a nice-to-have but an absolute must for small businesses.

Small business email marketing made easy with Beefree

In the bustling world of small business, every minute counts.

Beefree's email builder is tailored to help small businesses create visually stunning and engaging emails without the fuss. Whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their myriad templates, you're in for a seamless experience.

Ready to elevate your email marketing game? Dive into the world of effortless email design with Beefree. The best part? It's free for small businesses with a limited budget! 

How to Craft Compelling Internal Company Newsletters

Beefree team
Beefree team
7 Mar
2024

It’s no secret that newsletters are a powerful aspect of successful and impactful marketing strategies. With 81% of marketing professionals stating that email newsletters are their go-to type of content marketing, deciding whether to create and send regular newsletters to your clients is a no-brainer.

But what about your staff? Could employee newsletters be as effective and compelling for your employees as they are for your clients? The answer is “yes”.

Before creating your first-ever internal company newsletter, read our guide. Here, we’ll reveal the benefits of internal newsletters, the key elements to include, and how to create an internal newsletter for maximum reach and engagement.

According to a study by Ragan Communications, 83% of employees prefer receiving company news and updates via internal email newsletters.

It’s important for businesses to invest in internal newsletters because they play an important role in employee engagement, encourage better communication, and promote trust within the company. They represent an efficient way to share information, endorse company culture, and encourage employees to learn from one another.

Here are just some of the things you can expect to achieve by writing great company newsletters:

Enhanced staff commitment, motivation, and retention:

By using newsletters and emails to regularly engage employees in company news, updates, events, and celebrating individual accomplishments helps employees feel like essential stakeholders in the success of the company. This is more likely to help them feel involved in the company's success and be more open to providing feedback and contributing to the company beyond the day-to-day responsibilities.

Higher productivity:

When staff feel more involved and engaged, productivity follows. Gallup reported a 21% increase in productivity from highly engaged teams. Put simply, engaged employees are prepared to go above and beyond to complete their goals.

Better collaboration:

Regularly keeping your entire workforce in the loop allows them to communicate and collaborate more effectively.

How to Craft Compelling Internal Company Newsletters

Understand your audience's preferences

Your workforce likely consists of a range of folks varying in expertise, backgrounds, age groups, and interests.

So, to make sure your newsletters are read and engaged by as many people as possible, it is important to offer something for everyone. Which is, of course, easier said than done. This is where surveys and questionnaires can help. Before you create your internal newsletter, send out surveys asking questions such as:

  • How often would you like to receive the newsletter?
  • What are the three most interesting/useful/important topics you’d like to read?
  • Would you be happy to be featured in the newsletter following a project accomplishment?
  • What are your interests?
  • Are there any resources you’d like for us to include in the newsletter to help support your everyday work? 

By involving your employees in creating your email newsletters, you can curate the newsletter specifically for their needs. Consider segmenting your audience and sending department-specific newsletters if you notice various interests and needs across departments. 

Craft relevant and engaging content

Now, for the most crucial bit: your newsletter’s content. We mentioned how vital it is to use simple, straight-to-the-point language. This, though, doesn’t mean that your content should be bland and dull. For your newsletter to hit the mark, it must include compelling, relevant, and insightful content that your audience loves to read.

Your content needs to not only provide information but also engage your audience if you want to develop a sense of community within your organization. It is also a good idea to seek feedback and revise your content strategy over time, as you want your content to stay fresh and captivating.

Align content with company values and goals

Whatever you decide to include in your newsletter must align with your company’s values, mission, and vision for the future.

Everything about your newsletter should be an extension of these aspects – from its tone of voice to its visuals. This can help reinforce your brand identity and help foster a strong company culture and sense of community among your readers.

Develop a budget for newsletter expenses

Who is going to manage your newsletter? Will you handle it internally or outsource it to an external party? Regardless of which you choose, there will be a varying degree of costs associated with it. To keep track of them, develop a detailed budget – preferably using automated tools. 

The exact budget will vary depending on your organization's size and requirements. You may have to factor in the costs of email marketing platforms, content creation, design, analytics tools, employee time, and potentially staff training. 

One highly effective option for budget management is to utilize budget management software. These tools are designed to streamline your expense tracking process, reduce the margin for errors, and allow you to effortlessly keep a close eye on your newsletter-related expenses.

By combining budget tools with other monitoring tools, you’ll get a good sense of how your internal communications affect your business. 

Make sure you look at various metrics to measure your newsletter's success. For example, quantitative results like open rate and the number of shares can be checked, as well as more qualitative metrics such as digital survey responses and feedback meetings. This will help you determine how useful your newsletter is and means you can create ROI benchmarks.

Managing the workload effectively

Did you choose to handle your company newsletters internally? Great, but you’ll need to ensure this doesn’t become too time-intensive. In all likelihood, the person (or people) assigned to create the newsletter will also handle other tasks.

With tools such as time and expense management software, you’ll be able to check exactly how much time your employee devotes to creating and running the newsletter. Does it seem insufficient, and the content is starting to suffer? Or are they spending too much time on it and not focusing on their core activities?

Tracking all this helps your employees work more efficiently, stay on top of content planning, and keep up with their other tasks.

Choose a format and posting frequency

If you’ve asked your employees how often they’d like to receive the newsletter, you should now know the ideal frequency. Suppose 60% of people said they’re happy with one monthly newsletter, while 40% would like to read it weekly. Go for a middle-ground alternative, such as bi-monthly.

You can use email marketing automation to send newsletters at optimal times, allowing for factors like employees working in different time zones. This allows your team to focus their energy on content creation.

The optimal time to automate your newsletters is midweek mornings, as Mondays can be hectic for workers catching up after the weekend, and on Fridays, they may be less engaged due to the upcoming weekend. Mornings are usually best, as that is when most people check their emails. 

Some things you’ll want to include in your newsletters are unpredictable, such as employee achievements. However, other company newsletter ideas can be planned and outlined in advance, such as details on training sessions, a new leadership team manager joining the company, and company events.

Consistency is extremely important when it comes to maintaining audience engagement. Creating a content schedule for planned content will allow you to deliver valuable information regularly and reliably.

Continuously refine based on feedback

Maybe you think you’ve been sending out the most amazing company newsletters using the best platforms, but how do your readers feel? Ask them! Your audience’s feedback is one of the most precious tools you have in refining and improving your company newsletters.

Whether it’s about the content, the frequency, or the length, keep asking for feedback, suggestions, and input. You can make this a fast and smooth process by leveraging automated feedback software, such as SurveyMonkey and Typeform.

Your audience will likely appreciate being asked for feedback as it will make them feel that their opinions are valued and that the content is being purposefully designed for them.  

Encourage reader interaction and sharing

A newsletter with a strong CTA can retain a lot of its potential. So, remember to include a clear and enticing call to action at the end of your email. This should encourage the reader to interact with the content, share it, and discuss it with their peers.

7 Key elements to include in an internal company newsletter

We’ve compiled a list of the 7 key elements you should include in your company newsletter. This will help you form the basis of your internal communications, which you can continue to reform as you explore what works for you and your employees.

1. Easy-to-understand messaging

When writing your internal employee newsletter, leave complexity out of it. Don’t use jargon. Speak clearly and straightforwardly, and try to appeal to as large an audience as possible. 

This is especially important if people from different departments with different backgrounds and interests read your newsletter.

2. High-quality images and graphics

The choice of imagery in newsletters takes on an important role. It's about capturing your audience’s attention and making employees feel seen and represented. When curating images and visual elements for your newsletter, it's essential to prioritize content that resonates with your diverse workforce. Including imagery that reflects a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can foster a profound sense of inclusivity and belonging among your employees.

Adding interactive elements to an email newsletter can help spark your readers’ interest and keep their attention longer. So, remember to give your newsletter design some thought and include hi-res images, graphics, and other visual elements such as video clips and GIFs. 

By including images from all teams and team members, you’ll ensure that your internal company newsletter informs and reinforces a culture of inclusivity where every employee feels valued and represented.

3. Company updates and project spotlights

To get your team’s attention, you’ll want your newsletter to discuss important updates and highlights. Did you recently win an award? Are you going to organize a fun work trip or social event? Have you appointed a new manager for your marketing team? Is there any industry news that might be relevant to your company? Whatever it is, make sure it gets a mention.

4. Training information and helpful resources

Another must-have in your internal newsletter is useful information. This could be anything from the date and time of your next DEI training session to helpful resources about remote work and guidelines on new product releases. Remote work has become increasingly prevalent, and providing guidance and support in this area can greatly benefit your employees' productivity and well-being.

5. Leadership messages and staff contributions

Messages from your company’s leaders and internal shout-outs are two other things you’ll want your newsletter to have. These are especially important if your company has recently gone through something significant or a specific staff member has distinguished themselves in a project.

6. Employee highlights and achievements

Speaking of staff members, regularly include your team’s achievements and highlights. You could refer to a team or department or mention a specific person – it’s entirely up to you.

This practice of highlighting and celebrating employees success is instrumental in making them feel acknowledged and appreciated. It reinforces their sense of value within the organization and contributes to overall morale and motivation.

7. Culture reinforcement and community involvement

Lastly, remember to include a sentence or two about your company’s culture and tie it with anything tangible your readers can do to help the community. 

For example, if your company values becoming greener and more sustainable, you could scout for relevant volunteering opportunities in the area and add them to your newsletters. Or, you could mention what your company is doing to lower its carbon footprint and encourage your employees to help you achieve this goal.

Designing impactful internal newsletters with Beefree

If it all sounds like a lot and you’re not quite sure where to start, then remember: you don’t need to do it alone! Elevate your company's internal communications by leveraging the power of Beefree to design newsletters that captivate and resonate with your team. With its intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can effortlessly create visually stunning layouts, incorporating eye-catching visuals and dynamic content.

Offering a broad spectrum of professionally designed templates, Beefree caters to various internal communication needs, including announcements, team updates, project milestones, and employee recognition. With easy customization options, you can effortlessly tailor these templates to align with your company's branding, tone, and specific messaging requirements.

Sign up for free and start designing! 

How to Write Effective Training Invitation Emails to Excite People About Learning

Want to truly excite your workforce about learning? Read our guide to creating effective training invitation emails that really work.
Beefree team
Beefree team
5 Mar
2024

A training invitation email is designed to concisely provide the important logistical information relating to a meeting, including the date, time, location, and agenda, while also providing a prompt for recipients to confirm their attendance. It will also inform attendees of any preparations they need to make ahead of the scheduled session.

There are many different types of training, such as employee onboarding, professional development, technical skills improvement, sales, safety, leadership, health and wellness programs, customer education, and specialized training. These are all designed to match specific learning goals and the needs of the organization.

It is well worth investing the time to get your invitational emails just right as they not only provide attendees with important information in a streamlined way, but they can also set a positive tone for the whole training experience.

That said, creating a truly effective training invitation email can be trickier than it looks. After all, your employees are busy people. They can’t always set aside dedicated time to attend every mandatory training session. 

That means you need to persuade them that doing so will be worthwhile. For some the effectiveness of your invitational email may be the difference between attendance and non-attendance, so getting the initial message right is paramount.

Here’s why.

Why do well-crafted training invitation emails matter?

There are many challenges that can impact the effectiveness of your training sessions. These can range from low attendance, a lack of commitment and engagement with the content, or confusion about the training logistics and what is required of attendees. 

A well-crafted training invitation email can serve as a powerful tool to address these issues. 

In the following sections, we will look into how important invitation emails can be in achieving higher attendance, reducing miscommunication, and also how they can support data analysis, simplify the registration process, and boost employee accountability.

With that in mind, let’s explore the power of invitation emails.

Improved attendance and engagement

According to Gallup, only 32% of employees were actively engaged in the workplace in 2022. Their study highlights the challenge companies are facing to make sure their employees are enthusiastic about their work and the organization.

This is a significant problem as a workforce who experience low job satisfaction, will in turn lead to lower levels of productivity. It can also result in a high staff turnover and a negative culture in the workplace. This can leave a company finding it difficult to meet their organizational goals and a loss of a competitive advantage.

It’s crucial to find ways to tackle the problem. When it comes to training, that means motivating people to make the most of learning opportunities. Training plays an important role in boosting employee engagement. When employees realize that their company cares about their professional growth and values their progress, it tends to spark motivation and enthusiasm towards their work and the organization as a whole.

If you are looking for ways to improve employee engagement, an event invitation email can motivate employees by communicating its significance and relevance to their roles. You can also highlight the personal benefits they stand to gain, such as the potential for improved career prospects and valuable networking opportunities. 

That said, you have to get it right and show that you’re invested in employees’ career growth and value them. Your email must explain:

  • Why you’re conducting the training
  • Why the training content is relevant to them
  • How it benefits their continuous learning

Minimizes miscommunication

Setting out the essential details guarantees everyone is on the same page. Event emails should incorporate the following:

  • Basic details: Include training date and time, location, and key learning outcomes.
  • Training topic: What is the primary training subject? What skills will the sessions cover?
  • Training platform: Will these be in-person interactive sessions? Or via the company learning portal? 
  • Deadlines: Highlight registration deadlines or a time period the training should be completed in.

Supports tracking and data analysis

Training invitation emails are useful for gathering data for analyzing.

For instance, you could include a link to a pre-training survey to collect feedback about employee expectations. Alternatively, you could track interactions, such as open rates, click-through rates, or completion of registration forms. All of these give you a clue as to how engaged your employees are in the process.

Simplifies the registration process

Staff are less likely to register for training if they feel it would disrupt their work or there’s not someone to cover for them. 

One approach is to use shift management software solutions. These tools make it easier to streamline staff schedules and find the best time for holding training sessions without leaving a gap in the workforce. 

Use your training emails to inform staff that their shifts will be covered. By effectively managing their schedule, you simplify the process for them, so all they have to do is confirm their registration.

With that in mind, keep the registration process itself straightforward. This is particularly important for remote and hybrid teams. Implementing regular training is an excellent strategy for boosting remote team productivity, but it’s crucial to handle it correctly.

Avoid asking people to email a particular person to confirm their attendance. Instead, include a registration link that automatically confirms their attendance or directs them to a form.

Boosts employee accountability

Sending out a training email that just provides basic information represents a missed opportunity. Devote time to the email creation process and message. Encourage staff to take accountability for their learning process and explain the impact it will have on others.

Highlight how the training program will help the employee make a direct contribution to the company’s success. Doing this can help foster a sense of community and remind employees that they have an important role to play in shaping not only their own future but also the future of their team.

6 steps for creating effective training invitation emails

So how can you create an excellent training invitation in practice? Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Create attention-grabbing and informative subject lines

Chances are your employees wade through masses of emails daily. So take a cue from tried-and-tested email marketing strategies, and create a punchy email subject line so it stands out in inboxes. Keep it informative and concise, for example:

Boost Your Communication Skills: Mandatory Training – October 12

This has all the basic information, including the date, training subject, and the fact attendance is compulsory.

2. Organize the email for easy navigation and clear information flow

It’s tempting to create a catchy email design. But you should still make sure it’s easy to read and informative. 

Open with a brief intro explaining what the training entails and the benefits. This will pique your employee’s interest from the beginning. 

Then, give step-by-step instructions for how to enroll. This is where you include relevant links for registration and tracking purposes.

Finally, thank the reader for their attention and reiterate the valuable insights they’ll learn. Add  contact information in case they have questions or want to arrange an alternative training time.

3. Tailor training invitation emails, especially for new employees

Before you create your email template, consider the tone you’ll take and who will send it out. For example, an email from the CEO will add a certain gravitas, which is helpful for vital compliance training.

When it comes to new employees, try to be more focused and weave the invitation into the onboarding process. You can set up predefined tasks specific to each new hire using HR onboarding software. For example, let’s say you onboard someone who needs to hone their negotiation skills. You can automatically enroll them in a relevant online course. 

If this is something you discussed during their interview or job offer, reiterate that in your email. Make sure they understand the benefits in the context of their professional development.

4. Request prompt attendance confirmation by providing a deadline

Including a deadline gives employees a nudge to take action. Place this near the end of the email as part of your call-to-action. At this point, the recipient has already digested the main message and is motivated to move to the next stage.

That said, be careful with the tone. You don’t want to come across as too pushy or demanding in case that elicits a negative reaction. A simple, polite one-liner like this works well:

Please respond to this invitation by [time, date] to confirm your attendance.

5. Offer incentives for early registration to drive engagement

Of course, there are ways to up the ante a bit, such as offering incentives for people who sign up early. This is especially helpful when the training date is relatively far off.

Here are a few options to consider:

  • Use an employee recognition platform to generate rewards for early birds.
  • Provide practical perks for the first 20/50/100 sign-ups. This might include a digital coupon/voucher or entry to a prize draw.
  • Offer access to priority list for other specialized role-relevant training.

6. Emphasize the tangible benefits for participating employees

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: make sure you highlight why the training will be valuable to your employees. 

Offering training is a terrific way of boosting employee retention. But only if there’s a clear rationale behind it that will make your employees feel valued.

Avoid conducting one-off sessions. Instead, make them part of a continuous learning program that will genuinely benefit your team. In addition, listen to their feedback and ideas for future sessions. You can then refer back to this feedback in other training emails so employees can see that you are actively listening.

Start designing effective training invitation emails with Beefree

Elevate your training program with Beefree, the ultimate solution for crafting compelling and effective training invitation emails. Whether you're organizing professional development sessions, workshops, or corporate seminars, Beefree provides a user-friendly platform to design visually stunning and engaging email invitations.

Start from scratch or start designing with one of our Human-Resource templates. Create your free account today

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