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8 ways to Improve Employee Engagement from Onboarding Emails and Beyond

Anna Lysiuk
Anna Lysiuk
Oct 19, 2022
8 ways to Improve Employee Engagement from Onboarding Emails and Beyond
8 ways to Improve Employee Engagement from Onboarding Emails and Beyond

According to Gallup's findings, "only 12% of employees feel like their companies did a good job of onboarding." Not many employers realize that onboarding is much more than directing new hires to their office and assigning tasks right away. But instead, it's about finding ways to ensure and improve employee engagement from the first point of contact.While everyone within an organization is responsible for infusing company culture into everything they do, Human Resources helps manage and ensure that new employees feel safe and adapt to said culture.While onboarding emails are great at first, improving employee engagement is an ongoing effort. These efforts are especially important for remote workers who don't get to bond or experience the culture in person. Keep reading ifyou're wondering how emails can help onboard new hires and improve employee engagement.

8 Types of Email Templates to Improve Employee Engagement

Onboarding is an entire process that requires a series of several emails. We'll categorize those messages and give you simpleemail design tips to follow!

1. Thank you for your application email! 

Although this is a pre-boarding email, it's a huge part of the onboarding experience. It is the first time a potential candidate receives communication from your brand and gets to experience the company culture firsthand.A simple "thank you for your application email" goes a long way. Not only does it offer reassurance for potential candidates, but also it lets them know the next steps. This simple step is a great way to be clear and transparent while letting candidates know their time is valued and appreciated.

Use this template in Beefree!

Use this template in Beefree!

2. Offer Email

The job offer email helps to translate the company's culture. It should communicate essential details regarding the position, benefits, salary, and work schedule. However, it should also include that extra "something" (team spirit) that will drive the candidate towards this position before considering another offer.Here's a sample of an offer email that captures the team's culture in a light tone:"Dear Catherine, Over the last week, we enjoyed getting to know you. We loved learning about your interest in (personalized for them), and we're impressed with your energy, skills, and experience, which would make you the perfect person to join us. The entire team and I would like to formally offer you a position as a marketing manager. Congrats!We can offer you a salary of $ annually, plus bonuses and 20 days of vacation per year. I'd love to discuss the details in our offices on Monday, 9 AM. Please contact me with any questions or comments. We are excited to hear back from you. "Often interviews can be draining, and candidates can feel like just a number by the end. By adding a personal and human touch to your offer emails, you can let them know that their time is valuable and that you paid attention to who they are as a person beyond what they can bring to the team.

3. Welcome Email

Now that the person is officially part of your team, you can add more fun elements to the design and message. This email should make the candidate feel excited to have joined the team and offer an opportunity to learn more about the company, the culture, and their co-workers.Here are a few contents and design tips to keep in mind:

  • Include information about their direct team members and any other members they will be collaborating with.
  • You can use an online collage maker to quickly build photo collages. Include photos of team-building events and your team's day-to-day atmosphere.
  • Include a section with useful links and resources. These may be how-to tutorials, library resources, and even food delivery services that your team usually relies on.

Use this template in Beefree!

Use this template in Beefree!

4. Announcing a New Hire Email

Whenever someone joins the team, everyone should be made aware of them. This allows other employees the opportunity to get to know new team members that they'll be collaborating with and congratulate them personally. This is also great to helps avoid the need to introduce themselves over and over again.While this email is to introduce someone in a new position, it should also be about the human - beyond what they are bringing to the team.These are some details you should include in this message:

  • A photo of the new hire
  • Details about their position and responsibilities, so everyone will know how this new hire will be included in their own workflow.   
  • Previous experience,
  • Any hobbies, skills, and passions. 

You can also include new hires announcements in the company's HR newsletter to remind the team about last month's newcomers and share their stories.

5. Corporate Training Email

Training emails are especially important. They provide employees with knowledge on how to do their job effectively and efficiently and how they can meet personal and organizational goals. Trainings should be sent to teams on a quarterly basis and should include:

  • Main details about the topic of the training.
  • Text or video instructions about the organization's values, vision, and security rules. 
  • How-to videos on how to complete technical tasks. This is a crucial element of these emails, as it helps a new hire to understand how to use the corporate hardware and software. For example, explaining how they can uninstall programs on Mac and install the ones that are needed is easy to do via email. 

Training emails should also be sent out every time a new tool, policy, and/or procedure is implemented in the organization.

Use this template in Beefree!

Use this template in Beefree!

6. Anniversary or Birthday Email

It's great when the HR team reminds the entire team of birthdays and anniversaries.These emails allow employees to feel like they are part of a community and cared for. This is the right moment to add a dose of fun to the message. Here's an example of the text you can include:It's October 7; an important date! Our colleague Michelle is celebrating her birthday. Everyone is invited to a small party in the meeting room on October 7 at 4 PM. The drinks (and cake!) are on us.  Here is an email collection by BEE Pro to help you celebrate your team's next birthday.If you're writing an email about the first anniversary of someone's hiring, do it in the same light tone. This time, you can include important achievements for this person over the last year.

7. Collecting Feedback Email

According to People Managing People "63% of knowledge workers in the USA are open to looking for a new job within the next year." It's been an unsaid rule that the first 90 days are used as a "trial" period to see how new employees adapt to a new work environment. Now, employees are looking at organizations from that same lens during their first 30 days.Providing new employees with a safe space to give feedback during their first 30,60,90 days of employment is essential for employee retention. And using that feedback survey to make the necessary changes to the company culture. Here are some questions you can ask:

  • What did you like on your first day at work?
  • Would you have any suggestions on how we can improve the organization?
  • What do you think about the company so far?
  • Would you like to share any job-related problems you've faced during your time with us?
  • How are you adapting to the work environment and your team? 

Providing employees the opportunity to provide feedback during their first 90 days allows them to feel empowered over their success. It also sets a precedent and expectation that feedback is encouraged, creating a safe space and a strong company culture.

8. Performance Review Email

Similar to the email above, this is intended to collect feedback on how the new employee is adapting to the work. Within the first month or 90-days you can ask for feedback on how they believe they've been doing and toestablish specific goals for the upcoming period. This is also a great way to see how you can improve your onboarding and training process in the future.This message shouldn’t sound too formal. Here’s an example:"Hi Marissa, We’ve been thrilled to have you working with us for the past month. We’re happy with the progress you’ve made so far, and we sincerely hope we made you feel welcome in our organization. Allow us to announce your first-ever performance review. Don’t worry; it’s not scary at all! It’s your opportunity to have an important talk with your managers, share how things have been going from your point of view, and get a few suggestions on how to get better at what you do. Hopefully, we’ll be able to set tangible goals for the future. A performance review should go both ways. Provide team members with a self-evaluation form to give them an opportunity to discuss how they have been doing and adapting to the work and workload."

Improve Employee Engagement with BEE Pro

Sign up for a free BEE Pro account today and get access to 1,500+ email and landing pages, including The BEE Recruitment Templates Collection. This collection was made with HR teams in mind to quickly onboard new team members and nurture a strong company culture from the start.

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The challenges of designing emails directly in Marketo

Marketo’s built-in email editor is useful for basic templates but presents several limitations for marketers and designers.

  • Limited design flexibility – Customizing layouts, fonts, or interactive elements can be difficult without custom HTML or Marketo’s proprietary syntax.
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Due to these challenges, many marketing teams turn to external email builders like Beefree, FeedOtter, or Knak to improve design efficiency and automation.

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While other external email builders like Knak and FeedOtter also integrate with Marketo, Beefree offers distinct advantages.

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Frequently asked questions on using Beefree with Marketo Engage

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For a full list of our native integrations visit [https://beefree.io/integrations].

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Yes, there are a few important limitations to be aware of:

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Preheader text is not a native field in Marketo. However, Beefree includes it by embedding the preheader directly in the email's HTML code during export.

Additional resources and links

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By integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage, marketing teams gain a faster, more flexible way to build high-converting, on-brand email campaigns—while leveraging Marketo’s powerful automation and analytics to track performance and optimize results.

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Ready to elevate your Marketo email marketing? Try Beefree today and streamline your entire email creation process.

Start your 15-day free Business trial today!

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Email is king when it comes to talking directly to your customers. Sure, we might send texts or share voice notes, but we all still check our emails. It’s how we keep in touch with work and the businesses we connect with. 

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The victim could be anyone. The link could lead to a ransomware virus that holds your data captive or be the start of a data breach. It could even lead to a traditional scam that has you input your credit card details so a thief can steal them. 

For all these reasons and more, email providers consistently invest in security features to help protect their customers. One such feature is an email security gateway. 

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Why are secure email gateways important?

While we are getting better at filtering out spam emails, an estimated 45.6% of emails sent in 2023 were still spam. This poses a massive security risk for consumers, businesses, and governments alike. 

According to IBM, businesses are hit the hardest, with the global average cost of each successful phishing attack increasing to $4.88M USD. The attacks don’t just hit businesses, either, with attacks targeting individuals and even charities.

Just as phishing and spam emails have become more sophisticated, so have the tools designed to protect against them. All providers, including big names like Gmail, use SEGs to secure communications and other features, such as Gmail’s unsubscribe feature

What do SEGs flag as spam? 

SEGs continually update their parameters. This means that what they check for is constantly in flux. What SEGs look for today, for example, could include: 

  • Strange or suspicious subject lines
  • Highly urgent capitalization or excessive exclamation points
  • Strange URLs
  • Poor grammar and/or spelling
  • Generic greetings that don’t address the recipient 
  • Suspicious email addresses
  • The volume of emails sent at once
  • Attachment types 
  • Image-heavy content 

SEGs are far more advanced than just ticking boxes, but that doesn’t mean your emails can’t get blocked or sent to spam. After all, you might put together a great email campaign, but if your email is too image-heavy, it might get quarantined or sent to spam. 

The good news is that once you know what the SEGs look for, you can work to design better emails. Beefree can help you get started, with a range of templates for responsive email designs.

How to create newsletters with secure email gateways in mind 

The good news is that you can implement and send out most, if not all, of your newsletter ideas without issue. So long as the emails are well-made and are sent at a reasonable frequency, you’ll be golden. 

Start by first improving your security methods

In general, you should always look at ramping up the security measures in your business. You can use one of the top types of risk assessment matrix to understand your business's threats and how to resolve them. Then, since you already have that information, you can use it to create better newsletters and emails. 

Make sure the personalization feature works

One of the biggest red flags for an SEG is a generic greeting. Adding Dear Sir/Madam at the start isn’t going to fly in today’s world. Even if your email gets through, it’s unlikely the recipient will open it. 

That’s why you need personalization. Linking your email marketing tools to your customer relationship management system means you can offer easy personalization, like addressing your customers by name, or even offering personalized recommendations based on their order history. 

Avoid image-only emails 

Image-only emails are tempting for an email marketer. They’re striking, they look good, and you can fine-tune what they look like in Photoshop or another image editor. 

They can also be a red flag for SEGs.

Thankfully, the solution is simple: enrich your emails. The best part about this approach is that it also improves the accessibility. Improving email accessibility will help ensure that all your customers can engage with your emails on their terms. Those emails will also load faster, look great on all devices, and be more engaging. 

Align your emails with the landing pages 

SEGs look out for suspicious links. A link might be suspicious if there’s a misspelling or if the link doesn’t sound like the content in the email. So, how do you ensure that SEGs don’t see any of your links as suspicious? 

You make them predictable. 

An easy way to do this is to create a landing page from an email. On top of aligning the landing page with the content of the newsletter, you’ll want to: 

  • Make a custom URL for every link that matches the content of the page 
  • Ensure there’s no misspelling
  • Don’t use urgent language around your link

Use 2FA to boost security

Do you need 2FA to get past SEGs? No, but it’s a great way to help protect you and your customers. 

You can protect sensitive data by adding user identity verification. For example, a customer may get an order confirmation email but wants to cancel or change the delivery details. Including a two-factor authentication step ensures only the customer can request changes. 

Building in extra security features puts your customers at ease. It also protects your endpoints and, in turn, your business. So, no, you don’t need 2FA to get past SEGs, but it’s worth looking into for you and your customers’ protection. 

Avoid urgency 

Urgency can be a flag for SEGs. So: 

  • DON’T WRITE IN ALL CAPS
  • Minimize the use of exclamation points

Think of the copy in your newsletter as a chance to win over your audience, not scare them into clicking the link. Doing this will improve your relationship with your customers since they’ve come to you on their terms. It’s also essential to get emails past the SEG.

Key takeaways 

Secure email gateways are a primary defense against spam and phishing attacks, but they can pose a problem for email marketers. By working to understand the security risks associated with email scams, you can then understand what your email needs to make it into inboxes. 

From there, you’ll want to make your emails more personable, accessible, and secure. Once you’ve found that sweet spot, your newsletters will be more likely to get past the secure email gateway and into your audience’s inboxes. 

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