Beefree blog

The Go-To Guide for Human Resources Newsletters

Mariya Postelynak
Mariya Postelynak
Oct 15, 2021
The Go-To Guide for Human Resources Newsletters
The Go-To Guide for Human Resources Newsletters

Your human resources newsletters have a pretty big job to tackle. They're responsible for delivering up-to-date company news and industry insights, announcing new hires and keeping employees engaged. All while staying short, sweet and to-the-point. That’s a tall order.Luckily, there are some pretty incredible internal communications tools to help you out.In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about creating engaging human resource newsletters as well as the tools to help you do it. By the end, you’ll have a handful of new ideas and best practices to swear by.Let’s get to it.

What Is a Human Resources Newsletter?

Your human resources newsletter is a place to connect employees with the latest company news and internal updates. At the same time, it’s responsible for keeping employees connected and engaged. It should spotlight opportunities for staff to get involved within the company and build trust with colleagues—social committees, volunteer events, and everything in between.Your newsletter must also convey your company values and internal brand voice. This is done through your choice of words—conversational vs. formal—the images and graphics you use—memes vs. stock photos—as well as the information you include and exclude.

Human Resources Newsletters Best Practices

Internal newsletters from your HR team play a huge role in connecting employees across your company. They are even more prevalent now in our post-pandemic world.If your IT and Marketing teams have felt worlds apart beforehand, the pandemic introduced a whole new layer of physical distance. And it’s the job of your human resources newsletters to bridge this gap. To get your staff truly reading your newsletter, you’ll need to follow these best practices:

1. Ensure that your newsletter is easy to read

To get employees reading and connecting them to key company updates, you need to keep things clear and concise. Ditch the corporate jargon and keep sentences short—20 words or less is a good range.And don’t just make your newsletter a laundry list of new company protocols and policies. Add warmth and humor with personal anecdotes or jokes. All it takes is a quick google search of ‘funny’ or ‘heartwarming news stories of the day’ and you’ll have a selection of content to use as inspiration.

2. Use visuals

While it’s essential to get a lot of your information out in writing, some can be replaced with videos or even images. This includes how-to-guides, or announcements from your CEO. With a responsive HTML email template from BEE Pro, you can easily embed videos, GIFs and branded graphics into your human resources newsletters.If you’re a ContactMonkey customer, you can also leveragedesign service for Outlook. Their internal communications software enables businesses to create, send and track employee newsletters right from Outlook or Gmail. By streamlining employee communications, they empower internal communicators to continuously improve employee engagement.

3. Avoid information overload

You want to deliver the most up-to-date information to your employees without overwhelming them. The best way to find a balance between too many and too few emails is by checking your email analytics.See exactly when your employees are engaging with your HR newsletter the most and learn from the data.For example, if you send communications twice a week and employees mostly open them every Monday, it may be best to send your newsletter weekly. You’ll also learn the exact time when your employees are most likely to open your email and can schedule your send accordingly.

 4. Include interactive elements

Reading often becomes boring when it’s too passive. You can make your internal company newsletter more engaging by asking questions and gathering employee feedback.Embed employee pulse surveysright into your human resources newsletters. These quick, simple surveys centre around a single focused question, which employees can answer using emojis, thumbs up/down and even anonymous comments.

The Top 12 Human Resources Newsletter Ideas 

Even if you have years of experience in internal communications, it’s normal to feel like you’re fresh out of ideas sometimes.Below, we’ll break down 12 human resources newsletter ideas—the essentials and a few fun extras—as well as the tools to bring them to life.

1. Company updates and new products

This content should make up the core of your human resources newsletters. It could be a product launch, new influencer campaign or a bug fix on one of your customer interfaces. Big or small—it’s important that employees are fully in the loop so they can deliver the latest information to customers.Since this is the focus of your newsletter, you’ll want to keep this information at the top—so that it’s easily accessible for employees. But try to leave a surprise announcement, or exciting piece of news till the end of the newsletter so employees are incentivized to keep scrolling.Pro tip:List some of the update topics in your newsletter headline so employees interested in those insights are more likely to open.

2. Project updates from across your company

These are department-specific insights that will attract readers who are working on a project— such as a new marketing campaign or IT software—or whoever is directly impacted by it. This type of update also gives employees in other departments an in-depth look at what their colleagues are doing and prevents everyone working in silos.To roll out this update you’ll need to first send a request to different departments and have them email you any project updates and details. Remove any terminology that may not be accessible to others at your company and summarize the updates into key points.

3. New hire announcements

While it’s always been a challenge to be the new person in the office, the introduction of remote and hybrid work have made things even trickier. It’s challenging to build meaningful relationships without ever meeting your colleagues in person.New hire announcements play a huge role in connecting new employees with the rest of the team. In your new hire announcement, include the essentials like:

  • Name 
  • Job title
  • Personal hobby
  • Experience level
Human Resources newsletters

But also go beyond the basics and make the intro fun and conversational. With employee pulse surveys, your human resource professionals can embed the two truths and a lie in individual survey boxes and have readers respond with thumbs up for truth and thumbs down for lie.

4. Change management communications

When your company is going through change, it can be a time of uncertainty and confusion for employees. To keep your teams aligned and informed, your human resource newsletter is essential for sharing regular updates in the form of change management communications.It’s also important to ask for employee feedback during the change process and gauge concerns before they turn into full-blown problems. By embedding employee pulse surveys into your newsletter, you’ll be able to check in with your employees without overwhelming them with lengthy surveys during an already stressful time.

5. Revenue updates

Your revenue and its ups and downs, should be made transparent to employees. Although this update shouldn’t take up a huge chunk of your newsletter real estate, it does deserve some legroom.A good way to talk about revenue while avoiding information overload, is to leave it for your end-of-the-month human resources newsletter. Use short, simple bullets, to summarize how your company’s revenue is doing in comparison to the last quarter and add some infographics for detail.With a responsive internal newsletter template you can easily embed images, graphs and infographics to make your revenue update accessible for everyone—not just your finance department.

6. Company achievements

Don’t just let your newsletter become a space to break down the numbers and dish out targets. Celebrate your company achievements. Did your company surpass a quarterly sales target? Is a member of your team speaking at a major conference?It’s important to share your company accomplishments with your whole team. Learning about company successes helps build a sense of pride in the company. It also boosts employee morale and engagement by uniting employees in celebrating common goals.Your company achievement feature can include:

  • Employee promotions: “Congrats to Anne for stepping into the role of Product Manager!”
  • Associate of the month feature: “Check out our top performers for the month of August.”
  • New product or feature announcements: “Have you taken advantage of the cool new features of our latest sales software?”

7. Policy changes

Are you implementing a new hybrid workplace? Is your company rolling out a new corporate social responsibility initiative? Inform your staff about company policy changes in your human resources newsletters.Make this information easily accessible and engaging—that means no copy-pasting lengthy policy documents from your legal department. Instead, summarize key points and provide a link to the full policy document or a video discussing it. Replace bulky attachments by embedding smart links right into your employee emails.

8. Event announcements

Sending out event invites and registrations separately from your human resource newsletter only risks that both get lost in your employees’ inbox. Instead, send everything together and drive a bigger audience for each.Have a designated feature called ‘events.’ In it, provide a bullet list of each event that’s coming up along with a registration button. With ContactMonkey’s event management feature, employees can register for events directly from your newsletter. That way, your HR team can easily keep track of registrations—straight from your analytics dashboard.

9. Industry news

Sharing industry news is a great way to give employees inspiration and creative ideas to use in their own work. Or, provide insights on what not to do.In your next human resources newsletters, include a feature called ‘In other news’ or ‘Around the world.’ Use it to spotlight success stories from other industry leaders, innovative ideas, or cautionary tales.

10. Your external blog posts

If your own employees aren’t reading and sharing your company content—why should your customers? Your blog content contains great material to include in your human resource newsletter and get employees reading and sharing.Remember: your employees are your brand ambassadors. Even if they’re already familiar with the content, they may have forgotten to share it on their social media or might be reminded of someone who’s interested in the topic covered. In sum, reposting your blogs to your employee newsletter is a must.

11. Info From Your Leadership Team

Your company leaders set the tone, style, and habits that shape your company culture. So it’s important that employees hear directly from your senior leadership team at least once a month.Your human resource newsletter is a great place for executives to pen a few words to the whole team. Create a feature in your company newsletter called “In their own words” and launch it at the end of each month. Ask your CEO to provide a monthly address on a topic of choice, or provide an overview of the month to come. This is a great way to get employees opening and reading to stay in touch with leadership updates.

12. Client Success Stories

How is your company helping its clients? What challenges are your customers still frequently facing? Not everyone in your company will have a chance to interact with customers on the daily. And yet, everyone’s work ultimately goes into improving the client experience.Use your newsletter to let everyone see where their efforts are going and hear from clients directly. Creating a ‘Client Testimonies’ or ‘Customer Success Stories’ feature is a simple way to boost team morale and show everyone how their work is making an impact.

Key Takeaways

Designing an engaging employee newsletter is no small feat. So trial and error should be expected. That being said, there are many ways to keep improving your newsletter and expanding your readership. The key is to gather continuous employee insights and learn from what worked and what didn’t. With a great email tool like BEE Pro and internal communications platform like ContactMonkey, you can make the job much easier.

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Now, let's be honest—you’ve likely heard about all of these rotating for the last few years. While email marketing has come a long way and is changing faster than ever, there’s only so much you can do within 600x1,500 pixels. However, there are no limits to where your creativity can take you. 

Let’s get into it.  

#1. Unique, tailored experiences 

Damian Grabarczyk, the co-founder and growth marketer of PetLab Co., says, “We faced the challenge of connecting meaningfully with an audience that expects more than one-size-fits-all communication.” 

When we speak about crafting tailored emails we mean going beyond the recipient's first name in the subject line. We’re talking about optimizing your entire email strategy to design multi-stage touchpoints to nurture leads across the customer lifecycle. As well as, leveraging data to send hyper-personalized, relevant, and engaging emails that feel less like a broadcast message and more like a conversation. 

Many are using AI machine learning algorithms and AI automation to analyze customer interactions, past purchases, browsing habits, website visits, and even social media behavior to curate engaging email content that resonates deeply with the real-time needs of recipients.

For PetLab Co this looked like including content such as an individual’s pet health history or product usage timelines. Damian Grabarzyk expands, “This approach transformed the conversion rate and strengthened customer loyalty. As we look ahead, I see brands in 2025 moving beyond generic personalization to adopt strategies that make customers feel truly understood and valued.”

On the other hand, many are leaning into user-generated content (UGC) for crafting tailored experiences. Customers today are more likely to trust the opinions of peers over branded messages. UGC like customer reviews, testimonials, videos, and photos are the best form of social proof depicting real people using and benefitting from your products or services. 

We see the benefits of using both AI and UGC to get the most out of your email conversions ;). 

#2. AI tools as an addition, not a substitution

Experts at NordPass state, "AI-powered content generation tools are not here to replace email copywriters and marketers. These tools make us more efficient. The smarter the tool is, the better equipped we are to create high-performing email content that drives results." 

AI tools can support us by significantly enhancing the speed, precision, and effectiveness of your emails. For instance while traditionally A/B testing has required a lot of time to analyze small variations with AI you quickly implement and test multiple email elements and make adjustments based on real-time engagement data. There are AI algorithms that can even predict which variations are most likely to resonate with different audience segments, leading to more accurate targeting and faster optimization.

In short, AI tools are revolutionizing the way we craft and optimize our email’s deliverability. There are many different types of AI solutions so we suggest finding the right one for your needs. 

#3. Even more transparency around data

With AI continuing to rise, folks are more and more concerned about where their data is going. That’s where zero-party data collection becomes a key strategy in email marketing, allowing you to gather data directly from customers rather than relying on third-party sources. 

Zero-party data includes information that consumers willingly share, such as preferences, interests, and purchase intentions. This data is often collected through surveys, preference centers, quizzes, or interactive content and is highly valuable because it is shared explicitly, ensuring accuracy and deeper personalization without privacy concerns associated with third-party tracking.

As privacy regulations tighten, zero-party data will empower you to deliver hyper-personalized email experiences while respecting user privacy. This approach will help you build trust, as customers feel more in control of their data, and you gain insights that lead to more relevant and engaging email content.

#4. The death of static emails

With attention span getting shorter day after day, digest-format emails are expected to rise in popularity in 2025. Presenting email content in an easy-to-scan, organized, and minimalistic layout will surely help deliver the most relevant information in a fraction of the time. 

Additionally, interactive emails will allow recipients to directly engage within the email without having to visit a landing page or website. Interactive elements like product carousels, polls, and quizzes create a dynamic experience that keeps subscribers engaged, especially in visually driven industries like fashion brands

So what now? 

You’ve heard these strategies before, but now it’s time to actually put them into action. The brands that win at email marketing in 2025 won’t just be sending emails—they’ll be creating experiences. Whether it’s hyper-personalized content, AI-driven efficiency, zero-party data collection, or interactive emails that break the mold, the key is to stay ahead of the curve.

So, what’s the first strategy you’ll finally implement? Your inbox (and your audience) are waiting.

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Email makes gathering authentic product reviews quick and easy. By collecting sincere feedback, you can build trust, increase sales, boost loyalty, and innovate product improvements. 

That said, requesting reviews via email requires precise timing, personalized messaging, and lots of engagement optimizations. But don’t worry—we’ll walk you through some key steps to create email campaigns that deliver the valuable feedback you need.

Why product reviews matter

Product reviews do more than confirm that you're meeting customers’ needs. Sincere feedback drives loyalty and sales, offers valuable customer insights, and helps you develop a strategic product development roadmap.

  • Fosters customer loyalty: Requesting and listening to feedback makes your customers feel valued and heard. It demonstrates that you prioritize customer satisfaction, which helps you build stronger, long-term relationships. Review requests also act as re-engagement emails by starting new conversations with customers.
  • Increases sales: Social proof drives sales. According to a recent survey by Power Reviews, 90% of potential customers use online reviews to make purchasing decisions. In fact, reviews have more influence over purchasing decisions than product prices. Turning product reviews into customer testimonials and encouraging reviews on third-party sites can significantly boost sales.
Image sourced from powerreviews.com
  • Builds Customer 360 insights: Customer feedback delivers insights into customer needs and sentiments, enriching Customer 360. Exactly what is Customer 360? It’s a unified, 360-degree view of customer data. It empowers you to tailor products and customer experiences to meet individual needs and preferences. 
  • Drives product improvements: Sincere customer feedback reveals what target customers like/dislike about your products. It provides key insight into their value, functionality, and usability, unlocking large-scale development opportunities.

How to create an email campaign to collect product reviews

Want to unlock the power of product reviews? Let’s explore how to create email campaigns that encourage customers to share their feedback.

Segment your audience

Like promotional emails, product review requests shouldn’t be sent to every subscriber.

If subscribers haven’t had the chance to try your product, product review requests will feel irrelevant and may trigger unsubscriptions. So, only send review email requests to customers recently trying your product.

You can do this by segmenting your email list based on where customers are in the buying cycle. Target loyal customers, recent purchasers, and first-time buyers with tailored email campaigns. This ensures that you’re sending emails to customers most likely to respond with insightful feedback.

Write a compelling email subject line

According to Superoffice, 33% of people open an email based on the subject line. 

Image sourced from superoffice.com

To get the click-through rates you want, your email subject lines should be personalized, relevant, and engaging. Here are some examples:

  • Did you love [product]? Or hate it? Let us know!
  • We value your opinion — help us improve!
  • We want YOU to help us make our product better!
  • Up for a discount? Share your feedback for 10% off! 

Learn more > Tips for writing open worthy subject lines.

Optimize for customer engagement

A successful email marketing strategy relies on customer engagement. Here are some key email elements you need to encourage interactions.

  • An attractive email design: With the right layout, color scheme, typography, and images, you ensure easy readability and promote interaction. Use these engagement-boosting email design best practices to help you create a design that boosts conversion rates.
  • Gratitude and value: Thank customers for reading the email and explaining why their feedback is so important. Also, consider including a personalized Gmail email signature with your content details to build trust and encourage customers to engage with your review request. 
  • Personalized, relevant content: Personalized email content motivates engagement. Use customer data platform (CDP) data to tailor messages to individual customers. What is a CDP? It’s a centralized platform that collects and unifies customer information, building comprehensive customer profiles. 
  • Incentives: Offering a small discount can motivate customers to leave reviews, especially first-time buyers. That said, incentives can (sometimes) generate insincere reviews, so stress the importance of honesty. 
  • A strong call-to-action (CTA): Your CTA should direct readers straight to the reviews submission page. Use clear CTAs with bold buttons and typography to make it stand out.
  • Mobile responsiveness: If your emails are slow to load or don’t display correctly on mobile devices, your bounce rate will spike. Leverage solutions that offer advanced mobile optimization features — such as Beefree— to create responsive emails every single time.

Ask specific, concise questions

Complex, drawn-out questions that are too open-ended can disengage customers. So, get straight to the point with concise, direct questions. Here are some examples:

  • What did you think of [specific product feature]?
  • How often do you use our product?
  • What are your favorite/least favorite features?
  • How likely are you to recommend this product?
  • What could we do to improve our product?

Use a mixture of closed and open-ended questions to increase your chances of receiving meaningful responses.

Make it easy to respond

The easier it is for customers to leave a review, the more responses you’ll receive. So, make the process as seamless and convenient as possible. One way to do this is with survey emails.

Email surveys have high response rates. They can be completed within the email with minimal effort, which is a big plus for busy customers. And, they can generate a wealth of quantitative data and metrics that are quick to analyze, leading to faster improvements. BeeFree has an extensive collection of email survey templates to suit every need.

For longer review requests, include a CTA that directly links to the review submission page. Review forms should use simple, clear language, be optimized for mobile, and have a progress bar. 

You could even provide your telephone contact details to allow customers to leave a review via telephone. It’s the preferred communication method for 55% of Baby Boomers according to Hubspot, so it’s worth considering. 

Leverage small business telephone services from Vonage to access call center capabilities like virtual receptionists and CRM integrations, streamlining processes.

Also consider directing customers to leave reviews on popular review sites, such as Google and Amazon.

Optimize email timings

If you send product review requests too early, there’s a chance your customers won’t have tried your product yet. But if you send them too late, your customer might have forgotten their experience. 

So, when’s the best time to request reviews? 

Aim to send review requests within 7-14 days post-purchase. This gives customers a chance to try the product a few times, leading to more sincere, meaningful reviews. Plan for seasonal surges such as Black Friday and incorporate them into your schedules.

Key takeaways

Do email campaigns work for gathering valuable product reviews that drive improvements, boost trust, and increase sales and loyalty? 

Absolutely — but they need to be strategic.

To generate sincere reviews and valuable data, ensure your marketing emails are personalized, engaging, and optimized for convenience. And, use email list segmentation and marketing automation to ensure they’re sent to the right customers at the right time.

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