Internal Newsletter: What to Include and How to Run One

An internal newsletter is a regular email to everyone who works for your organisation. Staff read it when it tells them what has changed in their job and what to do next. When it reads like a notice board or a letter from the managing director, they stop opening it.

Our example is a made-up flooring company in Gloucester with 70 staff. Fifteen work in the office and showroom. The other 55 are fitters and warehouse staff, who read email on a phone, if at all.

What an internal newsletter is for

Whether you call it a staff newsletter, an employee newsletter or a company newsletter, it has one job: it saves staff from having to ask. Each issue answers four questions: what changed, what was decided, who is doing what, and what is coming up.

Unlike a customer newsletter, nobody signs up for it. Everyone on the payroll gets it, so each item has to be about their work, not about how the company sees itself.

The difference shows in a single item. Here is the same news written two ways for the Gloucester company.

Notice-board version	Version staff can act on
"We are delighted to launch our new job management app."	"From Monday 2 November, fitters log job photos in the new app. Paper sign-off sheets stop on Friday 13 November."
"Please help us keep the yard tidy."	"From Monday, offcuts go in the new skip by gate 2. The old offcut bay becomes van parking."

The left column tells staff that something happened. The right column tells each person what changes for them, and from when.

Internal newsletter ideas: sections for every issue

Give every issue the same sections in the same order, so staff know where to look. In a week when a section has nothing, drop it rather than filling it.

Section	What it answers	In the Gloucester issue	Who supplies it
What changed	What is different, for whom, from when	Job photos move to the app on 2 November	The manager who made the change
What you need to do	Actions with a deadline	Book Christmas leave by Friday 20 November	HR (human resources) or the office manager
Who's who	New starters, new roles, who to ask	A new warehouse supervisor starts, and returns now go to her	Team leaders
How we did	One figure staff can move, and why it moved	Call-backs fell from 19 to 11, mostly because carpet and vinyl now arrive cut to room size	Operations
Coming up	Training, visits, closures	Asbestos awareness refresher on Wednesday 18 November	HR
Thanks	Named thanks for a specific piece of work	The Stroud install team finished two days early	Anyone, through the editor
One question	Something staff answer by replying	"Which van stock item runs out first?"	The editor

Seven sections is a ceiling, not a target. For 20 staff, the first two rows plus Coming up often do the job.

What to leave out

Three kinds of item stay out:

• Anything staff must read and confirm, such as a new policy. It needs a channel staff cannot leave, like the HR system or their line manager; the newsletter can point to it.
• News a person should hear face to face first, such as a restructure or a change to their pay.
• Sales emails written for customers. Forward one and staff learn that the newsletter is meant for someone else.

How often to send an internal newsletter

Send it as often as things change for staff, on the same day and at the same time. Three rhythms fit organisations of 20 to 250 people:

• Weekly, when rotas, sites or jobs change from week to week, as in care, construction and warehousing.
• Fortnightly, for a mixed business like the Gloucester company, where installs change weekly and policies monthly.
• Monthly, for an office of 20 to 50 people where most news already travels by conversation.

Choose the send time by when staff start work, not when the writer finishes. The Gloucester company sends at 7:00 on alternate Mondays, before the vans leave the yard.

A fitter should be able to read the whole issue on a phone before the van leaves the yard. If yours runs longer, move the detail behind a link or split it across two issues.

Who writes and approves it

One person owns the internal newsletter. They collect the items, write them in one voice, sign the issue with their own name and send it. In a smaller business, that is usually the office manager, someone in HR or the founder.

A two-day cycle keeps it on time:

1. Contributors send facts, not finished text, by a fixed deadline, such as Thursday at noon.
2. The editor writes every item and sends a test copy to the approver on Friday morning.
3. The approver, usually a director, checks facts, dates and names, not style.
4. If an item touches pay, contracts or policy, HR checks that item only.
5. The editor schedules the issue for Monday at 7:00.

Keep it to one approver. Each extra reviewer adds a caveat, and the issue starts to read like a policy document.

A team newsletter for a single department runs the same way, with the team leader as editor.

How to measure an internal newsletter

Measure what staff did after reading, not how many opened the email. On a staff list, opens are the weakest signal you have.

Apple Mail Privacy Protection is a setting in the Mail app on iPhone and Mac, called Protect Mail Activity. It loads the images and other remote content of each email in the background "regardless of whether you engage with the email" (Apple, December 2025). Each protected copy can register as an open, read or not. Apple's iPhone User Guide adds that the protection does not extend to links, so clicks stay usable.

The size of the gap shows with assumed figures, not data from a real account. All 70 staff get the issue by email, at work or personal addresses. Of those, 40 use Apple Mail with the protection on: every protected copy registers as an open, and 15 of the 40 read it. Of the other 30, 12 read it, and their email registers an open only when they read it.

Figure	Count	Share of 70 staff
Opens in the report (all 40 protected copies, plus 12)	52	74%
Staff who read the issue (15 plus 12)	27	39%

In this example, a 74% open rate hides that 43 of the 70 staff did not read the issue. These signals tell you more:

Signal	What it tells you	How to collect it
Clicks on the lead item	Who acted on the main news	Put the details of each change behind one link
Replies to the one question	Who read to the end	Send replies to the editor's own inbox
Questions that stop coming	Whether the news landed	Count repeat questions to HR in the following week
Unsubscribes	Who found the newsletter was noise	The campaign report

Compare each issue with your own earlier issues, since benchmarks from customer email describe a different audience. Customer email has the same open-rate problem, and our approach to measuring email marketing treats opens as context for that reason.

Staff data in an internal newsletter under UK GDPR

Names, photos, birthdays and job changes in the newsletter are personal data, so UK GDPR applies. The regulator, the Information Commission's Office (ICO), covers staff information in its guidance on collecting and keeping employment records.

That guidance says consent is hard to rely on between employer and staff, because people may feel they cannot refuse. It points instead to other lawful bases, such as legitimate interests, backed by a legitimate interests assessment. Our reading: routine work news sent to work addresses can usually rest on legitimate interests, recorded in that assessment, rather than on a sign-up box.

You still have to tell staff. The ICO lists what workers must be told, including your purposes and who you share their information with. Name the newsletter and the email service that sends it in your staff privacy information.

Optional personal items work differently. Staff lose nothing by keeping their birthday, baby news or party photos out, so ask first and leave out anyone who declines. The ICO's own example of consent that works at work is a voluntary scheme with no penalty for staying out.

Keep health out completely. Health information is special category data, which needs an extra legal condition, so "off after an operation" never goes in the newsletter.

The ICO's employment guidance carries a notice that the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 may change it, and our summary is not legal advice.

How to reach staff who are not at a desk

Staff without a desk need the internal newsletter on a phone, on paper or by word of mouth. Fitters, warehouse teams, carers and shift workers often have no work email account, or check it once a week.

• Write for the phone first. Use a single column, as in mobile-first newsletter design, with the main item on the first screen. Link to pages that open without the company VPN (virtual private network) or an intranet login.
• Use personal addresses only by agreement. Ask for the address for this purpose, and add it to your privacy information.
• Print the issue. Pin a printed copy on the staff room or yard noticeboard. Add a QR code (the square barcode a phone camera reads) that opens the one thing people need, such as the leave form.
• Say it out loud. Team leaders read the "what changed" item at the start-of-shift briefing.

At the Gloucester company, fitters get the issue at personal addresses they chose to give. A printed copy goes on the yard board, and the warehouse supervisor reads the lead item out on Monday morning.

Sending an internal newsletter from MailGraf

MailGraf is an email platform, not an intranet. It sends the issue to your staff list and reports what happened, but it does not host pages or confirm that someone read a message. Four features suit a staff newsletter:

• Rows by site. Import the staff file with columns like Site and Team mapped to custom fields (Import contacts from a file). Set a row's Show to to Contacts matching a condition, for example Site is Warehouse. Only those staff receive that row (Show email content by contact).
• A test copy for the approver. The editor sends the approver a copy with Send test, or sends it to a test list of up to 20 colleagues. Once it is approved, Schedule on the Review step holds the issue until the send time. Leave Quiet hours off for a 7:00 send, because it holds sending until 08:00.
• Clicks without scanner noise. Reports leave out clicks made by automated security scans. In a campaign report, the Technology tab states how many opens came through Apple Mail Privacy Protection.
• Paper copies. A QR code block works on a printed copy too. With Count QR scans on, each scan appears under QR scans in the report (Add a QR code block). Scans of a printed copy count under the person whose email was printed, so read the total scans, not the unique count.

Every MailGraf email ends with a locked footer that carries your company address and an Unsubscribe link, and a campaign cannot go out without it. That includes staff email: a member of staff can unsubscribe, and later issues skip them.

For the Gloucester company, plan costs follow the monthly emails to staff, not the number of departments. The allowances are on the pricing page.