10 Reasons to Improve Internal Email Design and Templates

Internal emails with little to no design are easy to ignore—they are boring blocks of text that can easily get lost in the clutter of an employee’s inbox. This can be a massive problem in the workplace because some messages are too crucial to be left unread.

The key to making those emails unignorable is to improve the internal email design. Email design plays a more significant role in internal communication emails than you may think, and these communications are essential for your company.

In this article, we’ll explore:

• Why is internal email design important?
• The benefits of improving internal email design
• 10 reasons to invest in internal email design and templates
• How to improve your internal email design using ContactMonkey

Why Is Internal Email Design Important?

Internal email design is important because it increases the amount of recipients that will see and engage with your email. In today’s fast-paced work environment, employees are inundated with information, making it too easy for essential communications to get lost. Simply, a plain ol’ text email isn’t going to cut it. Internal email design is important because it:

• Captures attention: With an eye-catching design, you can grab your employees’ attention and increase their chances of reading your email.
• Sets the tone: A well-designed email looks professional and conveys a sense of importance and urgency. This can motivate employees to take action promptly.
• Improves readability: An organized layout, well-placed images, and appropriate font size can make your email easier to read and set up for interaction with pulse surveys, CTAs, event invites, and more.

The Benefits of Improving Internal Email Design

By now, you understand the importance of internal email design. But what are the actual benefits of investing time and effort into it? Let’s take a look:

• Increased engagement: A visually appealing email is more likely to be read, understood, and acted upon by employees.
• Improved communication: With a well-designed email, you can effectively convey your message and ensure it is received in the intended tone and manner.
• Stronger company culture: An engaging email design can make employees feel more connected to their workplace—creating a positive company culture.
• Better branding: Internal emails are an opportunity to showcase your brand and create a consistent brand image among employees.

10 Reasons to Invest in Internal Email Design and Templates

Email design tools like ContactMonkey improve internal email design by offering customizable templates that are visually appealing and easy to use. Great internal email design aside, here are ten reasons why your team should invest in internal email software to spiff up your comms:

1. Improve your readability for better engagement

Moving away from old-school, text-heavy emails to more attractive and functional designs isn’t just about making things look better. The best internal email design helps you clarify the intent of your email and spotlight vital information for employees. Internal email design templates ensure information stands out instead of getting lost in lengthy paragraphs.

For example, with ContactMonkey’s internal email template builder, you can easily highlight important information using call-to-action buttons or eye-catching images. Use an image or icon to draw attention to make your employees more likely to read and understand the message.

2. Develop a powerful brand identity to stand out in employee inboxes

Great internal email design goes beyond just looking nice; it plays a crucial role in shaping a robust and positive image of your company’s internal brand. When your emails reflect your company’s brand with consistent logos, colors, and fonts, it helps strengthen your brand identity among your team. It makes every team member feel like they’re part of something meaningful.

This consistent effort enhances internal brand recognition and transforms employees into brand ambassadors. Their experience with the company’s internal communications shapes how they talk about the brand outside—making them a part of your effective employer branding strategy.

Using ContactMonkey, you can easily set your company’s brand and style guidelines as default settings. Set up custom fonts, colours, paragraph and heading styles, and more.

3. Boost audience engagement with embedded visuals

Having more elements to interact with on the page gives your employees more opportunities to engage with content. For example, you can boost email engagement with an explainer video on a new policy or a GIF celebrating team achievements.

Visual elements can make your email memorable and foster deeper connections between team members. It is one of the most important internal email best practices to get right. ContactMonkey’s email template builder lets you access GIFs to embed in your emails without leaving the platform.

4. Elevate your communications with compelling videos

Embedding internal company videos within emails increases message creativity and provides a dynamic way to share information. Video is an effective medium to grab attention, explain complex topics quickly, and share compelling stories within your team.

Studies have shown that video can improve click-through rates (CTRs) by up to 300%. Whether it’s a quick update from the CEO, a behind-the-scenes look at a project, or a training video, adding this multimedia element can significantly enhance the recipient’s engagement with the content.

With ContactMonkey, seamlessly incorporating videos into your emails is straightforward—ensuring your communications are read and experienced. This approach keeps employees informed and builds a more connected and informed workplace culture.

All you have to do is drag and drop your video into the email template. ContactMonkey enables users to embed thumbnails of any public-facing YouTube or Vimeo video.

5. Create a mobile-friendly experience with responsive internal email design

Ensuring that internal emails are mobile-friendly is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. A responsive email design automatically adjusts content to fit the screens of smartphones and tablets—providing a seamless reading experience regardless of the device used. This adaptability is crucial for higher engagement rates, as employees are more likely to read and interact with messages that are accessible and visually appealing on their preferred devices.

This is when it’s essential to have an email design platform like ContactMonkey, which offers responsive HTML templates that automatically adjust to your recipients’ viewing device.

For instance, imagine you are sending an important announcement to the entire company. With a responsive newsletter template, employees can read and interact with the email on their phones while commuting or on lunch—ensuring that your message reaches them wherever they are.

6. Improve decision-making with advanced analytics, tracking, and data

Internal email software can also open up a whole new world of analytics, tracking, and data collection—things that you could only get by adding tracking pixels to plain text emails. Leveraging analytics will help you measure internal email engagement and optimize future emails.

When you bulk send out employee emails with visual or HTML elements, you can see how many people opened them, clicked on something, or even how long they spent reading.

This info is crucial for understanding how well your internal communications are working. It lets you tweak your messages, designs, and content to connect with your team based on actual engagement data. Internal email tracking makes gathering this type of data possible. Learn why internal email analytics is important to taking the next step towards improving internal comms performance.

Employee engagement data is invaluable to the internal comms team as they gain leadership buy-in and investment. With analytics, data-driven decision-making is more accessible, and you can see whether or not messages are furthering employee engagement and other strategic organizational goals.

In addition to gathering the quantitative email metrics, you can also gather qualitative metrics from ContactMonkey’s campaign dashboard. Using the click map reports, you can see which of your emails are grabbing your employees’ attention:

Further reading: Understand the key differences of ContactMonkey vs Mailchimp and why it is so important to use an internal comms tool. Also, check out our helpful guide to improving internal email engagement.

7. Highlight employee behaviour for better management decisions

The best indicator of what types of communication will work with your team is how they interact with your emails. And while it’s crucial to keep up with internal email design trends, listening to your team will give you the best insight.

Employee feedback offers a closer look at what catches their attention, such as the type of content they prefer or when they want to receive emails. Employee feedback can also help you time your messages so you know your employees will be likely to read them.

Management can ensure that the most critical messages are being received. By understanding employee behaviour, you can choose the best time to send your emails ultimately increasing engagement and participation. This approach allows teams to personalize communication efforts, showing employees they are valued as individuals within the organization.

8. Strengthen email campaign success with A/B testing and optimization

The ability to test and fine-tune email campaigns offers a considerable advantage. Using A/B testing, you can send two versions of an email to different groups to see which one resonates more—helping you land on the best internal email design.

This could mean incorporating email subject line best practices, rewriting the content, changing the design, or editing the calls to action. Analyze the results to help your team continually enhance internal communications—ensuring that each email you send is better than the last and boosting engagement and employee satisfaction.

For example, a company struggling with low participation in employee events can use A/B testing to see which email design is more effective in driving attendance. This allows for continuous improvement and optimization of internal communication campaigns—resulting in a more engaged and connected workforce.

9. Increase team productivity through better communication and collaboration

Great internal email design can help improve how your team talks and works together. The McKinsey Global Institute highlights that productivity can increase by 20% to 25% in companies with connected employees.

When messages are clear and visually appealing, they hit closer to home—encouraging everyone to join the conversation and throw in their ideas. It’s all about creating a space where communication flows freely. This approach boosts teamwork, sparks innovation, and ramps up productivity.

Visually appealing emails are especially important for internal communicators, who must ensure information is effectively disseminated to all employees. Using designed emails, they can create visually appealing and engaging messages that promote collaboration and open communication within the organization. Improved communication improves understanding of company goals, processes, and expectations, leading to a more productive workforce.

10. Foster connection and alignment across the company

Let’s face it: plain text emails can feel bland and impersonal. And that can lead to a terrible experience for your workforce. When you improve internal email design, you can improve your employee experience by strengthening your team’s connection with your company and its values and projects.

Use a consistent email design and branding to foster alignment with the company’s overall image—making it easier for employees to feel like they are part of something bigger. This sense of connection and alignment can improve employee satisfaction, retention, and overall success for the organization.

For example, let’s say your company is launching a new brand identity. By incorporating this design into internal emails, you can engage employees in the rollout process—making them feel like they are an integral part of the company’s success and evolution. This can also lead to a sense of pride and ownership among employees—further strengthening their connection with the organization.

Improve Your Internal Email Design with ContactMonkey

ContactMonkey offers a comprehensive solution for creating visually appealing and impactful internal emails. With a wide range of customizable templates, drag-and-drop design features, and robust analytics, ContactMonkey can elevate your internal communications game and truly connect with your team.

Whether you aim to improve the visibility of critical messages, foster a vibrant company culture, or drive company engagement, ContactMonkey has the tools you need to strike gold.

Ready to try out these 10 ways to improve internal email design? Book a free demo of ContactMonkey to take your internal communications to the next level!