Newsletters are crucial for Internal Communications departments as they provide a centralized platform for conveying important company information and updates to employees. This helps to keep employees informed, engaged, and aligned with company goals and objectives. Newsletters can also be used to promote company culture, celebrate employee achievements, and encourage collaboration and teamwork. With regular and consistent delivery, newsletters establish trust and transparency between management and employees, creating a positive and productive workplace culture. In addition, newsletters can also be used to gather feedback and gauge employee satisfaction, making them an effective tool for communication and relationship-building.
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Newsletter in SharePoint Online
In SharePoint Online, the feature known as News Digest serves as a newsletter. Contributors have the option to create and send a summary of news posts manually, or to have them automatically sent to site visitors. The manual process allows for the selection of specific posts to be included in the digest, while the automatic process selects and sends the most relevant news to each employee based on available information. This saves time for the contributors as the site takes care of selecting and sending the news, ensuring each employee receives the latest and most pertinent information.
Manual process
The manual process entails selecting the latest and most relevant news content, organizing it in a visually appealing format, and then distributing it to the intended audience. This feature provides contributors with the versatility to determine what news to share and when enabling them to communicate crucial information in a prompt manner and maintain their audience's engagement.
Automatic process
SharePoint Online offers an auto-news digest feature that sends automated emails with the latest relevant news posts to users who may have missed them. The news digest includes only authoritative news posts published on organization news sites and news posts that have been boosted by the organization. Additionally, only the news posts that the user has access to will be included, so users won't receive news posts that they don't have permission to see. Each news digest includes no more than 10 news posts and is limited to one email digest per week. If there are no news items relevant to the user, no news digest will be sent. If your organization has branded theme colors and a logo, these will automatically be displayed in the news digest.
Other channels (Yammer, Teams, Power Automate)
Microsoft Teams offers a convenient way to share news posts created in SharePoint Online with the relevant audience. Users can share news posts in channel chats or by using Teams tabs to configure specific news posts, pages, and libraries. Teams provide a centralized platform for employees to access the latest news and updates from their organization, making it easier for employees to stay informed and up-to-date.
Yammer is another tool that can be used to share news posts in an efficient manner. It allows you to reach groups of people quickly and easily by posting information directly to their feeds. Furthermore, Yammer is integrated into SharePoint Online, which means that you can post news items to Yammer directly from SharePoint without the need for extra steps. This integration allows you to keep all your information in one place and share it with relevant stakeholders.
Power Automate is a tool in Microsoft 365 that allows users to create and run automated workflows. With Power Automate, contributors can easily send news posts to the right audience by defining custom workflows that take into account the metadata of the news post. This helps ensure that information is spread effectively and reaches the intended recipients. Power Automate streamlines the process of sharing news and makes it more efficient, freeing up time for contributors to focus on other tasks.
Creating custom newsletters with Microsoft 365 and Mailchimp
If the SharePoint News Digest functionality does not meet your needs, it's easy to create integrated solutions with third-party platforms like Mailchimp. Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that enables businesses to send newsletters and automated email campaigns. It offers features such as custom template creation, subscriber and email list management, email campaign design and automation, and performance tracking through detailed analytics.
With the Mailchimp Connector in Power Automate, SharePoint Online and Mailchimp work seamlessly together. This integration allows contributors to create and manage content in SharePoint and use Mailchimp to send newsletters to engage employees. The connector provides various methods for creating and sending campaigns, making the most of SharePoint's content management capabilities and Mailchimp's email marketing strengths.
Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/es-es/connectors/mailchimp/
Summary
SharePoint Online has a feature called News Digest, which allows contributors to create and send a summarized version of news posts to site visitors and subscribers. The process can be done manually or automatically, based on the information available. The manual process involves selecting the most relevant and up-to-date news content and publishing it to the target audience. The automatic process sends the most relevant news to each employee.
For businesses looking for more advanced email marketing capabilities, Mailchimp is a popular platform that can be integrated with SharePoint Online through Power Automate. The integration combines the content management capabilities of SharePoint Online with the email marketing capabilities of Mailchimp.
OpenAI's GPT-3 was used to help write this article by providing the author with ideas and suggestions for content
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