If you run marketing for a company, you've probably been asked at some point what should go in the newsletter, and the honest answer is usually "whatever we published this month." That's how most issues end up as a list of links that nobody has a reason to open. This guide walks you through a newsletter content strategy in seven steps, so that by the end you can design an issue structure, including how to turn your blog posts into email sections, that's a newsletter people want to read, and not one your subscribers skim past. It's about what happens once someone is already on your list, so it doesn't cover getting new subscribers or making money from the newsletter.
The short answer to what to put in a company newsletter is one useful, timely idea for a specific reader, explained well enough in the email that they learn something without clicking. Then you add a small number of clearly labeled supporting items, like an article, an example, or a short update, but only if that reader cares about it. There's no research-backed number of sections or ideal ratio of helpful content to promotion, so treat this as an editorial framework and not a formula. The test is simple. Can a subscriber scanning on a phone tell what the main point is, learn something, and see what to do next?
Step 1: Define the reader and the issue's job
Start by choosing one group of existing subscribers and one recurring reason they'd be glad to see your email. For a marketing lead, that might be deciding what to publish next, getting more out of an article they already have, or understanding a change that affects their content work. Then write one sentence that says what the issue does: "This issue helps [reader] [do or decide something] by [a specific insight]."
To pick the subject of a given issue, use the questions your audience asks you, what got attention in past issues, and what's already on your content calendar. If you have more than one kind of subscriber, it's fine to vary what you send them based on their interests. Tailoring to groups you already have is part of the job, and it's much more useful than pretending every update matters equally to everyone. If you want help getting clear on who those readers are, a piece on audience research for content strategy is a good place to start. Building B2B buyer personas can sharpen that picture further.
You'll know this step is done when an editor can say who the issue is for, what the reader gets, and why it matters right now, without mentioning anything on your internal publishing schedule. Where people go wrong is treating "we published three posts" as the benefit to the reader, or mixing unrelated topics into one email because they all happened to be ready on the same day. Those choices come from your side of the inbox, and readers can tell.
Step 2: Pick a lead idea and leave out the filler
Once you know who the issue is for and you're deciding what to put in a company newsletter, choose the item with the clearest benefit to them and make it the lead. Then run every other candidate through a few plain questions. Is it accurate and current? Does this reader need it? Does it add something different from the lead? Can you state its benefit in one sentence?
Good candidates include a practical tip, a finding you've boiled down, an example from a customer or practitioner (with permission and details you can back up), a development in your industry with an explanation of why it matters, an article that's really useful, or a product change that affects how your reader works. A product update belongs in the issue when it answers the question "what can I do differently now?" and not just because it shipped this week.
It helps to keep a queue of approved material, along with a simple calendar that records the planned send date, the theme, who owns it, the source article, and its status. That way you're choosing from a shelf and not scrambling on the day. If you'd like a calendar you can keep up with, this walkthrough on building an editorial calendar you can keep is worth a look, and it works for small teams too.
This is one of the places where DeepSmith can help you find candidates. Content Map shows you which topics you've covered and helps with finding content gaps, and Opportunity Agents return content ideas with the data point that justifies each one attached, so your queue isn't built on guesses. Content Studio's planning workflow can then keep the articles behind those ideas moving. What DeepSmith doesn't do is decide which topic will make a winning email, run your newsletter calendar, or measure how people engage with an issue. The editor still picks the angle, and that judgment is what makes a newsletter feel like it has a point of view.
You'll know you're done when the lead has a one-sentence takeaway, every supporting item has its own purpose, and taking any one of them out would remove something useful. The usual mistake is filling a fixed number of blocks no matter how good the material is, or making every item about the company. If an item is weak, leave the slot empty. Nobody has ever complained that an issue was a little shorter than the last one because the editor was honest about what was worth sending.
Step 3: Build a reusable skeleton for each issue
A skeleton is a set of blocks you can rearrange, so readers get used to the shape of the email without you needing to fill every block every time. Here's one illustrative version you can adapt:
- A sender name and subject line.
- Preview text that adds to the subject line.
- A short heading and opening for the lead.
- One useful takeaway or a short worked example.
- A clear link to the deeper article, when there is one.
- One or two short, different secondary items.
- An optional company update, only if it's relevant.
- A brief closing.
Put your strongest material first, use descriptive headings, keep paragraphs short, and use images sparingly and with white space around them, so a reader can find their way by scanning. A colleague should be able to glance at the issue and name the main idea and each optional route to more detail without reading every paragraph.
The most common problems here are burying the best idea under a long introduction, stacking cards of equal weight with no obvious lead, and dropping in a promotional block that breaks the promise the issue made. There's no researched rule for a particular word count, exactly three stories, or a set percentage of educational content, so don't let anyone tell you there is.
Here are some newsletter format ideas to choose from when you set up your skeleton. These are proposed templates and not named industry standards, and nothing says one of them will outperform the others.
| Format | Lead block | Supporting blocks that fit | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-idea briefing | A useful answer or recommendation | An example, a caveat, a deeper-reading link | Holding back the whole answer just to get a click |
| Curated reading list | Your explanation of a theme | Short, distinct descriptions of selected articles | A bare list of links with no interpretation |
| Blog-led issue | One article's most useful insight, rewritten for email | A second takeaway or related resource | Copying the article wholesale |
| Practical digest | A clearly prioritized set of relevant developments | A "why it matters" and a next step for each | Treating every development as equally important |
| Product-and-practice issue | A real reader problem and its solution | A product change or demo that applies | Leading with a list of features and not the reader's task |
It's also useful to see newsletter format ideas from other teams. Litmus describes Asana using visually separated blocks and ending with a short "1-minute recap" of product changes, and it describes Bolt's ThinkShop as a source of ecommerce insights and strategies. Its write-up of The Hustle says it combines relevant news headlines with longer treatment of featured subjects. The thing to take from these examples is that each section makes it obvious what kind of value it offers. They don't tell you the best length or promise a result for your audience, so borrow the clarity and not the numbers.
Step 4: Turn blog posts into email sections
For a lot of teams, this is where a newsletter is easiest to get started, and also where it's easiest to get lazy. Repurposing is adaptation. A blog post is built to be found and to go deep, and an email section needs a focused hook, a takeaway someone can use, short paragraphs, and an optional way to read more.
Start by reading the article you've chosen and pulling out one takeaway, surprising finding, decision, or step that matters to this issue's reader. Rewrite the opening for the inbox and don't reuse the introduction you wrote for search. State the takeaway, and give the reader something concrete right there in the email, such as a small example, a decision rule, or a first action. After that, add a descriptive link to the full article for the detail that didn't fit. If you're pulling from several articles, write a separate description for each one so they don't repeat each other, and tie them together with a common theme. Also check that the examples, product claims, and links still match what's on the published page.
Here's an example, made up only to show the change in approach. Say you have an article on how to audit your newsletter content. A weak section says, "Read our new guide to newsletter strategy." A more useful one says, "Before you choose this week's links, write down the one decision your reader should be able to make after opening. If none of the candidate stories helps with that, save them for another issue. The full guide walks through the whole audit." That second version is sample copy, not a reported newsletter or a measured result, but it shows how a section can stand on its own and still lead to the article.
Common mistake: Don't confuse scannable with empty. A useful first takeaway makes skimming productive. If you hold back all the substance until the click, the email turns into an ad for the article and stops being an issue worth reading.
There's more on this in our guide to AI content repurposing workflows, and if you have a lean team, turning one article into a month of content shows how far a single piece can go. If you want to automate the adaptation, here's an agent workflow that repurposes one article into many assets.
DeepSmith fits here too. Apps Library can create a newsletter email version of an article, adapted to that channel's tone and length, and Deep IQ supplies the stored brand and product context so the version sounds like you, as covered in grounding content in your brand voice and product facts. That cuts down the manual adaptation once an article is written. You still decide which insight leads, check that the section is faithful to the article, combine items into an issue, and send it through your own email tool. DeepSmith doesn't send campaigns, tune subject lines from email data, or promise opens.
You'll know this step is done when the section makes sense on its own, represents the article accurately, and gives an interested reader a specific reason to keep going. People tend to slip by pasting a whole post, summarizing every heading, keeping keyword padding that helps search but bores an inbox reader, or sending a summary that was generated for them without checking its claims and voice.
Step 5: Write the subject line, preview text, and opening
The subject line is a promise about the most useful point in the issue, so it needs to be accurate. Use the preview text to add the payoff or some context, and don't just repeat the subject. Litmus recommends putting the important hook in the first 35 to 40 characters of a subject line, because a mobile inbox may show less of it. That's a design recommendation and not a fixed cutoff that applies everywhere.
For the opening itself, start with the answer, an observation, or a question that the issue actually resolves, and write like you're talking to a person and not making an announcement. Here's a pairing to show what we mean, and it's an illustration, not tested copy. The subject is "A better use for your latest blog post" and the preview is "Turn its strongest takeaway into an email readers can use today." The body then has to deliver that adaptation. If it doesn't, the pairing is a misleading promise, and readers remember those.
You'll know it's working when the subject, preview, and first screen all describe the same benefit, and the beginning gives value before it asks for a click. Common slips are an intriguing subject that has nothing to do with the contents, a preview that repeats the subject, and a generic "Our latest updates" for readers who have no reason yet to care. No character count or choice of words can guarantee that someone opens the email, so aim for accuracy first.
Step 6: Make the issue readable on a phone
A newsletter people want to read is one that's comfortable to read where they actually are, which is often a phone. Nielsen Norman Group ran several rounds of newsletter research starting in 2010, including a four-week diary study with 30 people across six countries, followed by an eye-tracking study with 42 people plus a six-person field study, and then a later lab study with 16 people. In that work, participants rated how easy newsletters were to read on mobile at 3.3 on a scale of 1 to 7. That's older usability research, so it doesn't tell you how many people skim today or what your own results will be. It does support designing for real reading and scanning habits. The same research also found that some people will spend time on longer material on mobile, so short isn't automatically better for every issue.
In practice, go for a simple, responsive reading order, often a single column. Use real headings and not just bigger or bolder text. Write short, descriptive link labels, add useful alt text to images that carry information, and make sure the copy still makes sense when images don't load. Give the lead action the most visual weight, and let the secondary links serve different interests without competing for attention. Preview the email in the inboxes your readers use and on a phone, check how it looks in dark mode where that applies, and click every link. An image should explain or clarify something, and not just decorate a crowded issue.
You'll know you're done when someone can understand the issue with images turned off, move through its headings, tap its links, and find the main takeaway on a narrow screen. The usual trouble spots are an image that holds the only important words, headings that are styled but have no structure, dense multicolumn cards, and a row of identical "Learn more" links where nobody can tell where each one goes.
One more nuance is worth keeping in mind. A quick scan should show the answer and the paths onward, but that doesn't rule out a longer, well-organized email when your readers want the full explanation in the inbox. Likewise, giving an issue one clear lead and one main action is good practice, but a curated digest with several labeled links is fine when the items are really different. "Only one call to action ever" is too rigid for a newsletter.
Step 7: Review each issue and plan the next one
Before you send, check the issue against its one-sentence promise, verify names and claims, proofread the subject and preview together, look at the mobile view, and test the links. After you send, look at which topics and individual links got attention compared with earlier issues sent to comparable audiences. Write down the lead theme, the format, the main links, and what you'd change next time. If you're comparing two versions, change one substantive thing at a time when you can, so the result means something.
Be careful with opens. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection can download remote email content in the background whether or not the person engaged with it, so a tracked open can happen without anyone reading the email. Read what Apple says about Mail Privacy Protection and treat opens as a rough signal alongside clicks and what readers tell you. Also be careful with benchmarks. Mailchimp's published Business and Finance averages are a 31.35% open rate, a 2.78% click rate, and a 0.15% unsubscribe rate, based on billions of tracked emails and campaigns sent to at least 1,000 subscribers. Those are broad industry averages, not a target for a company newsletter, and they don't tell you what a good number is for yours. If you want to compare against them, look at Mailchimp's benchmark page for the definitions first, because click and unsubscribe rates can be calculated differently on different platforms.
You'll know this step is done when each issue has a written editorial hypothesis and one specific adjustment, keep-or-cut decision, or question for the next one. The usual slips are calling a subject line a winner based only on apparent opens, announcing a universal best day to send, and comparing campaigns for different subscriber groups as if the content were the only difference.
On frequency, the research doesn't establish a best schedule, whether weekly, every two weeks, or monthly. Regularity helps set expectations, so pick a rhythm your team can keep up without padding, and if you can't sustain a useful weekly issue, send less often. Reporting on your newsletter's results comes from your email platform or whatever measurement process you use. DeepSmith's AI-search citation metrics track something different and aren't newsletter engagement numbers.
What to do next
Draft one issue using your reader promise from step 1 and the skeleton from step 3, send it, and review it the way step 7 describes before you turn your newsletter content strategy into a formal template. One real issue will teach you more about your readers than another round of planning will, and you can adjust the structure as you learn. If you want the plan on paper, a one-page content strategy is a light way to do it.
If you'd like help finding topics with evidence behind them and turning finished articles into newsletter-ready versions, you can start a free DeepSmith trial and see how Content Map, Opportunity Agents, and Apps Library work with your own site.
