Fluidity, focus deliver success for an in-house print newsletter

Ragan Recognition Award-winner breaks some rules and engages lots of employees

Just because your company’s print newsletter can’t deliver video or include links like an electronic newsletter doesn’t mean it can’t be innovative.

Just ask Cressida Barnabe. She’s the editor of Export Development Canada’s 33-year-old employee publication, this year’s Ragan Recognition Awards winner for Best For-Profit Newsletter.

For one thing, Link doesn’t have a set number of issues per year, a standard page count, or standing features.

“We used to have regular features, but we shy away from that now and let the newsletter evolve,” Barnabe says. “We have a Table of Contents and an Editor’s Message, of course, but we vary the rest of the content. We’re not pigeonholed to a certain way we’ve always done it.”

Link’s no-rules format enjoyed almost universal acclaim in a recent employee survey.Coming up with a theme and soliciting employee feedback help communicators create the newsletter that workers want to read.

Filling an open newsletter