Guidelines for newsletters at KI

When is a newsletter the right channel?

Several channels for internal communication are available at KI. In addition to newsletters, you can use the staff portal, newsletters, periodic e-mails within groups, Teams, physical meetings at different levels and Zoom. It is important that you understand why your newsletter is needed in relation to these other channels. Please answer these questions:

• What are our goals for sending a newsletter?
• How can we achieve these goals?
• Is a newsletter the right channel?
• Who is the recipient of the newsletter?
• Why should the recipient read our newsletter?
• Who has overall responsibility for the newsletter?
• Who plans mailing and content?
• Who produces text and image content?

What tool should I use?

A newsletter is a regular publication distributed via email. It can be done as a regular e-mail in Outlook, be an attachment in Word or PDF or created in a tool intended for the newsletter. The advantage of a tool is, among other things, that you can easily create a nice look with pictures, headings and links, and that the tool keeps track of subscribers and statistics. Many of our general tips apply to any channel, so apply them even if you choose a different solution for your newsletters. Postman from Paloma is the newsletter tool for which the communications department will offer support.

If you have questions about the service, please contact Paloma at support@paloma.se
If and when you place the order of a new account or a change in an existing one, contact Viktoria Olausson, viktoria.olausson@ki.se.

How to write a good newsletter

A good newsletter is easily overviewed and read, has good headlines and follows KI's graphical profile (which you will find here). Use the KI newsletter template. If you do not have it, ask the editor-in-chief of your institution. A newsletter should preferably not contain unique information, that is, information that cannot be found elsewhere online. You need to have accurate information online to link to. So, in order to write a good newsletter you usually need to start updating the information on or creating the web pages you will link to.

A good newsletter should:

• Be easy to read, concise and clear
• Contain news
• Be relevant to the recipient
• Bring up the most important thing for the reader, not the whole news
• Do not contain unique content (so do not need to be saved)
• Refer to more in-depth information elsewhere
• Offer the opportunity to unsubscribe
• Follow KI's graphic profile

Checklist for each newsletter

A common ambition is to send newsletters at regular intervals. However, the recipients main interest is to get the news while they are still new. Therefore, feel free to send the letter when there is something to say, even if it leads to different size letters or uneven sending frequency.

Here is a good checklist for each newsletter:

• What's new in my field?
• What does my target group need to know to continue doing a good job?
• What questions do I usually get from the organisation? They can be topics to the newsletter.
• Do I usually write long emails about certain topics? Is it perhaps because the target group needs information on this?
• Is there information online that already answers the questions from the target groups? Does this info need to be updated? Can I remind you that this information is/has been updated?