Product Newsletters
I love product newsletters!
I really got to see what good looks like several years ago while working at a globally distributed company.
We had offices and product teams all around the world. Every month, we would send out an internal product newsletter to the whole organization, giving an update on what each product team was working on.
As you will see in the examples below, product newsletters are commonly used as an external communication tool for businesses and product managers to keep their users up to date with product changes.
However, as I saw at this company, they can also be a powerful tool to communicate internally.
Every month, I (and many others) looked forward to the newsletter. It was a great way to keep up to date and connect with the other teams on the other side of the world.
It also had other benefits.
I noticed that we would regularly pick something up in the newsletter. Someone would notice an opportunity to collaborate or realize two teams were trying to solve the same thing.
It wasn’t out of the ordinary to find myself on a handful of late evening calls collaborating with my colleagues on the other side of the world in the days following the product newsletter.
I wish I had some copies of those newsletters to share, but unfortunately, this was several years ago.
The biggest thing I feel that set it apart were the heavy use of visuals. We always aimed to include plenty of images, even videos, to demonstrate the work (or share Halloween party snaps).
But I really saw how much of a powerful tool they could be.
Since then, as someone who now works with companies to help them become more product-led, product newsletters have been a regular tool in my toolkit.
So, I thought I’d share a few things on product newsletters in this post in the hope that it helps one of you too.
Let’s get into it, starting with examples!
Example Product Newsletters
The following examples are all external facing product newsletters and conveniently they have all recently found their way into my inbox.
Mixpanel:
Mixpanel keeps it simple. They follow a ‘What’s New’ and ‘Coming Soon’ format.
Their newsletter largely contains links to their site with a more detailed breakdown of the new/coming soon features.
Grammarly:
I really like Grammarly’s use of colors and emojis. Their newsletter ‘pops’ a lot more than others.
For example, the use of the rocket ship (🚀) emoji in the subject line grabs your attention.
Grammarly’s newsletter is broken down by product-lines. First you have general Grammarly updates, then there are Grammarly Business specific updates, and since Grammarly is a freemium product, they also break it down based on whether the updates are free or a premium feature.
As you will see in my template below. I prefer to structure product newsletters by products.
I find it to be a very user-centric format. For example, those who aren’t Grammarly Business users can ignore that section whilst those who are on a free account can also immediately see what features are available to them vs not. Nothing worse than going looking for the feature and realizing it’s paid and you can’t access it.
Product Pathways
Here’s one I sent out last month for Product Pathways.
This was a unique Product Newsletter, but it’s still one nonetheless. But given it’s still early days for Product Pathways, this newsletter was mostly about what’s to come this year. However, it still followed a similar format to the Mixpanel newsletter, where I covered what was new/launched last year and what’s to come.
Product Newsletter Format
One thing you’ll note with all the examples above is that they have gone light on the details since they're all external-facing newsletters.
For internal product newsletters, I like to go into more depth. This includes sharing details such as ‘wins’, ‘learnings’, and ‘challenges’, not just what we did. If you want to cultivate a ‘shared consciousness’ across the organisation deliberate effort needs to be put in to share information such as learnings across teams.
The end results is a product newsletter format that look like the following:
📣 [month] Product Newsletter
Hi all,
[brief intro often written by the product leader (e.g. CPO, Directer of Product, Group PM, etc)]
This month has been a jammed packed month for the Product Teams....
[Product Team 1]Key activities
This is a general introduction to cover the key activities the team had done this month.
Wins
What were the wins from this week, if any?
What's new in the product?
Provide an update, screenshots or even a demo video on the key changes that have been made to the product this month.
Challenges
What were the key challenges or issues from this week that we're facing, if any?
What’s ahead?
What are we planning on doing next?
[Product Team 2]
Key activities
This is a general introduction to cover the key activities the team had done this month.
Wins
What were the wins from this week, if any?
What's new in the product?
Provide an update, screenshots or even a demo video on the key changes that have been made to the product this month.
Challenges
What were the key challenges or issues from this week that we're facing, if any?
What’s ahead?
What are we planning on doing next?
[Product Team....X]
Key activities
This is a general introduction to cover the key activities the team had done this month.
Wins
What were the wins from this week, if any?
What's new in the product?
Provide an update, screenshots or even a demo video on the key changes that have been made to the product this month.
Challenges
What were the key challenges or issues from this week that we're facing, if any?
What’s ahead?
What are we planning on doing next?
My System for Compiling Regular Product Newsletters
I have no doubt that some of you are wondering: love this! but how the heck do I produce something like this every month?
This is a common reaction from the product leaders I floated this idea with.
Good news is that you don’t need to do this every month.
Find a cadence that works for you. If you’re in a fast-paced environment, my recommendation would be to consider a more frequent cadence (ie monthly) and those on the other end of the spectrum, where not much happens in a month, a less frequent cadence (ie quarterly). But find what works for you.
Now, cadence aside, how do you get this to run like a well-oiled machine?
The way I like to run this is the following:
Start with a template, and create a copy into a fresh Google Doc/Notion/Confluence page (anything where you can share the link and everyone can real-time edit)
Share the link in Slack at the start of the week tagging each of the product teams to complete by the end of day Thursday (I like to make this a join effort between Product + Design + Tech. You can make this the responsibility of the product trios)
There’s two reasons for this. One product is a team sport. I would never want anyone to feel as though product gets all the glory. This should never be the case. Second, if you have a single person responsible when they’re away or sick it creates an issue. This way, there should always be one person available to complete the team’s update.
It’s then the responsibility of each product team to complete their section. Their product area should be clearly marked in the template.
If needed you can give people a nudge. You will be able to see who has edited the doc vs not. You can then easily nudge them through a Slack message or an inline comment typically does the trick (of course, consider delegating this task to someone)
Each team completes their section, and as the product leader, you add a short blurb at the start of the newsletter.
Once everything is completed it’s best to have someone proofread read it. The best relationship I’ve ever leveraged for this was marketing. Getting one of the Marketing Managers to proofread quickly was amazing; she was a copy and proofreading legend!
Finally, copy it all into an email or load it into your marketing automation tool (if you have the luxury to leverage that) and send it to company_all@company.com
This was the exact process we used at the company I spoke about at the start. It’s also the process that largely the product teams I’ve introduced this to follow as well.
It works well. The effort is distributed and asynchronous. There are few single-person dependencies, and the effort of any one person is lightweight. Honestly, as someone who had to fill it out, once you get used to doing them regularly, you get pretty quick at doing it.
If you’re a growing startup and feel you’re starting to struggle with visibility on what all the product teams are up to across the business, I’d highly recommend considering producing an internal product newsletter.
And if you don’t have one already, external-facing product newsletters are still a great way to connect and keep your users up to date.
It’s worth giving them a try!
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Last week, over 300 passionate product people joined me live for a free webinar on ‘Building Effective Product Roadmaps’ (the recording is below).
I want to share the results of the polls I ran during the webinar and figured, why not do a summary of the key points too.
Let’s get into it!