How to increase UX research visibility with an internal newsletter
Research newsletters
✓ Get your insights read across the whole org
The larger your company is, the harder it becomes to communicate the value and impact of UX research. One of the most effective ways for research operations pros to do this is through a well-crafted internal newsletter.
Look, I get it: UX research teams already have a lot on their plate. Especially if you are a smaller team among hundreds (or thousands) of employees, putting together a lengthy newsletter every month or quarter could seem unattainable. But in my experience, the value of increased visibility for UX research insights and artifacts is well worth it.
In this article, we'll help you get started.
So why a research newsletter?
As researchers and ResOps pros, we're used to sharing our work in research readouts, either in Slack or Teams, at All-Hands team meetings, or at quarterly reviews or retrospectives. So why should you also share research findings in a newsletter?
UXR gets to have a point of view
Newsletters allow you to curate the tone of UXR, building internal brand for your department. The newsletter lets you share that voice at a larger scale, making your insights and findings memorable.
Easy to search
Newsletters shared in email are easily searchable, especially if you're a Microsoft-heavy team that uses Copilot or Gmail with Gemini. Even if you use an Intranet like Sharepoint to post your newsletter, most have built-in search capabilities to let others find your newsletter.
Newsletters are familiar and comfortable
You likely won't convert non-newsletter readers into readers, but a ton of people (me included!) are familiar and comfortable with the newsletter format. If a big body of work is posted on Slack, I'm apt to glaze over it. But a newsletter? I'll save to read later, or read in the moment.
The pros & cons of research newsletters
Every mode of communication has its ups and downs. Here are a couple to keep in mind for newsletters in particular.
Pros
- Practice your own storytelling abilities
- Democratize access to UX research insights and findings outside of your department
- Can link readers to different newsletters, thought streams, or material they may not have visibility to in your organization by cross-linking
- At the end of the year, you have a great resource summarizing your body of work that you can easily refer back to and share with your team and others
Cons
- Coordination or buy-in from researchers to provide another piece of information during their process
- Time and effort of writing, editing, designing, and building a newsletter
- Distribution struggles (low open rates, broken links, deliverability issues, etc.)
How to start your research newsletter
Find examples of research round ups or newsletters internally or externally
Pay attention to the amount of content, the tone of voice, and how they deliver insights. Is it graph heavy? Quick bullet points? Quirky or snarky commentary? In some cases, there are already examples of round ups, like what Lilyth Ester Grove, Research Operations Lead at AB InBev saw in her organization's product release notes:
“I got started with the newsletter modeling it after the product release notes that we send out as a company. I figured that it would be an effective way to increase the reach of our research findings and increase visibility overall of the team.”
Get researchers on board
Researchers already have to prepare readouts and deliver those results. Getting them on board means the content can be a shared load. They can provide the details and the insights they already prepared, while you curate the newsletter. As a ResOps, you may have to play around with how to work with your researchers on who does what after the first couple of newsletters. Or, if you're a researcher leading the newsletter, you'll need to decide who on your team is best suited for this task.
Find a way to distribute it
Your internal communications department (if you have one!) may have rules on how to distribute your newsletter. Coordinate with them. If you have other teams or departments that use a newsletter that you admire, reach out to them for advice on how to get started. Make sure you know who is going to receive the newsletter, and do some research on who the best audience would be. Typically with internal newsletters you won't have to deal with opt-ins, but it's best to check with your organization's policies before launching.
Decide what "success" looks like
It's important to have a metric in mind when you first launch your newsletter, so you have a baseline to measure on. Is it the number of opens or clicks? Replies? Increased visibility within your org? Have an idea so you can track progress yourself.
“In our survey we had a rating scale for 'tell us what you thought about this newsletter' and a feedback survey that allowed an open-end response to collect what the audience wants to learn about next time. This was really helpful to learn what to improve on.”
Create a template
Making yourself a template that you can reference back to makes the job so much easier. To help you get started, I'm sharing the template I've found success with over the years at various companies.
Take it from Elizabeth Creighton, PhD, Founder & Principal of Brazen, Author of Research for All newsletter, who thinks a template (not AI!) was the key to reducing the workload of a newsletter:
“It takes a lot of work to write each issue, so the adjustments I've made have mostly been to reduce my workload. For example, over time I've iterated on a template to use for every issue, and having that built-in structure is a real time-saver. Additionally, I give myself grace when writing the section that takes the most work. This section used to be a fairly lengthy 'blog post'-style piece, but I'm now satisfied with a few short paragraphs. (It's all still my writing though, one shortcut I never envision taking is having AI write my stuff for me!)”
You have a newsletter, now what?
Like all processes, newsletters should be iterated and improved upon. Here are some thought-starters on how to improve your newsletter's engagement and visibility:
Experiment with different lengths of content
Lowell Reade, former Senior Research Program Manager at Duolingo, shared with me what has worked for him in the past.
“We are currently just using quotes, photos, and linking to readouts or other deliverables. We've received direct responses from stakeholders about the parts of the newsletter that they engaged with, which is great feedback!”
Engage with new teams as reorgs happen, or new team members join
Steph Kingston, Research Operations Specialist at Cisco found that the most iterations happened with team changes.
“Over the years it grew partially as teams joined together and reorgs happened. So it has changed mostly in the sense that it includes submissions from more people and goes out to way more people.”
Experiment with a featured section from tangential, or disconnected teams entirely
One of my most successful features was about a HQ Office redesign survey, which led tons of employees who wouldn't normally look at research to start to read the newsletter.
If we had a crystal ball…
I asked fellow ResOps that have stood up newsletters in different sized organizations what is one piece of advice they would give to anyone starting a newsletter. They had a lot to say:
“Ask yourself the Deep Dark Question: 'What impact or outcome will this drive?' People love the idea of a newsletter but the reality is most people's inboxes are already overloaded. Newsletters are a lot of work and you should make sure you know what you're working towards before you start.”
“If you are trying to start a newsletter, try to piggyback on existing structures. I think that starting from zero is complicated for anything, especially if you don't have leadership buy-in. Therefore I would recommend looking at what is already happening and try to use a similar structure.”
“Pick a cadence that works for you, and don't stress if you need to take a break. Even people who love your content will barely remember you exist most of the time, and they're unlikely to be counting down the minutes until your next issue. It's totally fine to send your newsletter every couple of weeks, once a month, or even less often, and to give yourself some time off if you're sick or going on vacation.”
“My advice would be to obtain a clear vision of the newsletter goals and who your recipients are. Do a listening tour with your immediate and cross-functional stakeholders alike to align on those goals. Have fun experimenting! It is ok to start small and as you get signals about interest and increased engagement, expand efforts from there.”
My advice
Use it as an opportunity to flex your storytelling skills. UX Researchers are told to make their readouts compelling, interesting, and easy to understand. So they have done some of the heavy lifting for you by featuring their interesting work. Your job is to take what they have created and make it your own. Have fun with it!
