The employee spotlight email that is not internal comms in the wrong inbox
Nobody subscribed to meet your operations assistant. They will happily meet the person who packs the parcel, if that changes something for them.
Staff introductions are the campaign most likely to be written for the person in it instead of the person reading it. The fix is simple. Pick somebody whose work your customer experiences directly, then let them explain the part of the job nobody sees.
Does the reader experience this person's work?
Run every candidate through one question. Does a customer touch the output of this person's job? The packer, whoever answers the phone, the buyer who rejects a batch, the technician who tests returns: all yes. The finance manager and the marketing coordinator, however good, are a no.
That's not a judgement about who matters. It's about whether the email has anything to tell your reader beyond a nice photo and a favourite biscuit.
Five questions that produce a usable answer
Left to themselves, most people write a paragraph about how much they love the team. Ask narrow questions instead and the answers come back specific enough to publish more or less unedited.
- What do you check before something leaves here, and what makes you send it back
- What do customers get wrong about this product most often
- What is the hardest order you have handled and what happened
- What would you buy from our range, and what would you never buy
- What has changed about how we do this since you started
Question four produces the best copy and the most nervous marketing manager. Publish the honest answer. A member of staff saying which product isn't for everybody does more for your credibility than any amount of brand voice.
One person, one photograph, one thing they do
The format is short and it's the same every time. Who they are, what they do that affects your reader, one long quote in their own words, and a link to the thing they were talking about. Two hundred words of body copy is plenty.
Photograph them where they work, not against a backdrop. A picture with the warehouse, the bench or the packing table in it carries what three paragraphs about attention to detail carry, and the reader gets it instantly.
Four ways this campaign goes wrong
| The mistake | How it reads | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| A rota of everyone, in order | An internal newsletter that escaped | Only people whose work the customer touches |
| Fun facts and favourite films | Filler, skipped in a second | One thing they do that changes the product |
| Copy written by marketing in their voice | A press release with a face on it | Their own words, lightly cut, never rewritten |
| No link to anything | A pleasant dead end | One route to the product they discussed |
The last row is the one that quietly costs you money. A campaign doesn't have to sell. It does have to give somebody who's now interested somewhere to go.
It's a retention send, not an acquisition one
New subscribers don't care yet. This one performs with people who've bought at least once, where a name and a face attach to an experience they've already had. It's at its best in the quiet weeks between promotional pushes, when you're asking the list for nothing.
It does a job nobody credits it with, too. Subscribers who have met the person who answers support are noticeably easier to deal with when something goes wrong, and over a year that's worth more than the campaign's own revenue line. That's the argument for treating it as part of the lifecycle rather than filler.
Run one a quarter, not one a month. Frequency is what turns it back into internal comms.
Ask your support lead who customers already know by name
Somebody on your team is already being asked for by name in replies. Start there: the introduction has effectively happened already, and the email is only making it official.
Then look at whether any of these people appear anywhere on your site. Usually the about page has a founder and nobody else, so every account we run starts with the same easy win: the people doing the work are invisible to the people paying for it.
Alex Gregoriades
Operations director at Engage Commerce, where he runs the accounts the writing comes out of.
FAQs
How often should we send employee spotlights?
Quarterly suits most brands. Monthly turns the format into a rota, and subscribers start recognising it before they read it. At that point the open rate tells you what they think. Between promotional pushes is the right slot in the calendar.
What if our team is only two people?
Then it becomes a founder note or a meet the team send, and it still works. Small teams have the advantage here, because the person answering the email really is the person who made the thing, and saying so plainly is the whole campaign.
Should staff write their own copy?
They should answer questions instead of writing copy. Give them five narrow questions, record or collect the answers, then cut for length without changing the words. Anything rewritten into brand voice loses the thing that made it worth sending.
Does an employee spotlight need a call to action?
It needs one route to whatever they discussed, and nothing else. No offer, no secondary banner, no three column footer of categories. The click you want is the one that follows naturally from what the reader just learned.
Introduce the work, not the org chart
An employee spotlight earns its send when the person in it does something your reader has already experienced without knowing who was behind it. Ask narrow questions, publish the answers in their own words, photograph them at work and link to the thing they talked about. Send it quarterly to people who've bought, and it does quiet work on every conversation that follows.
Campaigns that are not discounts
One campaign type per post: what it is for, who it is sent to, and how to build it without reaching for a code.
The day in the life email, and the two versions worth sending
One version shows a customer's routine with your product in it. The other shows yours. They persuade different people and should not be mixed.
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The customer spotlight email, built from one real order
A testimonial is a quote about you. A spotlight is a portrait of them, which is a longer read and a much better one.
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The crossword email, and whether a puzzle belongs in your programme
A puzzle in an inbox is a genuine novelty. It's also a real production cost, and it earns its place in a handful of programmes.
Read itWould you rather this was just handled?
Bring your Klaviyo account and the thing annoying you most. We will tell you what we would fix first, on the call, before you spend anything.
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