7 ways to measure the success of internal communications

Internal communications have been historically hard to track. Click through rates and open rates are valuable metrics — if you send essential updates with a tool that tracks them — but they aren’t showing a complete picture of an equally important story:

• How engaged are your readers?

• How satisfied are they with what you’re sending?

• Where can you adjust and improve to serve them better?

• What people or groups might need a check-in outside the realm of email?

Why it matters: Only 50% of employees thoroughly read what leaders send them. But, when teams are engaged and reading, data shows there's a direct line between employees who get effective updates they value and how aligned they are with your broader goals. 

Great, but how do you get there, right? You’ll need a simple, effective, and creative plan to get honest feedback from your readers so you can stay in step with their evolving needs. And for a lot of organizations, that means a lot of change — only 43% of employees say they have an easy way to share feedback on key communications they receive today.

A few ways to gather feedback:

1. Open rates. This could mean different things depending on your channel: opens for a recurring newsletter update, read receipts for a general email, logins to a team app or other platform. This is your vital pulse check.

• Identify the metric that has meaning for you.

• Track and observe it over time.

• See what average and seasonal engagement looks like.

• If you have access to them, use tools and free online competitive benchmarks to understand how your engagement stacks up to what similar organizations see in theirs. 

2. Click rates. This one is shape shifting in modern communication. For years, clicks were the holy grail in email communication. Writing got shorter, links became more common, the goal was to tease readers into clicking to discover what they needed. It also led to reader fatigue. Folks only ping pong so much — if at all.

• Prioritize putting what’s essential in the body of your communication.

• Include links, but give readers the option to go deeper — rather than require it.

• Emphasize the clicks that truly are necessary, like registrations and sign ups.

When you focus on fewer clicks, you’re asking less of your reader — but you’re also making it much easier and more likely that they click where it matters, rather than exhausting them before they ever get to it.

3. Audience segments. Whether you’re sending to a full list or just a portion of it, using a tool that lets you divide your audience into segments will help you keep a pulse on how different groups of your employees or stakeholders respond to your internal communications. Consider segmenting your list — and analyzing reader engagement — by:

• Regions

• Departments

• Staff vs. stakeholders

• Executives vs. employees

• Managers vs. individual contributors

4. Polls. They’re a simple, straightforward way to find out what resonates with your audience, what they want to see more of, and what isn’t working for them. 

• Ask if they liked an article.

• Question if they want more or less information on certain topics.

• See how often they want messages delivered.

• Find out what stakeholders they appreciate hearing from.

5. One-click surveys. If you don’t have a communication tool with polls, simple one-click survey questions can be an easy alternative to give you the feedback you need.

• Decide what question you want to ask your readers.

• Use an online tool to set up one survey for each possible answer. 

• In your next outreach, include the question and a linked list of answers. 

• Ask readers to pick their answer — and you’ll see data roll in. 

6. Write-in feedback. For longer, more thorough feedback, let readers express thoughts in their own words.

• Use direct calls to action and reply to your message and share input. Sometimes readers just need encouragement.

• Try linking to a shared document or other drive where readers can compile feedback and see their peers’, too.

• Use a lightweight or more formal, recurring survey to collect and track sentiment over time and adjust your strategy in-kind. 

7. Casual input. If you don’t have the ability to use technology to get feedback, use what you can when you can. 

• Stop colleagues in the hallway to solicit feedback.

• Ask for feedback during 1:1 meetings.

• Share the question in an IM tool to a room or team. 

Showing that you’re open to feedback — and responsive when you receive it — makes you a smarter, more trustworthy source of information. Capitalize on that. Continually check in over time to stay up to date with the ever-evolving needs of your audience. They’ll be happier and better informed. You’ll earn higher engagement.

Go deeper: Learn about the other three pillars of Essential Communication Management.