Stop Guessing: The Internal Comms Metrics That Actually Matter

Most SMB internal comms teams are still guessing.

You guess what employees notice.
You guess whether leaders’ messages land.
You guess if a campaign worked because someone replied “great update” and the inbox went quiet.

That guessing has a cost. It burns hours on content that doesn’t move anything. It makes you reactive instead of deliberate. And it trains leaders to treat internal comms like a distribution list, not a business function.

Part of the problem is the default measurement stack. Outlook and Gmail can show activity signals. They can’t show outcomes. And they definitely can’t show outcomes by audience.

Internal Comms Metrics That Matter (And What They Replace)

If you want internal comms metrics that hold up in a leadership conversation, you need metrics that answer three questions:

Did the right people see it?
Did they engage in a meaningful way?
Did anything improve over time?

Here are the metrics that actually matter, and the weak proxies they replace.

Reach By Defined Audience (Not "Open Rate")

“Open rate” is a weak metric unless the audience is clearly defined and intentionally targeted. If everyone gets everything, an open rate is just a popularity score for your subject line.

What to measure instead: reach within the intended audience.

Example
You send a system change notice to “All Employees.” It gets a 43% open rate. Leadership asks, “Did impacted teams see it?” You can’t answer.

Better
You send the notice to “Impacted users” based on role or location. You report “72% reach in impacted users within 48 hours.” Now the metric means something.

Engagement That Signal Intent (Not Raw Clicks)

Clicks don’t tell you whether people understood the message or did the right thing. A click can mean confusion, curiosity, or an accidental tap.

What to measure instead: engagement tied to the goal of the message.

Examples
Policy update: confirmation, completion, or follow-through
Training campaign: enrollment or completion rates by segment
Benefits reminders: repeat engagement across multiple sends, not one spike

Content Drop-Off and What Gets Ignored

Internal comms teams spend time polishing sections nobody reads. Leaders add paragraphs employees routinely skip.

What to measure instead: where attention drops and which elements consistently perform.

When you can say “Most employees stop after the first section” or “The ‘What’s changing for you’ block performs best,” you can design messages people actually use.

Trendlines By Segment (Not One-Off Performance)

One email is not a strategy. A trendline is.

What to measure instead: engagement over time by key segments. Location. Role. Function. Deskless vs desk-based. Manager vs non-manager.

This is where internal comms starts to look intentional instead of reactive.

Why Most Teams Can't Measure These Internal Comms Metrics

Because they’re missing Foundations.

Not a dashboard. Not a prettier report. The basics that make measurement real: targeting, governance, and segmentation.

Without Foundations, metrics stay shallow. You can’t measure reach by audience if you don’t define audiences. You can’t compare performance by segment if segmentation is an afterthought. And you can’t trust the data if anyone can send anything to everyone.

Foundations is the Hero: Targeting, Governace, Segmentation

Targeting: stop sending to everyone

Targeting turns “open rate” into “reach.”

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Foundations makes targeting practical by letting you build audiences around real needs instead of brittle lists. Role. Location. Function. Eligibility.

Result: you can say who a message was for and whether that group actually saw it.

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Governance: stop letting measurement get weaponized

Without governance, metrics become political. People chase higher opens instead of better outcomes. Subject lines get optimized for clicks instead of clarity.

Foundations sets rules around who sends what, to whom, and why. That protects attention and makes your metrics credible.

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Segmentation: stop treating “employees” like one audience

Segmentation is how you learn. It shows you that managers engage differently than non-managers. Frontline teams behave differently than HQ. Certain locations are consistently missed. Foundations makes segmentation usable without adding manual work.

Broadcast Insights 3.0 is the Proof Layer

Once Foundations is in place, Broadcast Insights 3.0 becomes the accelerant.

It gives you visibility across Outlook and Gmail that standard tools can’t provide.

You can show:

• Reach within the intended audience
• Engagement patterns by segment
• Which content blocks perform and which don’t
• Trendlines over time that show improvement

This is the difference between reporting activity and reporting outcomes.

A Scenario You'll Recognize: The CEO Asks For Proof

CEO: “We’re investing in change comms. Is it working?”

If you’re guessing, you fall into one of these traps:

You show open rates. CEO asks, “Did the plant teams see it?”
You show clicks. CEO asks, “Did anyone actually do the thing?”
You say “feedback has been positive.” CEO hears “no proof.”

With Foundations and Insights, the answer sounds different.

“We targeted impacted employees only. We achieved 74% reach within 48 hours. Engagement was lowest in night shift, so we adapted the next send for mobile and added a manager toolkit. Reach improved to 83% in that segment over three sends.”

Now you’re managing comms, not defending it.

Quick Diagnostic: Are You Still Guessing

Answer these honestly:

1: Can you name your top five audiences and show reach for each?
2: Can you identify segments that consistently miss key messages?
3: Can you prove targeted sends outperform all-employee emails?
4: Can you show which content gets ignored so you can cut it?
5: Can you show improvement over time, not just last week’s numbers?

If most answers are “not really,” the issue isn’t effort. It’s infrastructure.

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Checklist: A Simple Internal Comms Metrics Set to Run Monthly

• Audience reach by priority segment (48 hours)
• Engagement aligned to message intent
• Content drop-off points
• Repeat engagement by segment
• Month-over-month trendlines

Template: A One-Page Outcomes Report Leader Will Actually Read

What we aimed to achieve
One sentence.

Who we targeted
Clear audience definition.

What we sent
Two bullets max.

What happened
Reach the intended audience
Engagement or action rate
Lowest-performing segment
One key insight

What we changed
One sentence based on evidence.

Next step
One sentence.

What's Next

If you want to stop guessing, Foundations is where that starts.

The Broadcast Foundations Tier gives internal comms teams a free, structured way to move beyond Outlook and Gmail. You get real audience targeting, governance controls, and baseline analytics so your metrics actually mean something.

Foundations includes up to three team members, making it easy for Internal Comms, HR, and IT to work from the same system. You can send up to 5,000 employee emails per month, enough to support newsletters, leadership updates, and recurring HR communication without friction. If you outgrow that volume, additional sends are available at a simple per-email rate.

Most importantly, Foundations creates the conditions for measurement. Clear audiences. Consistent sends. Data you can trust.

If you’re ready to build a dependable, measurable internal comms engine instead of flying blind, Foundations is the natural next step.