Internal communications metrics are a vital component of any successful internal communications strategy. Here’s why they matter so much.
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Access NowInternal communicators face pains and challenges daily. At Cerkl, we recognize this and strive to address the issues and develop meaningful solutions.
Our 2024 workshop at the 11th Annual Strategic Internal Communications Conference in San Francisco confirmed the biggest pains and challenges internal communicators face. So, Maddy Rieman, Cerkl’s head of Customer Success, identified 10 top challenges that could potentially make or break an organization. We featured these in 10 blog posts, with this one identifying the most important comms metrics.
According to Gallagher’s 2025 Employee Communications Report based on the State of the Sector 2024/25 survey, lack of analytics and measurement remains one of the top five challenges for internal communicators. The other four are a lack of involvement in decision-making, a lack of support from senior leaders, a lack of involvement in change management, and a lack of direction from the top.
It also highlights data literacy issues, with only 20% of respondents saying they have data literacy skills in-house.
“Using data is one thing, but curating and presenting it to leaders in a meaningful way is another.”
Gallagher
“A lot of times we hear that communicators don’t have the resources to slice and dice metrics, so it can feel overwhelming at times,” says Maddy. “For instance, if they are using Outlook to send comms, then they don’t get ANY engagement data. More importantly, they don’t even have the time to even drill down on a campaign or specific communications metrics. Generally, this saddens me, because I hear that communicators want to be able to analyze the success of their campaigns.”
So, how do tools like Broadcast help reduce the lift required to look into comms metrics? By allowing communicators to apply learning, ultimately improving future opportunities, and helping their overall internal communications strategy.
Internal communications metrics are crucial for several reasons, from providing valuable insights to helping companies make important decisions. There is also evidence that the strategic success of many organizations is supported by measurement, which is why it’s so important to measure internal communications.
Gallagher’s 2025 report advises communicators to think strategically, then act purposefully. “Ground your work in strategy by aligning with business goals, understanding your audience, and focusing on outcomes. Use data to guide your decisions, measure your impact, and adjust as needed.”
However, it’s vital to use data effectively. Demonstrating the value of communications, building strong business cases for additional resources, engaging leadership, and refining strategies all rely on effectively gathering, analyzing, curating, and sharing data. But data alone isn’t enough. Gallagher points out that it’s your experience, intuition, and business understanding that turn raw numbers into meaningful insights and actionable recommendations for your organization.
“Be clear on the metrics that matter most to your business, and measure how you contribute and deliver against these.”
Gallagher
When you use data effectively, you will gain insights and uncover patterns that empower smarter, more strategic communication decisions.
Internal communication metrics provide organizations with valuable insights into the effectiveness of their communication strategies and channels.
By tracking metrics such as email open rates, intranet engagement, and employee satisfaction scores, companies can identify areas where communication may be lacking and make adjustments accordingly.
Internal communication metrics allow organizations to measure the impact of their communication efforts on employee engagement, productivity, and overall business performance.
By correlating communication metrics with key performance indicators (KPIs) such as employee turnover rates or customer satisfaction scores, companies can make data-driven decisions to optimize communication strategies and drive business outcomes.
We know that every company should track key internal communications metrics to ensure effective communication. But which internal communications metrics should they be tracking?
Some of the most common email metrics are open rates, click-through rates, page views, and engagement metrics. Maddy’s advice is to spend time understanding the metrics that your tools provide. Depending on the system and specific metrics available, you need to shape your comms strategy to coincide with these.
She cites the example of total opens and total clicks versus unique opens and unique clicks. “Total opens will look at the total number of opens that the email received by the recipient across all devices, mobile, desktops, tablets, etc., and also includes any opens that occurred if that email was forwarded on to another recipient. Whereas unique opens and unique clicks will only look at the first time that communication was opened and clicked. It doesn’t track how many times that communication was opened amongst the various devices.
“Both of these metrics tell you different data stories. Understanding the culture of your company is imperative when it comes to internal communications. For this reason, it is vital to identify which set of metrics you should be honing in on.”
She also points out that, depending on the organization and its internal tech stack systems, many factors can affect adequate tracking and communications.
For example, “most companies have security scanning systems that automatically open and click all emails before they hit the recipients’ inboxes. If these security scanning systems aren’t adequately configured to work in parallel with their comms tools, the communicator could face incorrect data and analytics. It’s important for leaders to work alongside their IT teams to ensure they understand what systems are in place that may affect their communications metrics.”
It’s interesting to know which internal communications metrics companies are, in fact, tracking.
The 2025 Gallagher report provides the answer:
We have mentioned that linking communication metrics to KPIs can be invaluable when making data-driven decisions. However, Gallagher highlights a critical disconnect. While organizations value business outcomes, the metrics that communicators track don’t always align with their KPIs. For example, despite 92% of respondents being at least in part accountable for employee engagement, only 71% monitor the metrics. Similarly, 56% are accountable for employee retention versus the 40% who track it.
Additionally, the 2025 report reveals that most communicators do not have the right tools, as satisfaction drops sharply for advanced capabilities like personalization, segmentation, and sentiment tracking.
“Effective communication strategies require fit-for-purpose tools. Although most communicators influence channel decisions, dissatisfaction with current channel capabilities remains widespread.”
Gallagher
Skills are also vital. As mentioned earlier, data literacy is also a huge problem, with only 20% of respondents saying their organization has these skills. On the bright side, 58% said they would train their people. However, 13% said they had zero plan for this critical skill.
With all these challenges in mind, we’ve prepared a list of 25 metrics that you can implement in your communications strategy. Use them all, or choose those that work best for you. We have grouped them according to type for ease of reference.
We are kicking off with email communication metrics because it is widely accepted that email remains a cornerstone of communication in the workplace. According to Ragan research published in May 2025, email remains the most effective internal comms channel, with 71% of communicators rating it as such, followed by intranets at 39% and e‑newsletters at 35%. It is also the most effective way of communicating with deskless workers (51%), followed by townhalls (30%) and intranets (26%), and for communicating with dispersed employees (67%), followed by intranets (41%) and townhalls (37%).
This is despite “growing interest in, and attention to, new technologies and platforms,” particularly AI, says Mike Prokopeak, Director of Learning and Council Content for Ragan Communications.
So, what should you measure?
The open rate is the percentage of recipients who open an email out of the total number of recipients. It indicates the effectiveness of email subject lines and the level of interest in the email content. There is evidence that it can range from a mere 10% to 99%. This is why your specific metrics are so important.
Our recently published Internal Comms Metric Guide shows how audience needs and engagement patterns affect open rate metrics. For example, the average open rates of Cerkl Broadcast Email Blasts for the healthcare industry is 48.40%, and 56.70% for higher education, 55.20% for manufacturing, and 55.48% for software and IT.
Of course, many other factors can affect open rates. For example, “Apple recently released a new security feature for iPhones that will significantly impact rates of communications, if engaged or opened on an employee’s mobile device,” says Maddy. Cerkl’s Employee Communications in a Post-IOS 15 World Whitepaper has more information to help you improve open rates.
The click-through rate is the percentage of recipients who click on one or more links within an email out of the total number of recipients.
Our clients’ CTRs for Email Blasts vary a little, from 9.71% for manufacturing to 6.83% for higher education. The CTRs for News Digests are more varied: 18.65% for healthcare, 11.60% for software and IT, 11.74% for higher education, and 9.71% for manufacturing.
The conversion rate refers to the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action after clicking on a link in the email. This might be anything from downloading an app to signing up for an event.
The bounce rate is the percentage of emails that are not successfully delivered to employees’ inboxes due to various reasons, ranging from invalid email addresses to full mailboxes.
The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who opt out of receiving further emails from the sender after receiving a particular email. Essentially, it measures the level of dissatisfaction or disengagement with email content or frequency.
We have shown that intranets are high on the list of effective communication methods. Ragan research also shows that many organizations are currently adding intranets to the comms channels. While AI tools, including chatbots, have increased by 29% in the past year, 14% have added intranets, and 11% have added messaging apps that include popular collaboration platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
The Gallagher stats show that 75% of organizations use tools like Teams and Slack, with 75% finding them effective. When it comes to intranets, 72% use them and 69% find them effective.
Here’s what to track in terms of metrics for intranets and platform metrics.
Page views indicate the number of times a specific page on the intranet or collaboration platform has been viewed by users.
Unique visitors are the number of distinct individuals who have visited the intranet or collaboration platform within a specific period.
Engagement metrics are the number of interactions users have with content on the intranet or collaboration platform. These include leaving comments, liking posts, or sharing content.
This metric indicates the number of users actively participating in forums, discussion groups, or online communities within the intranet or collaboration platform.
Research underscores the growing importance and limitations, of feedback within internal communications. For example, a Seramount Report, The Survey Trap: Why Traditional Tools Miss the Mark in Employee Engagement, highlights that, despite widespread use of surveys and passive listening tools, U.S. employee engagement remains stagnant at historically low levels. Only 30% of employees feel engaged at work. The report also reveals a major issue. More than half of employees believe their feedback leads to little or no change.
Broader industry research adds context to the limitations of surveys. An Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) article shows that as few as 25% of employees believe their feedback prompts any action. At the same time, when surveys are taken seriously, they lead to higher engagement and significantly better retention, with engaged workers 3.4 times less likely to be job hunting.
This is why employee feedback and survey metrics are so important.
Employee satisfaction scores are a quantitative measurement of the overall satisfaction of employees with various aspects of their job and workplace environment.
Communication effectiveness ratings show employees’ perceptions of the effectiveness of internal communication channels and strategies in delivering relevant and timely information.
The net promoter score (NPS) is a metric that is used to measure the likelihood of employees recommending their organization as a good place to work.
Suggestions or ideas for improvement are usually gleaned from employee feedback. They commonly suggest ways for improving internal communications, processes, or overall workplace experience.
Unlock the full potential of your internal communication efforts with our free Internal Comms Metric Guide.
According to Gallagher’s 2025 report, employee in-person conferences, roadshows, and townhalls are used by 52% of organizations, with 87% finding them effective. Slightly more (68%) use the virtual versions, with 86% finding they are effective. Informal in-person and virtual get-togethers and social events are used by 63%, with 75% saying they are an effective channel.
78% of companies use all-employee live events for internal communications. Furthermore, 97% of them find it to be a highly effective broadcast channel. Similarly, manager team meetings are also regarded as being effective, with 81% using this collaboration channel.
Here’s what to track.
Attendance rates are the percentage of invited participants who attend a meeting or event. It’s vital to keep track of them.
Participation levels indicate the degree of active involvement and contribution from attendees during a meeting or event, This includes asking questions, providing feedback, or participating in discussions.
Surveys conducted after a meeting or event are the way to gather attendees’ feedback and opinions on various aspects such as content, speakers, organization, and overall experience.
Gall gher reports that post-event feedback and engagement surveys remain amongst the top five effective listening methods. Perception of their value has increased from 69% to 76% for the surveys, and from 47% to 53% for post-event feedback.
The number or percentage of action items or tasks identified during a meeting that have been successfully completed or implemented.
Content engagement metrics are data points that show how audiences interact with your content, revealing how well it resonates and keeps them interested. By tracking these metrics, you can understand more clearly what content works best and tailor your strategy for future success.
Video views and completion rates report the number of times video content has been viewed by users and the percentage of viewers who watched the video until the end.
This indicates the number of times a blog post or article has been accessed and read by users.
Social media engagement reflects the number of interactions that content receives on social media platforms. It includes likes, shares, and comments on various social media platforms.
According to Ragan, social media is another channel growing in popularity. With a 13% increase in the past year, it follows close behind intranets (14%).
This refers to the number of times internal documents, resources, or materials have been downloaded or accessed by employees.
Ragan’s research indicates that 7% of organizations have added mobile apps in the past year. According to Gallagher, 17% of organizations use employee comms apps, with 70% finding them effective.
This metric indicates the total number of times the mobile app has been downloaded and installed by employees.
Active users are literally the number of users who actively engage with the mobile app within a specific period. This may be daily or monthly.
The time spent on a mobile app is the average amount of time users spend using it during a single session or over a specified period.
This indicates the features, sections, or content within the mobile app that are most frequently accessed or utilized by users.
Unlock the full potential of your internal communication efforts with our free Internal Comms Metric Guide.
The 2025 Gallagher report reveals the top five use cases for data.
There have also been incremental increases across data use cases. For instance, there’s been an 11% increase in communicators using data to provide evidence of value and more than 9% using it to make changes to channel frameworks.
The problem is that using it is one thing, but curating and presenting it to leaders in a meaningful way is another.
The greatest challenge appears to be data literacy — the ability to read, work with, analyze, and communicate information from data.
“Data literacy helps people ask questions, build knowledge, make decisions, and share meaning with interested stakeholders. This applies not just to interpreting data, but curating it, too. As one communicator put it, ‘Amongst the wealth of data we have, we need to choose the information that matters most to leaders. All the other stuff we need to keep for ourselves. Don’t overwhelm people with numbers.”
Gallagher
Other measurement challenges include a lack of:
Let’s take a closer look.
Time and resources are precious commodities for any communications team. Often, internal communication professionals are juggling multiple tasks, from crafting messaging to managing employee feedback channels. The reality is that measuring internal communications effectiveness is time-consuming, and it requires specific resources, like employee engagement software or an employee app, to collect and analyze data effectively.
One significant hurdle in the path of measuring internal communications is the absence of established metrics. Many companies lack a structured framework for defining key internal communication metrics, such as engagement metrics, adoption rates, or page visits. This gap makes it challenging to measure internal communications’ effectiveness and align communications strategy with business objectives.
The absence of appropriate tools for collating and analyzing internal communication metrics further exacerbates measurement challenges. Tools that offer detailed email tracking, engagement metrics monitoring, or survey result analysis are pivotal for understanding employee engagement levels, employee turnover rates, and overall company intranet effectiveness.
Without these tools, gathering data becomes a manual and error-prone process, potentially leading to inaccurate insights. Moreover, the inability to analyze data comprehensively can hamper the development of a refined and targeted internal communications strategy.
Benchmarking data plays a crucial role in measuring internal communications effectiveness. Without a reference point or industry standard, it’s challenging to evaluate whether metrics like employee adoption rate or customer satisfaction are on target. This lack of benchmarking data makes it difficult to set realistic goals or understand where improvements are needed.
The foundation of any successful internal communications strategy lies in clear, attainable objectives that align with overall business targets. A common mistake is pursuing communications activities without predefined goals or understanding how they contribute to business success. This lack of clarity can lead to misdirection and ineffective use of resources.
Maddy identifies some of the best practices for maximizing the impact of data measurement:
Maddy explains why this is so important. “If you have a workforce that commonly forwards emails to groups, you need to take this into consideration when doing an analysis of your communication metrics. Forwarding an email to large groups of people will immediately impact the totality of your open rates and clicks.
“So, in the case of a company that has a forwarding culture, we highly suggest that organizations focus on unique open and unique clicks versus totals.”
“Don’t just use audience segmentation as a way to target communications to the appropriate groups within your employee base,” says Maddy. “Segmentation can also be used to help identify common threads or trends amongst unique groups of individuals. That gives you the opportunity for comparison, identifying highly engaged groups versus the groups that are the least engaged with a campaign or communication.”
“Create a structure that requires the person or team requesting delivery of a communication to identify tangible metrics around the success of those messages.
“For example, if IT comes to the communications team and says they need to send out a message to all users of a specific system informing them that they must change their password before a given date, insist that IT give communicators a success metric. In this case, IT would deem this communication a success if 85% of employees update their password or system access prior to the deadline date.”
It is also important for internal communicators to work with IT to track those metrics over time after the campaign has ended.
It’s important to use and compare different types of metrics. If you don’t do this, you won’t have a sure way to measure success. For this reason, Maddy suggests communicators provide data in a way that says “here were your campaign or comms metrics, and this is where it stands up against other campaigns of a similar nature.” Also, leadership needs contextual information to understand how a new campaign might stand up to similar comms shared in the past.
Maddy advocates that communicators take time to understand data and analytics.
“We’ve worked with plenty of companies that have entire divisions that are responsible for that type of work. Of course, not all companies have this type of luxury, especially a small team. They don’t have the time or resources available at that level. However, there are always small ways in which any communicator can beef up knowledge and an understanding of metrics.
“I highly suggest that any communicator lean on their solutions teams (if they have them) to ask for best practices. Communicators shouldn’t feel like they’re alone. Any good solution should provide a communicator with as many resources as possible to gain knowledge.”
We’ve already mentioned how important feedback is. Maddy, more than anyone, recognizes how crucial it is.
“However, I hear a lot from internal communicators that they’re very careful to ask for feedback from employees, because if they cannot execute on system feedback directly, employees providing feedback immediately lose faith. There’s a fine line between gathering, analyzing, and applying feedback.” For example, weighing individual feedback from employees while also being able to track implicit feedback from employees can be difficult.
Cerkl Broadcast can help measure comms effectively in a myriad of ways. Designed for internal communicators, it serves as a centralized hub for all communication assets. In this way, it ensures that communicators can easily access and manage information, which makes planning considerably more effective.
The platform features Broadcast Insights with custom dashboards that enable users to show leadership how their initiatives impact the bottom line of business. A key benefit is that you can access all the important internal communications metrics and make decisions in real time. Another is that you can track goals that relate to specific metrics that align with your team’s objectives. You can also export insights tables that are invaluable for evaluating internal communications metrics.
The versatile Broadcast platform also enables communicators to segment their audiences based on all kinds of criteria, including department, role, or location. This facilitates precise targeting in the delivery of internal communications. Furthermore, you can also use segmentation to identify engagement metrics based on different employee groups.
Broadcast Insights internal communications metrics include:
These provide an excellent opportunity to present the results of internal communication within your organization to leadership — and use these invaluable metrics to make future decisions to improve comms strategies.
There is no doubt that internal communications metrics matter a lot. That’s why we have created a dedicated Internal Comms Metric Guide for people like you.
Download it today absolutely free.
Unlock the full potential of your internal communication efforts with our free Internal Comms Metric Guide.
How do you measure the success of internal communications? You can measure the success of internal communications by tracking a mix of metrics. Start by looking at reach (how many employees saw the message) and engagement (how they interacted with it), as well as feedback surveys that help gauge employee understanding and sentiment.
How do you evaluate internal comms? Evaluating internal communications is not just about numbers. Analyze how well your messages resonate with employees. Consider surveys, focus groups, and leader feedback to understand if communication is clear, relevant, and driving desired actions.
What is an internal communication matrix? An internal communication matrix is a tool that helps people visualize how different communication channels (email, intranet, and so on) align with various employee needs and goals. It helps ensure you’re using the right channel for the right message.
What is the scorecard for internal communications? A scorecard for internal communications is a customizable set of metrics that track progress towards specific communication goals. It allows you to monitor KPIs and measure the effectiveness of your internal communications efforts over time.
Unlock the full potential of your internal communication efforts with our free Internal Comms Metric Guide.
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