Whether you want to show how internal comms increases employee engagement, optimize your messaging, unlock a larger internal comms budget, or all three, data analytics will help you accomplish your goal.

Data analytics is a broad field that uses various techniques, like computer science, statistics, and math, to gain insights from data sets. In this course, we’ll explore data analytics in the context of internal communications.

You’ll learn the most useful internal comms KPIs (key performance indicators), how to collect and analyze internal and benchmark data, and how to present your findings to senior leadership. This knowledge can help shape your internal comms strategy and show leadership the holistic effect your internal comms has on the organization.

While comms professionals are typically creative (and less about numbers), executives tend to appreciate numbers and logic. By digging into your data, you can help bridge this gap—connecting the dots between the creative and the analytical—and increase your credibility. Equipped with the right metrics, you can illustrate how internal comms programs are directly affecting the bottom line.

Introduction to key terms

We’ll define new terms throughout this course, but before we dive in, let’s ensure we’re on the same page with the fundamentals.

When we mention ‘benchmarking,’ we’re referencing the process of comparing your organization's data to standardized data from another place—like other companies in your industry—or some time else, like the last month, quarter, or year. There are a few different types of benchmarking to understand.

Competitive benchmarking occurs when you compare your products, systems, and processes to those of your main competitors. In internal communications, this means comparing your messaging to other companies in your industry. Competitive benchmarking can help you identify critical areas of improvement.

Internal benchmarking is similar but only involves comparing internal data. With internal communications, this could mean comparing data quarter-by-quarter or year-over-year, the performance of different campaigns, or measuring departmental communications strategies against each other. It’s often helpful to compare your averages (i.e., your benchmarks) with your outliers. Why is one email significantly more successful (or less) than your average message?

Strategic benchmarking means looking outside your industry to explore systems and processes that have led to significant changes in other sectors. While measuring your comms performance against data from a completely different industry is not a fair gauge of your effectiveness, it can help inspire new ideas and strategies you can tailor to your industry and audience.

Another term we’ll reference frequently is KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. These are the key quantifiable indicators of progress toward an intended result. We’ll define specific internal comms KPIs in the next lesson. As you read, think about the KPIs you track or those you hope to track in the future.