Ragan research shows internal comms audits are infrequent and uncommon

With the fiscal year nearing its halfway point, we’re taking another look at Ragan’s 2023 Communications Benchmark Report, which features results from nearly 1,000 communicators worldwide weighing in on how they measure the success of their work.

All told, 79% of respondents said they measure the effectiveness of their internal and/or external communications, while 18% don’t. That said, only 6% of respondents said they are “very satisfied” with the measure of communications effectiveness while 26% reported they are dissatisfied.

Most respondents (37%) measure communications monthly, while 21% said they measure quarterly and 15% on an ad-hoc basis.

Internal audits on the decline 

While most external communicators considered their primary metrics to be retweets and shares (77%) and gauging the number of social media followers (64%), they paid substantially less attention to open rates, click-thru rates on externally distributed e-newsletters.

On the internal communication side, the top measurement methods remained constant year over year, but there were some dips. Reliance on focus groups (19%) and executive/ leadership interviews (13%), were each down by 5 points compared to last year.