New analytics features to measure the business impact of communications

The role of workforce communications has become increasingly important in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. In fact, a recent Edelman report reveals that employee communications are the most credible source of information about the crisis. It’s clear that COVID-19 has brought greater focus to the need for timely, targeted and trusted information, yet the need for effective communications is nothing new. It’s critical not just in crises, but also for every key business initiative an organization undertakes. Effective workforce communication is a deciding factor in whether those initiatives succeed and drive business results.  

Challenges with measuring communications

While the value of effective communications is inherently understood, the ability to measure the impact of workforce communications has lagged. This has prevented communications from becoming more data-driven and strategically relevant to business. Communications data can be key to guiding decisions, showing ROI and optimizing programs, but most companies typically have no way to access it. 

There are several reasons why measuring communications has proven difficult. First among them is the fact that business communication happens across many different systems like email, intranet, mobile apps and collaboration tools. It’s hard to track who’s viewing and reading your messages across these systems.  

Another issue is that traditional communication metrics focus on total clicks versus what’s unique to the individual user. This can skew your metrics if you have power users clicking on the same article multiple times. You may not be reaching as many people as you thought if you’re not looking at unique counts.

Drive key initiatives across channels with new functionality

Analyze is the Firstup analytics suite that helps companies measure communications impact across channels so they can drive business outcomes. We’ve recently updated Analyze with new functionality and reporting to give organizations a clearer picture into the state of their workforce communications. With these updates you can better tie business communications to your most important initiatives and understand what’s working and what needs improvement.

With these new updates, organizations can use Analyze to:

• Track communications related to key initiatives. Enter your key initiatives, such as digital transformation, post-merger integration and crisis comms, into the Firstup platform. Then tag communications associated with these initiatives to measure how employees are responding. This will make it for you to see how your most important messages are impacting your company’s top priorities.   
• Measure communications across all of your digital channels.  Analyze now includes more in-depth data on how your employees are engaging with content in email, mobile push notifications and content amplifiers that syndicate to additional endpoints like your intranet or collaboration systems. As in previous versions, Analyze also provides data on content viewed through the mobile app and web experience. This gives you a complete picture of your workforce communications wherever your employees consume content. Additionally, Analyze now delivers unique counts. That means each employee’s interactions with content are only counted one time, giving you a more accurate understanding of how well you’re reaching your workers.
• Visualize, filter and group data for deep analysis. Analytics shouldn’t be intimidating. We’ve updated the functionality of Analyze to make it easier for users to view, filter and group data so you can customize your reports for your exact needs. You can also use your company’s unique attributes for reporting. Many customers are using custom attributes like department, work location and job titles to see how their communications are performing.

New reports, new insights

With access to so much data, it can be difficult to know where to start. This is why we’ve created new reports that summarize the top aspects of your communications program. 

When you first open Analyze you’ll find a new Executive Summary report that provides an overview of your communications program. You can quickly see how many employees you’ve reached, how they’ve engaged with your content and how it breaks down by location, digital channel and top posts. Everything can be filtered, grouped and customized for further analysis.

Our newest collection of reports is called The Essentials and provides a breakdown of workforce communications by key dimensions like Audience, Channels, Content, Initiatives, Posts, Publishers and more. Use these reports to go deeper and refine different aspects of your communications strategy.

So what actionable insights can you glean from Analyze? Here are some ways customers are using Analyze to optimize their communications strategies:

• Understand which publishers drive the most engagement to better promote key initiatives
• View engagement by department and location to see which groups need more support
• Improve delivery by understanding how many employees are being reached, and which digital channels they’re using to consume content 
• Identify the optimal time of day to send content so it gets seen and read
• Determine what types of content should be featured, and what content should be promoted with Smart Campaign notifications to improve response. 

Available now with more to come 

The new reports and functionality are available now in Analyze. We’re excited to continue enhancing Analyze based on customer feedback, including updates to the way you can share insights with others alongside more reports, so please send us your thoughts. For more information on Analyze please contact us for a demo, reach out to your engagement team or check out these knowledge base articles.