Measure and Analyze Outreach Results

By John Simpson, Engagement Consultant at GovDelivery

There are a few basic components that anyone can leverage when beginning to develop the framework for their digital engagement strategy or evaluate an existing one. This blog post is part of a larger series tied to our recent webinar on Stakeholder Engagement in Federal Government. If you missed it, take a look back at parts 1 and 2 to learn more about the first few steps when building a digital engagement strategy.

Measure and Analyze Results

Unless you are measuring and analyzing your communications, you can’t determine what’s impacting your stakeholder engagement. Without regular analysis, your communications is a rudderless boat, unable to correct its course or steer toward your goals.

So what should you measure, with regard to your communications? Our work across more than 1,000 public sector organizations over the last decade has shown that a critical metric to track is outreach. Across all communication channels and digital communication tools, outreach is a basic yet foundational metric for digital engagement, which is also why it can be so powerful in determining the success of your communications.

Beyond outreach, depending on the channel you are using to distribute your communications, there are a variety of metrics at your disposable.

Although every organization is unique and its available tools varied, email endures as the most effective method to best reach an audience and get them to take action. Below are some basic, but crucial metrics you should be including in any analytics report on the effectiveness of your communications:

• Unique Open Rate
• Unique Link Click Rate
• Total Email Opened
• Total Links Clicked
• Conversion Rate
• Engagement Rate
• Unsubscribe Rate

Each of these metrics have clear definitions and recommended best uses, but it is imperative to prioritize what metrics will best tell the story of your organization’s success.

Leaving room open in your outreach for experimentation and improvement over the course of your outreach campaigns will grant you a greater chance at reaching your business goals. Keeping an eye out for trends and patterns in your results will also allow for you to discover growth or best practices you had not imagined when starting your outreach.

What metrics do you measure when reviewing digital communications and engagement with stakeholders? Let us know in the comments below.