Metrics that matter: Measuring the success of your essential communications

The question is, what do you want to achieve from your essential communications? Usually, we are trying to get the consumer to act, whether that's to pay a bill or take note of their statement.

How do you know if they are driving customer action and delivering against your business goals? 

Whether it's statements, bills or welcome packs, essential communications are just that – essential. Content is often heavily regulated, and language can be legalistic. That's why, in a push to tick the boxes and get them out to customers, businesses often underestimate the potential of these communications to be used to drive changes in customer behaviour and impact business results. 

But sometimes you can ask them to do more than that. You might want to influence them to pay their bill online, to download an app so they can manage their service, or to sign up for email communications. It's when you start using essential communications to reach specific business goals that you need to consider how you measure their success. 

There are many metrics you can use to measure the impact and success of your essential communications. It's only when you measure certain metrics that you can make real data-driven decisions to improve your essential communications, drive a better customer experience and get the best return on investment. 

In this article, we'll explain some key metrics to help measure the success of essential communications.

How to measure the success of your essential communications

The reality is, you cannot rely on the same metrics to measure the success of both your essential communications and your marketing communications. Depending on the communication channel, Marcomms functions will measure against metrics like:

While the open rate of an essential communication is important, it is more valuable to know that it has driven a certain action – like paying a bill on time. That's the real measure of success.

So what should you be measuring for essential communications?

Not every piece of information on a communication can be or needs to be tracked; it's about measuring the metrics that matter to your business goals.

When we align essential communications to deliver against these metrics, we see organisations making improvements to their business performance through:

Put your organisation's goals first

The first step is to figure out what you want your essential communications to accomplish. At Computershare Communication Services, we specialise in essential communications and helping our clients achieve these business improvements. It all starts with your organisation's goals. By understanding your goals, we can work out the most effective way to improve your communication's messaging to help streamline processes, improve customer engagement and drive customer behaviour while measuring the results that matter to you.

Over to you

Ready to measure customer actions on your essential customer communications? Computershare's commsx team can assist and help your business redesign and revitalize your customer communications to deliver the best outcome for both your customers and your business.

Computershare Communication Services has been delivering essential communications for 30 years and have a deep level of knowledge to help improve essential communications based on customer behaviour research.