Segmenting academic audiences for effective internal communication

University workforces – and especially cohorts of academic staff – are increasingly diverse in terms of job roles and faculty needs and locations. But the goals of internal communications – to be applicable, motivating and memorable – remain more homogeneous. Binding internal communications to an organisational mission or ethos makes them credible and relevant. Designing messaging to specific audience concerns fosters positive sentiment. And consistency of key points increases “stickiness”, helping employees to internalise and act on information.

So, message discipline requires a coordinated comms plan. By ensuring that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet – using agreed phrases and communicating specified stances towards core concerns – comms professionals reinforce the organisation’s strategic objectives and reflect its values. We also know that, just as when we target external customers and clients, we need to craft messages that fit each group’s concerns, tone and language. 

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So, how can communications professionals preserve the consistency required for effective comms while being sufficiently differentiated across employee types?

The art of segmenting communications audiences

In communications, audience segmentation splits audiences according to common characteristics and information needs, and the three main types are profile, behavioural and psychographic. 

In profile segmentation, a university comms team can tailor messages to the characteristics of its intended audience. For example, it may target early career researchers with motivational messaging about professional development strategies. While the messages are targeted at specific audience segments, they serve common organisational objectives – in this example, succession planning and investment in people. 

In behavioural segmentation, audiences are divided according to their actions and routines – for example, targeting staff who drive to work with messaging around a cycle-to-work scheme. 

When using psychographic segmentation – which splits audiences based on their beliefs, values and mindsets – HE communicators may target the segment of their workforce who act as “champions” for the university’s culture. Comms professionals can harness the credibility of these highly enthused staff, knowing they will transmit messages positively to respectful peers during water-cooler moments.

In breaking up the audience, we avoid the limitations of a one-size-fits-all approach.

How to break your internal audience into targeted segments 

If your message requires different groups of people to understand, do, think or feel specific things, your communications plan will include segmenting your audience. Before developing a communication, aligning your objectives with your audience is an essential step: 

• What are you trying to achieve?
• Who do you need to reach?
• What do you want them to think, feel, do and know? 

Then, comms teams can look at practical ways to segment an audience for more effective messaging:

Slicing vertically 

Sometimes, you may need to communicate specific messages to academic departments, schools, faculties, research groups or other easily identifiable clusters of staff. If your university is undergoing a reorganisation, not all departments may be affected equally, for example. Separating out these groups can help comms teams to tailor messaging. 

The benefit of vertical slicing is a chance to acknowledge team identities and empower accountable leaders – such as heads of department, faculty deans or research group leads – to cascade information and build staff activities that support your centralised communication. Placing key messages in the context of departments or groups of faculty helps colleagues feel seen and understood, empowering them to engage with initiatives and share helpful feedback.

However, without careful management, slicing vertically can also create siloed communication or accidental exclusion or limit the sharing of ideas and best practices. 

Slicing horizontally 

Occasionally, communicators may need to segment information by hierarchy – for instance, the communications apply different messaging to the same topic and require specific actions from senior leadership teams, the professoriate or junior faculty. A cascade system, where senior leadership and managers emphasise and contextualise important information for their direct reports or departments, can have a positive impact.

This approach means that staff responses may be equally hierarchical. It can also fuel staff perceptions of “us and them” or a lack of transparency and democratic processes. As such, it should be used judiciously and sparingly.

Behavioural and psychographic segmentation 

A large and cumbersome academic audience can also be segmented, at least informally, according to staff behaviour or interests. This approach harnesses the energy and credibility of “early adopters” – enthusiastic staff who are receptive, accessible and keen to promote change. For example, identifying “sustainability champions” enables comms professionals to seed more technical or complex ideas among highly motivated and influential staff members who will then pass the messaging to and persuade their less committed colleagues.  

It can also help the university be strategic about gathering engaged staff around priority areas or topics. 

However, this approach can create a two-tier audience of “insiders” and “outsiders”, which would be divisive, demotivating, inequitable and counter-productive. To ensure this does not happen, communicators should conduct regular internal market research to ascertain which staff want to contribute more energetically to the strategic cultural direction of their institution, and they should adjust their targeting of messages accordingly.

The three key takeaways

Effective internal communication in higher education relies on audience segmentation to deliver relevant, tailored messages while maintaining a consistent organisational mission.

Communicators can divide their audiences based on shared characteristics through profile, behavioural or psychographic segmentation to better address the specific needs of different staff groups.

However, while segmenting audiences vertically by department or horizontally by hierarchy improves message targeting, communicators must carefully manage these strategies to avoid creating isolated silos or an inequitable workplace culture.

David M. Brown is UK head of the department of marketing and operations and an associate professor in marketing at Edinburgh Business School, and Katie Trachtenberg is strategic communications and engagement manager for Edinburgh Business School and the School of Social Sciences, both at Heriot-Watt University.

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