I spend a great deal of my time wrestling with MREB’s newsletter and Web site, trying to figure out the best ways to communicate our research findings to thousands of market researchers across the globe.  And MREB’s annual research initiative on Embedding Customer Knowledge into the Business contains best practices that any researcher hoping to improve action taken on insight should apply.

I know that many researchers face the same challenges I feel, as across 2011 we fielded many tactical questions related to communication on our Primary Research Forum.  Perhaps I should have seeded a question on the best way to communicate interesting results from one-off survey questions…but for now I’ll go with a blog post to share interesting results from a variety of communications-related questions.

Newsletters: What Have you Done for Communication Lately?

Asked if their research department uses newsletters to deliver knowledge to the broader organization, 61% of respondents said no:

And for those who DO use newsletters, it’s pretty clear that corporate research departments typically use the channel for basic, untargeted information sharing.  Among the most popular goals for newsletters: communicating new project results and sharing synthesized insights:

One thing newsletters definitely AREN’T used for: communicating with senior executives.  According to our respondents, face-to-face presentations are the main channel used for driving senior execution action based on customer insight.  Folks also mentioned immersion events as an effective communication channel, and MREB members can see how Pollstar, P&G, and Alticor create interactive experiences to re-build business partners’ understanding of customers.

For those looking to communicate with senior executives with a written product, we uncovered a concise and powerful written format used at Alticor.  Researchers there aggregate and synthesize information around pre-identified core business drivers, creating a report that addresses the company’s most important strategic issues.

Partnering for Better Communication

As my colleague Liz Barrett blogged about a few weeks ago, going to the pros for communication help can help disseminate insight-based messaging to internal audiences.  And about half of respondents to a related question on the forum say that they’ve worked with the Communications department to distribute insights:

One member on the forum said: “We work closely with the corp communications team.  They cull our newsletter for information that they can readily share with the entire corp.  Their newsletter has more clout than ours.”

So, what do you think are the best communications strategies for getting customer knowledge into the brains of decision makers?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.