Post-event Analysis: Metrics to Gauge the Success of Your Virtual Event and Why it’s Important

01-Apr-2020 01:05 PM Digital Marketing

Companies who do not measure success of an event stand to leave money under the table. Since data is the new oil, be it in business operations or in events, companies must collect data that will help them in the future. Some of them may not know how to gauge the success of an event and what they must do after the virtual event has ended.

While how many empty seats you filled may be all that you are interested in, there are plenty of metrics by which you can measure success. You must have a plan for before and after, so that you know all the numbers you want to know and make your next event better.

While your sales team keeps track of attendees and nurtures them for the success of future events and campaigns, you must engage with your account staff and your digital marketing team to track metrics.

Whatever metrics are in the list below must be used even before the planning phase begins:

Number of Registrations/Sales Numbers

Some people register ahead, but some people register at the event, whether it is online or in a physical location. The total number of final registrations gives a clear understanding of sales. It tells you which month had the highest number of registrations and if you have to rethink your sales strategy or not.

Monitor the sales for the event ever since you created the page for it. Keep track of who made the registrations. This includes age, first-timers, repeat customers, the profession they are in, etc. While you do that, keep track of how many enquiries you have on the phone/email, signups for email newsletters, etc. This shows an interest in people in your events.

Post-Event Surveys

Asking your attendees if they liked the event or not will help you understand the attendee satisfaction and ensure that future events happen without any problems and exceeds expectation. Offer numeric response options if possible. You will draw deeper insights with clean and quantifiable data.

Registration Types

By monitoring ticket types, you can be more granular with registration data. By dividing registration numbers by ticket types, it will let you know which ticket type performed the best and which ones were appealing to your attendees. This data will help you be more targeted when organizing your next one.

Post-Event Surveys

The best way to know how attendees felt about the event is to ask them. The sales team must engage with them by asking a bunch of questions like:

• Are you likely to attend the next event?
• Will you recommend our event/products/services to family and friends?
• After attending the event, are you more or less likely to buy product M during the launch, or will you go with product N?

Even if you have sold out the venue, it does not mean that you will receive a five-star rating. You must also provide a box that can let the respondents answer the “less likely” or the “very unlikely” responses. Surveys will let you know about the venue, the format of the event, entertainment in the event or the lack thereof.

Revenue and Overhead Cost

The purpose of doing events is to bring in more revenue to your company and to promote your company’s other products and services. Otherwise, why do it at all? However, you must spend some money to make it all back and then some. If your event does not perform like you wanted to, your numbers could show higher on the liability side.

Measure parameters like:

• Anticipated cost versus actual cost
• Anticipated revenue versus actual revenue
• Actual cost versus actual revenue

Please note that incurring more cost than revenue does not mean that your event has failed. If you have collected emails of attendees, that’s a battle half won. Add the list to your newsletter audience list and promote your products. Repeat customers are also good for your company. For more marketing metrics, read this article.

Another metric to keep track is the time taken to plan your event. Will you use your own resources to plan the event, get certificates done, and update event platforms? If you do this, you may lose out on sales opportunities which could bring more signups. Instead spend money and hire an agency that can look after getting event creatives done. Call Verbinden to find out more.

Monitor Social Media Activity

There are chances that you will be actively promoting your event on social media. This means that you will be looking at analytics and monitoring social media activity. Keeping your audience engaged will make them talk about it and share content on their own social media handles.

Create an event hashtag and check if they are using the hashtag even after the event. Social media mentions are equivalent to giving a direct ‘shoutout.’ Read posts to see what the attendees are saying. Check for praises and also complaints.

Keep track of the reaction to a post namely, likes, shares, and retweets. This will show how much the post resonated with the audience. Doing this will also help you understand the social media friendliness of your event and it tells you if your attendees know how to use social media or not.

Community Member Activities

This metric will ensure that you are aware of activity levels within the community as well as the types of attendees that are most active in the app. Active community members may view profiles or spend a lot of time on the app.

This data will be useful in optimizing the mobile app experience and find ways to engage attendees within the app. Reviewing the messages sent within members will be helpful in facilitating connections.

Sponsorship Satisfaction

If your event is fully funded by you/by the fee paid by your attendees, you are in luck. You may rely on satisfaction surveys of your attendees. If you however have a sponsor funding your event, the satisfaction level of your sponsors also counts.

To know the pulse with your sponsor, set up a face-to-face meeting or a Skype call with them. This is because you want your sponsors in a long-term relationship with your company. Take criticisms from them and implement their feedback.

Keep track of the social interactions of your attendees with your sponsors. You should also make sure that your attendees are interested in your sponsors or not. This will help you close future partnerships.

Track Customers Acquired and Returning Attendees

You may want to conduct a recurring event, weather it is monthly, annually, or weekly, or a follow-up event. To this end, tracking how many attendees are returning may be important. It will give you an idea how much your event resonated with your audience and what the themes of your event must be.

You must also collect how many customers you have converted and acquired after collecting leads. You must make sure if you have acquired the customer because of the event or not. To know this, you may ask the customer directly. You must also ask through which channel they registered for the event. Use technology to create the right data integration.

Which of these Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will you track to determine the success of your event depends on your end goal. There are many more KPIs than what we mentioned here, but these are the most tracked ones. These KPIs will determine how successful your events are and where to improve on.

Verbinden will help you integrate metrics, track KPIs and help you conduct better events. Call us today.