Measuring an event’s success, whether it is an exhibition, a seminar or a conference, allows you to identify what you need to work on when planning future events. Nowadays, participant satisfaction is an integral part of ROI. It represents a large part of the success of your event, especially when it comes to virtual events. Here are some indicators that will allow you to measure the success of your future events.
Define exact criteria before your event
What evaluation criteria should we take into account? This depends largely on your event’s objective – do you want to present your strategic plan to the senior management? Attract new clients? Train your colleagues? Motivate your teams? Depending on the nature of your event, you may require several evaluation criteria. Here are a couple that you may find useful.
The attendance rate
This is the first criterion that comes to mind – count the number of guests. You can also compare the number of people present, in-person and remotely, with the number of people invited. If your event is hybrid, tools are available, such as the OnSite app, to scan your guests’ invitations as they arrive, allowing you to track the attendance rate in real time. You also gain precious data such as the exact time the people arrive, which session had the highest attendance rate, etc.
For virtual events, you can also get more information about the online attendance. The event platform ConnexMe allows you to access the number of participants connected to your event in real time.
Guest involvement
An event’s success is also judged by the extent to which the attendees participate. If they are invested in the event, they will better remember the event’s key messages and will remember it as a positive experience. How can you judge your attendees’ participation? With an event platform like ConnexMe, you can collect the opinion of your audience by organizing different types of votes (evaluation, ranking etc…) and by allowing participants to post their comments live. Through brainstorming, collect and synthesize participants’ ideas on a given topic and allow them to collaborate together.
Throughout the event, you will be able to track the number of private messages sent by your guests, the number of questions asked, the number of people participating in the polls etc. at any point during the event. At the end of the event, you will be able to use this data to find out which moments best captured your guests’ interest.
How your attendees felt about your event
Quantitative evaluation criteria are not sufficient indicators of your event’s success; qualitative data is also required. That’s why evaluation forms are sent to guests to find out what they thought about the event. Compiling this information has long been a time-consuming process – and this is not counting the time spent sending reminders to the guests asking them to fill in the form. With a solution like ConnexMe, you can ask your guests to give their opinion at any time (at the end of each session or at the end of the event). The data is then automatically compiled for easy analysis of the results of your event.
Gather feedback from participants (during and after the event) to find out their interests, needs and expectations. This valuable information will be taken into account when organizing your next events to personalize your content for your audience.
For your hybrid events, consider asking both audiences how they felt to determine if the in-person and virtual experiences had the desired effect.
Your event’s influence
When you are hosting a virtual or hybrid event, one of the aims of which is to attract as many attendees as possible, success can also be measured by its renown. Look at the scale of press coverage, the number of blog posts and the number of times it is mentioned on social media to calculate it. These are good criteria to use to calculate your event’s success.
There are many criteria that can be used to work out how successful your event is – it’s up to you to decide which are relevant to you (before the event). Choose the direct results (the engagement rate, the ratio of participants/guests, the number of attendees, etc.) or the indirect ones (guest satisfaction etc.) Even if some of them are hard to evaluate, new tools will allow you to refine how you calculate your event’s success.
Thanks to our event platform and its numerous features, you will have a better idea of the success of your future events! Interested? Contact us for a demo.
