How to Start Measuring Event Success

Events can be a powerful marketing tool. However, it’s important to leverage reporting and analytics to prove their success and optimize your event strategies going forward. Read on to learn more about how you can capture meaningful virtual event metrics. 

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Although Peter Drucker’s quote may have initially applied to his work more than 80 years ago with well-renowned manufacturing companies such as General Motors, it still applies today to all things marketing: content marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing – and yes – event marketing. Just like GM analyzes the performance of an auto assembly line, if you want to improve your events, you too need to measure their performance and calculate ROI. 

Sounds easy, right? After all, there are myriad event technology solutions on the market, many with sophisticated reporting and analytics tools that put event attendance numbers, registration numbers, and even the number of content downloads at your fingertips.

And the truth is, with the right event technology, event success is easy to measure… but only if you take time first to identify the objectives of your event marketing strategy. Are you creating events to drive leads and/or generate brand awareness? Or maybe you’re hosting an event to launch a new product, recruit new employees, or train new managers? 

Once you’ve outlined the objectives of your event strategy, you can then define how you will assess its success, which leads to the question, what KPI for events do you measure? For example, you might use event management KPIs to measure brand awareness by registration and attendee numbers or lead generation by the number of booth visits or presentation attendance. There’s no right or wrong answer, and no “magic number” will tell you how successful your events were. However, if you hone in on three to five metrics that you feel reflect how well you achieved your event objectives, you’ll be primed to demonstrate your events’ value and iterate your event strategy to improve continuously.  

Where to Get Data From?

Conduct Post-Event Surveys 

Of course, numbers tell just part of the story; they really only tell the quantity side. For a perspective on quality, you may want to turn to survey questions to ask your attendees — ideally, those conducted on-the-spot while an event is taking place. But if this isn’t possible, follow-up surveys may be used. Asking open-ended questions that leave room for lengthy responses can help you gauge the reaction of attendees. Ask them detailed questions that don’t have yes or no answers. Instead of asking “Did you like this event?” or “Would you return to this event if it were held again?”, ask questions like “What did you like about this event?” or “Why do you think you would come back to this event?”

When you have a wide range of answers to open-ended questions, you’ll learn a lot. It’s rare for an event to be successful the first time it happens; most successful occasions have to recur multiple times before their organizers and planners can build on what’s been successful and phase out what’s not been as effective.

Smart event planners and organizers are able to not just examine numbers, but to look deeper and to ask “Why?” instead of just asking “What?” or “How much?”. Using the answers to “Why?” questions to build better experiences in the future is the key to successful event planning.

Poll your Attendees

Live polling is also a useful tool for measuring in-event attendee satisfaction and engagement and overall event success. Polling metrics can provide insight into a session’s success, attendee impressions of the speaker’s content, and more.

Why is measuring attendee satisfaction crucial?

If the attendees are satisfied, they’ll have a better impression of your business and learn a thing or two. This can help your branding and may lead to additional word of mouth.

How do you measure attendee satisfaction?

Polls and event engagement tools can help you assess whether attendees felt sessions or events were worth their time. Check the social mentions about the event. Use web-based software to track them and measure the sentiment of the comments. Also, check the sentiment of the comments about the brand itself. Compare the ones from before and after the event.

Monitor Social Media Activity

We live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Your event needs to be there, too. You should know how people speak about it. One way to measure event success is to track mentions, reposts, etc. on social media. When planning your event, make sure to create unique hashtags for event stakeholders and attendees to use on social platforms to promote your event and share their event experience with followers. 

Why are social media mentions important to keep track of?

Whether you want it or not, social media play a role in branding and buzz. Mentions show you the trends, such as the social perception of your brand.

How do you keep track of social media mentions?

There are a few web-based apps that track mentions and measure the sentiment. Use them to track this KPI.

Examine Registration and Attendance Numbers

Registration and attendance is a straightforward way to evaluate your event's success. You’ll also want to compare registration and attendance numbers from one event to the next, as this will inform your long-term event strategy. For example, do events held in September yield more attendees than events held in February? Or do events with multiple agenda tracks perform better than events with only one? You can also compare registration and attendance numbers by participation type. For example, how many attendees participated with an exhibit-hall-only pass versus an all-access pass? This information can help you think through pricing and participation level strategies for future events.

Why is measuring event attendance crucial?

The coverage of the estimated audience with the real-life one tells you how efficient your efforts were. Also, it is the basis for further calculations, such as cost per attendee, or ROI. What’s more, it keeps track of pre-event promotion efficiency. For further events, it will help you keep your goals realistic.

How do you measure event attendance?

You can count sold tickets or check-ins. You can check it manually, or use software for event organizers that will do it for you.

Many people RSVP the invitation but never show up. Tracking event metrics related to acquisition and attendance can also help you determine the effectiveness of your pre-event marketing and be used for future marketing.

Why is acquisition important?

This is a common problem, especially concerning free events. By measuring acquisition, you will know how valuable your event was to the targeted audience.

How do you measure event acquisition?

This is pretty simple: compare the number of people who RSVP (registrants) with the number of people that actually attended your event (attendees).

Compare Overhead Costs and Revenue

Another method of measuring event success is comparing overhead costs and revenue. If your event generated a significant profit, you’ll want to make sure you understand why it did and replicate the event “formula.” In addition, it can be helpful to examine revenue by campaign or promo code, so you understand which event marketing tactics had the greatest impact. 

Evaluate Sponsor Interactions 

Maintaining a positive relationship with your event sponsors is key to a successful, long-term events strategy. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure you’re tracking booked demos and booth visits as well as asking sponsor-related questions on your post-event survey and in-event polls. 

Measure Speaker Engagement 

You can gauge your attendees’ satisfaction with the speakers on your agenda by measuring the number of session views and session ratings. In addition, you’ll capture more feedback if you enable the attendees to engage with the speaker through live polls, live audience reactions, or post-session surveys. It’s also a good idea to analyze session metrics such as  average view duration, page views, and virtual versus in-person attendance rates if your event was hybrid. These metrics can uncover commonalities amongst popular sessions, such as topics or session length, and you can use these insights to inform future event agendas.

Examine the Number of Returning Attendees

Evaluate the number of returning attendees at your event. If this number is high, your event is clearly offering something worthwhile. If the number of returning attendees is low, you should examine your event to determine why there’s a dropoff in attendance. Perhaps you’ve moved the event date or location or eliminated a popular activity from your agenda and need to reconsider. 

Review Sales Leads and New Opportunities

While it’s crucial to evaluate attendee satisfaction with your event, you also have to measure how many sales leads and/or new opportunities your event generated, as well as the dollar value of these deals. These metrics will help you calculate marketing-influenced or marketing-generated revenue, which can in turn help you build the business case for future event budgets. 

Measuring Events - KPIs

In short, you need to know whether you’re meeting your goals. How can you track event ROI if you don’t know how you’re measuring it? Tracking event metrics tied to your predefined goals can help you demonstrate that ROI.

Monitoring event management is the only way to make event success a repeatable experience.

Employer branding events are various. There are internal events and external events. They all have different goals. Internal stand-ups, parties, and meetups are hosted to build team spirit. They help to come up with some ideas on how to solve current problems and even to discuss together the development course of the company. The external events can be launched to attract new talents, increase brand reach, or establish a certain image.

Only when you know what you want to achieve can you effectively measure it. And only when you know how to measure it, will you succeed time after time.

Setting Event KPIs

Before you can measure KPIs, you must first define your goals. This must happen during the initial event planning stage as you determine the underlying reasons for any event. For example, your event metrics would be very different if you were hosting sustainable events to attract environmental activists vs. a hybrid event for oil and gas companies.

The first step will be to decide what you want to achieve with the event. Will you be tracking event metrics for attendance, attendee satisfaction, new loads, or closed deals? Write them all down. That’s the canvas for your goal map.

Pick the one goal that is the most important from the company’s point of view, and name it the main goal; this will be the key indicator of your success. Then, take the secondary goals and segment them in terms of importance. Make sure your event tech integrations are capable of tracking event metrics the way you need.

Using a virtual event platform you can track every element of your event, whether it’s completely virtual or in-person featuring virtual elements in a hybrid setting.

KPIs for Events Worth Measuring

When determining KPIs, it’s important to be specific to determine to what extent you achieved your event goals. Here are some event KPI examples.

Event KPI: Sales

In most cases, your business sells products or services. You may host an in-person or virtual event to launch a new product, promote your services, or attract new customers. Here are some sales KPIs to track the success of an event:

• New customers: Closing new clients is the “holy grail” for many event organizers and measuring deal attribution or influence from your event will help you estimate the event’s ROI. Fortunately, event technology makes it easy to measure deal attribution or influence. For example, the Eventory by 6Connex app will assign a QR code to every attendee, enabling you to track behavior such as presentation attendance, booth visits, networking meetings, and more. Another way to measure new deal attribution or influence from your event is to provide attendees with a special code, which can be redeemed when purchasing your product or service.
• Net new leads: Sometimes, the most notable achievement from your event can be a new lead. Again, event technology such as the Eventory app makes it easy to measure lead generation. Remember, new leads can come from any number of attendee behaviors, including signing up for a newsletter or joining a social media community.
• Sales funnel progression: You’ll likely have event attendees already in your sales funnel. Track their progression through the funnel after your event. For example, did they move from an awareness stage prior to the event to a consideration stage after the event?
• Average sale value: Estimate the average value of products and/or services sold because of the event. Compare it with data from previous events. You could also compare the average sale value by sales rep to determine who performs best at events and then staff future events accordingly.
• Total sales value: Calculate the total value of products and/or services sold because of the event. Compare the event performance against historical data as well as against other marketing channels. This will help you assess event ROI.
• Networking: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. In addition to closing deals, it’s important for sales reps to network at events and bring new contacts into the marketing funnel. Setting networking objectives for sales teams is common prior to event participation.

Event KPI: Finance

This group of event marketing KPIs can be used to maximize event profits and inform future event budgets.

• ROI: This metric calculates how much revenue you made (or lost) organizing an event. When measuring ROI, be sure to consider all event expenses. It’s reasonable to include non-monetary expenses, such as the value of the event planning team’s time. Then, calculate your income from the event. This should include new products and services sold, sponsorships sold, and ticket sales if there were fees for event participation. 
• Profit: Like the value of sold products and services, calculating the profit from new deals that were either influenced or directly attributed to your event may be important, especially to your sales team, as many reps are compensated based on profit. When calculating profit, be sure to account for not only production costs but also staff expenses.

Event KPI: Marketing

Marketers can use KPIs for events to measure the event's influence on any number of marketing goals, such as increasing brand awareness, acquiring new marketable contacts, or accelerating existing contacts through the marketing funnel.

• Audience size: How many people registered for your event, and how many attended? This data is easy to capture with event technology that includes automated registration, ticketing, and badging features such as Eventory. You can also leverage QR codes to track session attendance, booth visits, and more to better understand your agenda's most appealing parts.
• Website traffic: You can check whether the traffic on your website increased during and after your event with a tool like Google Analytics. Remember that relationships established during the event are not restricted to the time of the event itself, so measure website traffic long after the closing remarks!
• Brand awareness: A “side effect” of a well-organized event can be an increase in brand awareness. However, brand awareness can be difficult to measure. One idea: consider monitoring social media both before the event and in the weeks following the event. Research the frequency with which your brand appears. Another option is to create a dedicated hashtag for the event and track its activity. You can also create a short survey using event technology such as Eventory and ask your participants about their perception of your brand before and after the event.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): The NPS indicator was created by Fred Reicheld, who devised a standard for measuring client loyalty and satisfaction. In an NPS survey, your clients are asked to grade, on a scale of 1 to 10, their willingness to recommend your services and products to other people. The scale is divided into 3 categories: results between 0 and 6 are negative opinions, 7 and 8 are neutral, and 9 and 10 are favorable. NPS is measured by subtracting the percentage of negative opinions from the percentage of “promoters.” Why is it worth measuring? It allows you to easily compare the score of your brand with the competition, and in the case of events, you can measure your NPS both before and after your event to determine whether the event influenced the score.
• Inbound hyperlinks: This KPI can be measured before and after your event. The metric indirectly reflects your brand awareness and is best captured by using tools such as Google Analytics.
• Session ratings: Asking attendees to rate your event sessions will give you detailed insights into how you can fine-tune your event agenda to maximize attendee satisfaction at future events. The best way to capture the data is either through in-event survey technology found in many event apps or through a post-event survey.
• Interactions: If one of your event’s value propositions is the chance to network with industry peers, consider taking advantage of a mobile event app such as Eventory, which will allow you to track how many times participants exchanged contact data, sent in-app messages, and more.
• Event movements:  By measuring this KPI, you will know which event activities generated the most interest. For example, did people attend more networking sessions or visit the exhibit hall? Which booths did they visit, and how much time did they spend at each one? Again, an event app with QR code technology will make it easy to track this data. 
• Social media mentions: Don't miss this KPI to track the success of an event. Measure social media mentions with classic monitoring tools such as Brand24 or SentiOne. Be sure to measure the sentiment of those mentions so you can assess how your brand was received.

6Connex tip: Speaking of KPIs, are you looking for the best way to measure event success? We've got you covered! Our benchmark for attendee engagement takes it a step further - consulting on how to make your next event even more successful. Our consultations provide actionable suggestions on how to continually improve so you’re not only meeting but exceeding your KPIs. We're well-versed in what we do, and we analyze the following factors to provide you with an attendee engagement score:

• Attendee conversion,
• Content views, 
• Location entries, 
• Gamification participation,
• and Webcast participation 

At the core of the Benchmark for Attendee Engagement is the Attendee Engagement Score, which measures the average attendee engagement level during the event. The higher the score, the healthier and happier your attendees, and the better your ROI.

Event KPI: HR

If you organize an event as an employer, your goals could include increasing brand awareness, capturing new talent, or retaining your current employees. Collecting event data will give you more information about your performance. Here are some event management KPIs that you'll find helpful.

• Attendee profiles: In addition to measuring attendance numbers, you should identify the characteristics of the people present. If the purpose of your event was to recruit new talent, did the attendees’ profiles match your ideal candidate profiles? Thanks to features in event apps such as Eventory, you can easily capture demographic and other data at the point of registration. 
• Applications: This metric is straightforward. If the goal of your event is to fill open positions, how many job applications were completed?
• Candidates: This metric is also straightforward. If the goal of your event is to recruit new talent for open positions, how many right-fit candidates did you generate?
• Interviews scheduled and held: If your event is for recruiting purposes, be sure to use an event app such as Eventory, which generates personalized business cards and facilitates networking. Then track how many interviews were scheduled and conducted at the event. Keep in mind, you can also track interview activity with event participants after the event to get a more complete picture of your event’s success.  
• Length of the hiring process: You may find it interesting to compare the time it takes you to fill an open position with a hiring event versus without a hiring event to verify whether the hiring event is a worthwhile recruiting strategy.
• Hiring costs: This is a crucial event management KPI. In addition to comparing how much time it takes to fill an open position with an event versus without one, you might also want to compare the cost of filling an open position with a hiring event versus without one.   

Event KPI: Partners

Occasionally, you participate in an event as a partner, perhaps in the role of a sponsor or exhibitor. Participation, however, usually comes at a cost, so you want to make sure you measure the right event KPIS to see the return on your investment.

• Booth visitors: If you’re exhibiting at the event, knowing how many people visited your booth is important. Using QR codes can help you easily understand this number, and event technology with gamification features can also help you capture detailed data.
• Time spent at the booth: Measuring the average time each visitor spent at your booth will allow you to assess the quality of your booth experience. Was the booth so interactive that people spent time, or did they pass by without interest? This type of data can inform your booth strategy at future events. 
• Website referral traffic: Measure the number of website hits you receive from the event website, event social media channels, event email campaigns, etc. 
• Net new leads: Partners, too, will want to measure the number of new leads they capture at an event. This data will help you determine whether event participation was worthwhile and inform future event calendars.
• Presentation attendance and rating: If your event partnership included a speaking session, measure how many people were present and how the content was received using feedback tools in event apps such as Eventory. The data can be used to iterate your presentation as necessary to better meet the needs of your audience in the future.  

The Benefits of Monitoring Event Performance

Keeping track of your position on the goal completion map gives you the information you need to determine what’s working, what’s not, and what you need to do more of or less of in future events.

It shows if the actions you picked to organize and promote an event are efficient. If something doesn’t go according to plan, you have a chance to modify it and adjust to the current situation.

No event is perfect, so you also shouldn’t be afraid of bad news. Bad news can, in fact, be a blessing. How many times have you said, “if I only knew that earlier?” That’s your early information system!

The other benefit is that by setting goals and KPIs, you can better control who attends your event. That’s right. No more medical students showing up for an IT event! It might seem trivial, but adjusting the audience is crucial if you want to optimize costs for the event organizers or company. Exclude marketing to people who won’t have any interest in presented topics and will definitely not help you to fulfill your goals.

Also, monitoring event management performance is crucial for measuring event ROI. However, the return on the investment alone may not be enough to determine if it was worth it to organize a particular event. Secondary KPIs will help to complete the picture.

Last, but not least, numbers are the universal language that all departments understand. Event organization requires the cooperation of many people. A transparent KPI system eliminates any misunderstandings and keeps everybody focused on the goals.

Data analysis isn’t just a domain of SEO specialists or bookkeepers. Everyone involved in managing an event should use it to achieve goals and keep track of their performance.

Learn More About Event Management with 6Connex

Are you looking forward to better hires, more effective fundraising, more entertaining conferences, and so on? 6Connex is here.

As the leading provider of in-person, hybrid, and virtual event technology for enterprises worldwide, it’s our job to ensure your events meet and exceed your benchmarks. We offer virtual event solutions and engagement tools of every kind, and we’re ready to demonstrate how we can help.

Now on-demand!

"Embracing AI in Events: Navigating Opportunities and Challenges"

Dive into the future of events with our insightful webinar, "Embracing AI in Events: Navigating Opportunities and Challenges,". Join our esteemed speakers: Dahlia El Gazzar - Founder of DAHLIA+ Agency, Stephen Kaufman - Chief Product Officer at Inriver, and Henry Tran - CTO at 6Connex

Explore the transformative potential of AI in event planning, and engagement, and the challenges it may bring. Stay informed and inspired as we navigate the thrilling opportunities and challenges that AI brings to the dynamic world of events.