Event metrics allow marketers to measure their event’s success, effectively communicate the impact with the executives, and optimize events to improve ROI. Without this data, it can be exceedingly tough to analyze the success of your events, or to know how to improve. Today, marketers understand that Event Intelligence plays an important role in their decision-making process. But knowing which event metrics to track can be a challenge.
Event intelligence metrics refer to the insights that are pulled from data that your events generate. This can include stats like registration data or session attendance. It can also include more granular data such as levels of:
- Attendee-to-attendee engagement and interaction
- Participant engagement with your sponsors
- Interest in your products or services
These metrics and insights have the potential to redefine the way you plan, design, and analyze future events. So, it stands to reason that event intelligence metrics can be crucial to the success of every type of event you host. There’s intelligence in every stage of an event, from start to finish. And the data used to formulate event intelligence can be gathered before, during, and continue after the event.
To make use of it, you need a well-structured data strategy plan that sets out the best ways to collect and analyze the information available to you. That way, you can report on all the elements you need to ascertain how successful past events have been, and what you need to do to improve future events.
The Most Important Event Metrics You Need
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Registration Trends
Once your event registration opens, it’s important to closely monitor your registration numbers and plot them against milestones. While it is vitally important to get people to register for events, it is just as important to ensure that they actually attend. One great way to do this is by using event marketing software that automates the registration process.First, you can evaluate registration rates. Your event intelligence metrics will (or should) tell you which marketing efforts were most successful in getting people to register. This will indicate the kind of attendance you might have expected. The question is, did attendance rates live up to expectations? If there’s a large discrepancy between the two figures, then they probably didn’t! Certain Event Intelligence allows you to automatically capture attendee data, track registrations, and view important registration trends like who registered for which session, is there an increase in the number of registrations? What resulted in the increase in registrations? compare your registrations to past events and see if you’re where you need to be or should you promote your event.
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Attendee Engagement Levels
To effectively engage with your attendees, it’s essential that you know who your audiences are. Understanding who you’re connecting with allows you to craft the right messaging and share relevant content that would likely to resonate with them. These event intelligence metrics will tell you:
- How many people you targeted during your pre-event marketing campaign registered for the event and how many attended vs no-shows.
- If your event was the hybrid type, it will tell you what percentage attended in-person vs those who used the virtual options.
- How many attendees took advantage of breakout sessions or turned up for keynote presentations.
- How many people checked into (or clicked on) sponsor booths.
- How many attendees engaged and who (or what percentage) took part in discussions, Q&A sessions, and/or sent private messages.
- What marketing collateral (brochures, flyers, and so on) did you offer, and what did attendees download?
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Post-Event Survey Responses
One of the best ways to assess attendee satisfaction is with surveys. You can generate polls and surveys during events, or you can send out post-event surveys. Ask questions that will help shape future events, including those that relate to:
- What they liked most about the event
- What, if anything, they didn’t like
- What elements of the event they found most valuable
- Which activities, topics, keynotes, etc. they’d like to see at the next event
Net promoter scores can also be useful in satisfaction surveys. For example, on a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend the event to a colleague or friend? The more data and event metrics you collect and analyze, the easier and more effective it will be to identify and repeat the components of your event that succeeded and improve those that were less successful.
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Mobile App Usage
Event engagement apps provide content, event schedules, information about speakers, maps, and everything else that those planning to attend the event need. They work for in-person, virtual, and hybrid events and encourage interactivity.
If you’ve made the decision to invest in an event app, you likely want to ensure it delivers. You will also need to generate enough interest in the app to ensure your event participants download it. The number of downloads made will be another event intelligence metric for you to measure, as will the level of engagement in the app.Event app engagement might include anything from games and live chat to activity feeds, discussion boards, or Q&As. Sponsor engagement, as well as social feed and sharing of photos, may also be part of an engagement app. It can also be a good idea to use event apps to get survey feedback from attendees and other participants.In-app advertising can also be an effective tool within event apps that can add to event revenue. So, the more event apps your attendees download, the more potential advantages you will have.
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Scheduled Meetings with Prospects and Customers
This is where those all-important leads can come into play. One of the most common goals of events is to generate revenue, either through sales or the promotion of business opportunities, or by generating leads to follow-up after the event. Your event intelligence metrics will identify how many meetings are scheduled with prospects or customers, and then how successful these are after follow-up.Making use of a complete event experience platform can give you the advantage of integrated data collection, digital technologies, and tools to maximize on leads.
Ultimately, you will be able to identify and use event intelligence data to not only improve your events but also convert your high-target prospects into paying customers.
Schedule a demo with Certain today to see how we can help you take your events to the next level!