Whenever you host an event, it’s important to make sure that you have some way of gauging the event’s success. It’s never enough to have just one key performance indicator, KPI. You need to have a few in place. This will help you accurately assess if your event can be defined a success by your measurements. You should have multiple methods in mind at the very beginning of planning the event. While selling a lot of tickets may seem like a good way to judge success, it’s not accurate. It also doesn’t help better your events in the future. Below we will go through 3 ways to help you determine if your event was a success.
Monitor social media activity
It’s important for you to be active on social media in the days leading up to your event. This will help get attendees excited about the event. Also, it will get them to talk about it on their own social media accounts. However, to help determine the success of your event you need to closely monitor social media activity after the event. This will help you see if any attendees have continued to send out posts using your event hashtag.
If your attendees are still engaged in the days following your event in a positive way, it’s a good indication that your event was successful. Even if you have attendees leaving negative feedback regarding your event, while it might be hard to read, you need to take it as it is – feedback so you can better your events in the future.
Post-event surveys
The easiest way to get feedback on your event is to ask attendees through a post-event survey. With a post-event survey, you need to keep it short and to the point. You can include a few open-ended questions, but there should be no more than 3 on it. Your attendees won’t complete your survey if it’s too long and requires a lot of work on their end.
However, you can’t just throw a handful of questions together and expect to get insightful responses. You need to know your goals so your questions can be based around them. This will allow you to have a better understanding of any weak points that you can improve on, as well as see what worked great. Also, the best way to have attendees complete a post-event survey is to offer some type of incentive. Your incentive doesn’t need to be anything major, it can be as easy as a coupon or discount for your product or service that you were promoting at the event.
Sales numbers
You need to monitor your sales numbers in the weeks following an event. You should also keep track of who is making the purchases. Are they mainly repeat customers, new customers who attended the event, or past customers who returned after a period of being absent?
Aside from sales numbers, you can measure the number of sign-ups for your newsletter or a free trial. Also, you can see if there’s any raise in the number of email or phone enquiries.