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Table of Contents
Overview
Every event planner wishes to create an event that is successful. However, if you ask different people what success is, you are likely to get a lot of different answers. Events are actually organised for various reasons from celebrations to events or educational motives. These events take place in diverse industries while targeting a wide scope of audience along with their agendas and expectations as well. And thus, how to define successful events is based on the underlying objectives and people attending them which means no two such successful events shall look alike at all. With such complexity, it may seem hard to determine whether an event has been successful or not. But once you establish the metrics to evaluate, the KPIs to track, and the method for calculating return on investment, you will find that event management is quite easy. This blog will take a look at what success may mean in the events sector and beyond, effective ways to measure event success, and event ROI and KPIs.
What are event KPIs and why do they matter?
Event KPIs are measurable indicators that help determine whether an event has achieved its objectives. Such metrics help event planners know what is working and what is not and where there is room for improvement.
Monitoring
It helps you check on the performance, check if the event hit the marks set for it, refine your planning by learning from success and failures for future events.
Show ROI
Show evidence that the event holds value to the stakeholders.
Boost attendee experience
Collect feedback to improve what attendees experience.
Why should you keep an eye on event KPIs?
Performance tracking
It offers a clear method to know whether the objectives set for an event are achieved or not.
Strategic improvements
The learnings from the KPI inform the creation of better strategies for future events.
Stakeholder updates
Provides hard evidence to stakeholders regarding how the event performed.
KPIs of a successful event
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Registration counts and attendee check-ins
Total registrations are another measure of how successful an event was. It also helps to include the number of people who attend and check into the event. Many registrants didn’t appear at the event itself. This can be assumed since some of them may have purchased tickets but did not attend. However, if this gap is minimal, it shows that the event was more successful.
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Post-event surveys
It’s best to give out surveys after the event to attendees. You should make your surveys concise and focused to make them most impactful. Once you have the results, you should calculate the NPS or net promoter score that you got from the survey questions to determine how the attendees feel about the event. This way, you’ll be able to improve your planning for future events.
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Social media engagement
In today’s world of digital world, the social media activity of festival-goers serves as a near-instant measure of success. To simplify tracking, encourage attendees to use a specific event hashtag, allowing you to see how often it has been mentioned and shared on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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Income earned
Ultimately, revenue figures are the measure of success. To determine whether your event has met expectations, look at the net revenue after subtracting all overhead expenses.
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Sponsor feedback surveys
Just like the surveys conducted for attendees after the event, send a survey to your sponsors to measure their level of engagement. A high net promoter score in the feedback indicates positive outcomes and significantly boosts the likelihood of future partnerships.
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Collect feedback from your attendees
Live polling is an excellent method to get an idea of the attendee’s satisfaction and engagement, along with the overall success of your event. Poll data can give valuable insights into how a session went, how the audience felt about the speaker’s content, and so much more.
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Evaluate speaker engagement
Monitor session views and ratings to get the influence your speakers are carrying. Engage attendees with polls, reactions, or surveys when the sessions go live. Also, use views in terms of duration, page views, or hybrid attendance, to find any trends. This way, learn from popular sessions to refine the agenda for next time.
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Return rate of attendees
Monitor the return rate of your event attendees as a value indicator. Return is high if success can be achieved; otherwise, find a cause for low return rate. Identify what led to a decline, and it might be because of date change or removal of activity and therefore address necessary adjustments.
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Evaluate sales leads
Evaluate the sales leads and opportunities generated by your event. Monitor the monetary value of deals to understand the revenue driven by your marketing efforts. Use these findings to support your budget for future events.
Measure event success
In order to assess how well something went, one can follow the following tips:-
Set goals in advance
Set clear goals at the beginning, so you’ll have a way to measure what you want afterwards.
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Use specific benchmarks
Have specific benchmarks through measurable objectives along with clear KPIs and metrics that could make it easy to evaluate whether things went quite well.
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With the audience in mind
Have a plan with the audience for your event and make sure they are met by it, thereby keeping them satisfied. In the after-phase, check upon your goals with which you initially started to calculate the overall success.
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Collect real-time feedback
Speaking with attendees at the event gets the guard down and allows for candid feedback that could be positive or constructive to making the next event even bigger and better.
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Look at other metrics too
Beyond your core objectives, think about additional metrics to fully understand success, and improve your planning for next time.
Community 360 – Your all-in-one event management tool
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Manage events
Community 360 makes it super easy for users to handle both live and virtual events. It connects with popular tools like Zoom, Teams, and Eventbrite, making the whole planning and execution a breeze.
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Personalised event pages
Event planners can whip up custom event pages that showcase all the important information, promotional material, and registration details, giving everything a polished look.
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Feedback tools
There are unlimited surveys and polls with a simple drag-and-drop setup, perfect for gathering feedback from attendees before, during, and after the events.
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Instant communication features
There is a direct channel for attendees and organisers to communicate with each other, amplifying interaction and engagement using community chat features in Community 360.
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Easy registration management
Our e-commerce feature streamlines the process of managing attendee registrations, keeping track of how many people have signed up and checking them in to see participation levels.
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Easy payment processing
The platform includes payment processing for the easy management of transactions regarding event registrations or ticket sales directly on the site.
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Document management
All key documents such as agendas, speaker profiles, and marketing materials for events are easily stored and shared so everyone involved can have easy access to them.
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Performance analytics
Community 360 comes with customisable reporting tools that let planners get into different metrics about event performance, which helps them measure success against their KPIs.
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Mobile accessibility
The platform has a mobile application where the attendees can check details on an event going on in real-time, connect with other participants, and get updates.
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Task management features
This function enables the event organisers to manage planning tasks effectively and carry out all minor and major details, ensuring they meet deadlines.
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Integration with social media
Community 360 increases social media engagement through event promotion on multiple platforms and tracks engagement with unique hashtags.
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Emergency alerts and notifications
The system has the capability of sending emergency alerts or other vital information to participants, thus ensuring that everyone is well updated at an event.
Make every event successful
Knowing what success looks like for your event is crucial in building up your strengths and seeing where you can improve. We hope that this blog has taken you through the various dimensions of success in event management. On top of that, using a robust event management platform like Community 360 really helps you set clear goals, create and implement smart plans, and carry out important evaluations after the event.
Keeping these points in mind, you can thoroughly evaluate how well your event went and set the stage for refining your strategies for future events.
