As every event planner knows, planning and executing a corporate event are only the first two hurdles. The final and perhaps most crucial step is assessing the performance of your event to determine its impact. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to use the right event metrics to gain valuable insights into how successful your event was and how to identify areas for improvement. By the end, you’ll understand how a data-driven approach will help you make informed decisions to ensure the future success of every event.
What are Event Metrics?
People often use the terms event metrics and event KPIs interchangeably, but they aren’t the same thing. Before we get into the specific event metrics we and our clients use, let’s make sure we understand the difference.
Event metrics provide a snapshot of the success of an event by offering raw data. These quantitative measurements capture various aspects of the event, from financial performance to attendee engagement and more. Event metrics are also great for tracking the success of sponsorships, evaluating the success of marketing campaigns, and identifying gaps in attendee conversion.
Event KPIs, on the other hand, track performance based on a specific set of event goals. They help your team understand if you’re making the right decisions. While event KPIs tell you if you are headed in the right direction based on goals you set during the event planning stages, event metrics track the specific aspects that are working (or not working) towards those goals.
Benefits of Tracking Event Metrics
The most obvious benefit of tracking event metrics is that you can show the value you create for your organization through events. But there are some other fantastic benefits to tracking event metrics:
A Better Attendee Experience
Event metrics give you insights into exactly when and how much your attendees engaged with your event content. Analyze this data to tweak and adjust your program to elevate the attendee experience.
Reduce Costs (and Increase ROI)
Once you understand the parts of the program your attendees engage with the most, you know which touchpoints to invest in at future events.
Empower Employees to Make Data-Driven Decisions
This is a big one. We have seen firsthand that when you introduce KPIs and metrics into the event planning process, your team undergoes an amazing mental shift. They begin to have a data-driven mindset, which can only improve the event planning process.
Event Metrics to Track to Gauge Your Event’s Success
Now that we know what event metrics are and the benefits they offer, let’s look at some of the metrics every event planner should be tracking.
Number of Registrations
Let’s start at the very beginning. Tracking the number of people who sign up for your event is a great way to understand if your marketing and landing page are effective. This metric is also a great way to gauge whether your audience has any real interest in your topic. If registrations are lower than expected, it may be that you are highlighting a topic that doesn’t appeal to your target audience.
Returning Participants
How many of your attendees have shown up to previous events? The bigger this number, the more confident you can be that you are providing real value. If you are trying to build brand loyalty, gather and analyze as much data as you can to understand your target audience better. The more you focus on creating events that continue to please this demographic, the more they’ll keep coming back for more and will eventually convert.
Engagement Rate
A key event metric to track, engagement rate shows whether your attendees are participating and interacting with each other. Be sure to track different forms of event engagement so you can get a clear picture of what your audience liked and didn’t like. For instance, you can track speaker engagement through surveys and polls and even by observing how much applause each speaker receives. Those speakers who resonate the most with your guests will garner the most interactions and attendance.
Event App Adoption Rate
Thanks to the popularity of virtual and hybrid events, event apps have become indispensable tools for event planners. These apps allow your attendees to participate from anywhere in the world, increasing event attendance and brand reach. Track your event app’s adoption rate by looking for metrics like sign-ins, time spent on the app, and frequency of use.
Website Traffic
An often overlooked event metric is website traffic. After your event, did you notice an uptick in website visits? If so, this could be an indicator that your event was a success and audience members are coming to your site to find out more about your company and products/services. Use Google Analytics to track how much traffic came through searches of your branded and non-branded keywords used at the event.
Cost Per Attendee/Customer Acquisition
You can’t recognize your event’s ROI without first understanding your cost per attendee or cost per customer acquisition. How much money did you spend on planning, marketing, and managing your event versus how much you received in new sales or new impressions? To track this event metric, simply take your final budget (the amount you spent on the event) and divide it by the number of people who attended. Then, continue to track to understand how many attendees turned into customers during or after your event.
Conclusion
By implementing a data-driven approach to event measurement, you can gain valuable insights that will propel your future events to even greater success. Don’t wait to leverage the power of event metrics!
If you’d like help planning your next corporate event and incorporating a data-driven strategy, contact us today. We’ll help you choose the right metrics to track and use the data you collect to create truly impactful events.
