3 Pieces of Data You Should Get From Your Event Attendees

We know, whether you’re putting together your event for the first time or the tenth time, running it well is probably a priority of yours. It’s obvious why. You want your attendees to be raving fans about their experiences, to go home after your event excited for next year, and more importantly — you want them telling their friends to come, so you have less work to do marketing it in the future.

But if running an event well is your priority (and really, how couldn’t it be!) then it’s essential that you know how you’re doing along the way. This allows you to make changes and adapt to what your attendees want, even when you’re in the middle of your event — and to do that you have to ask your attendees for feedback.

While this may seem obvious, knowing exactly what they want or how they feel can be extremely difficult, and for many new event organizers, asking can fall totally off the radar.

When you’re just trying to keep all the balls up in the air, how can you also go about getting information from your attendees that will lead to them helping you improve your event while it’s happening or even in the years to come?

The answer is simple, data.

Asking your attendees to answer simple questions that translates to implementable feedback can help you learn which parts of your event ran smoothly, and which parts may need a little more work.

However, not all data at an event is created equal, and some pieces you collect from your attendees can make or break your event.

Here at Superevent our goal is always to help you put on your best event possible, so this week we’re uncovering how you can go straight to the source and begin asking your attendees for the feedback that matters the first time.

Simple data

While this seems basic, and hardly like data at all, these two pieces of information can be used for everything from marketing to tracking your attendee retention rate.

For example, let’s say this is your third year running an event, and you want to see how many people have attended not only this upcoming year but events that have happened every year. Name and email is by far the easiest way to track these pieces.

This also allows you to see which part of your marketing funnel they heard about your event and bought tickets. For example, were they on your list before signing up for your event, or were they new to your organization in general? With these pieces of information, you can go about planning and restructuring your marketing strategies accordingly for the years to come.

Net Promoter Score

The second most important piece of data you can collect from your attendees is their ‘Net Promoter Score’. This score measures the willingness of your attendees to recommend your event to others. This can be as simple as asking them to rate your event between 1-10 and using the average response to see how you did.

• A rating of 1-6, indicate that attendees weren’t happy with their experience and are more likely to discourage someone from attending, rather than encourage them.
• A rating 7-8 indicates a neutral attendee that will neither encourage new attendees or speak poorly about their experience.
• A 9-10 shows a group of raving fans who will eagerly help promote your event through word of mouth.

Like all other pieces of data, the easiest way to find out your Net Promoter Score is to ask attendees after your event in a simple email survey.

While you can include other questions in this survey to see how you did across the board, knowing your Net Promoter Score will be singlehandedly beneficial for knowing how your attendees felt about their experience as a whole — so don’t bombard them with too many questions, and end up not getting any answers.

Likewise, it can be a good idea to follow up with any attendees who gave you a score of less than 6, to see specifically what went wrong and learn how you can improve.

Attendee Experience

While your Net Promoter Score is incredibly useful to understand how your event did after it’s finished, what about if you want to know how your attendees are feeling about it while it’s happening live?

Asking your attendees for feedback, while your event is running via an email or with a quick poll, like the one we feature in our app, can get real-time information and allow you to make changes to improve your event before it’s too late.

While there are many different factors that go into making up a good event experience, here are a couple of easy places to start asking for feedback:

• Breakout sessions — If you’re running a large event with multiple breakout sessions or small groups, asking your attendees which ones they attended and enjoyed can be very useful for understanding the issues your audience is seeking help with, and if your event runs multiple days, if there needs to be any restructuring, ie. with a room size, dropping a session, etc.This can also be great information for deciding who you can bring back for next year, based on which speakers draw in the most people.

• Venue and food — Another really easy piece of attendee feedback to grab is their thoughts and feeling about the venue and services, such as food and entertainment. This can be particularly useful if this is your first time hosting an event in a specific location, or are using a new caterer, etc. However, asking about the venue and food runs deeper than just making sure they liked what you served — bad food, or inadequate services can leave a lasting impression on your attendees and dealing with them early can be the difference between being a fan of your event and not.
• Transportation — Much like the venue and services, transportation can leave a lasting impression on your attendees. If you arranged a shuttle service for attendees staying off site, or if you provided directions for how to get to your event, you’ll want to ensure that those are clear and running smoothly by checking in.

Final thoughts

Running your best possible event can feel daunting, but staying afloat is easy when you ask! Remember, success is an iterative process, but how will you change your event if you don’t know what’s wrong? Click To Tweet

Try to find simple tools that can help make it easy for your staff members to check in with attendees, ask questions often, and begin implementing that which can be changed as soon as possible.

As always, running a good event comes down to flexibility, so keep adapting to the feedback you receive and everyone is bound to have a great time.