How Do You Know If Your Event Was a Success?

Running an online event can help increase brand awareness, help you generate new leads, and help you convert leads into paying customers. To make the most out of your events, you need to analyze them afterward to determine whether or not they were successful.

Ask for Feedback

The best way to determine an event’s success is to get feedback from participants. If the participants enjoyed the event and got something out of it, the event was successful. If they did not, that’s a serious problem, because unsatisfied attendees won’t use your business or recommend it to their colleagues and friends.

Thus, the first step toward event evaluation is to ask for feedback. Many event holders provide attendees with a brief survey they can fill out after the event. In order to motivate participants to complete the survey, many event holders offer an incentive for doing so, such entry into a drawing for a small prize.

In any case, the survey should include the following:

• What the participant thought of the event venue.
• What the participant thought about the presentation(s) given during the event.
• How valuable the content was to the participant.
• How likely the participant is to recommend similar events.
• How likely the participant is to participate in similar events.
• A space for additional comments, suggestions and feedback

By conducting this type of survey, you can find out what participants thought, felt and experienced, and determine whether or not the event was a success from a customer service perspective.

Event Analytics

It’s also helpful to look at some basic data from the event, as this will tell you whether or not you met goals for lead generation and customer engagement. Focus on how many participants came to the event, how many of them stayed for the entire event and how many of them actively engaged the presenters by asking questions or responding to what the event presenter said.

The engagement levels are particularly important because engaged participants are likely to get something out of the event and either use your business or recommend it to others. From the perspective of generating leads and sales, high participant numbers with low engagement levels show it was not as successful an event as a lower participant number with high engagement.

Look at Both Sides

In order to really determine how successful your event was, make sure to look at both the positive and negatives about the event. Write down what went well, including positive feedback from your attendees and your own opinion, and then do the same for what didn’t go well. Compare negatives and positives to get a better idea of how successful your event was.

After finishing an event, it can be challenging to try to figure out its success. Keep your goals in mind and be open to feedback from your audience. Examine event data and list the positives and negatives to get a full picture of your event’s success so you know what to keep and what to change for the next one.