So, you organized an event for the company, and now is the time to analyze the engagement and performance of your event. A few important questions the leadership team might toss at you could be:

  • Did it meet the event performance expectations?
  • What were the KPIs and were they achieved?
  • What was the ROI?
  • How could we have done better?

To answer these questions, you need quantified data and suitable event-tracking software and analytical tools to obtain inferences for your event planning and marketing strategy. Having a set of event performance and engagement tracking metrics can help you achieve that.

Did you know that 79% of American marketers generate their leads through ​event marketing​​? With a few solid event performance and engagement tracking metrics, you’ll be able to back up your claim of how well your event performed. Whether it was acquiring sales leads, or getting the word out, consider including these 5 performance and engagement tracking metrics to evaluate your conference or ​convention’s success.

Attendee Engagement

People enjoy the content that keeps them gripped to their seats. The same holds true for an event you are organizing. With ​virtual events ​becoming the norm, keeping your attendees engaged is more important now than ever. You can do that through various ways –

  • Live polling
  • Push notifications
  • On-demand content
  • Surveys

These methods of boosting/assessing attendee engagement can be good indicators of how well your event has performed. For example, how well are people responding to your event on the internet? You can track event engagement through social media mentions and online posts.

Attendee engagement and event tracking apps helps the event organizers to evaluate the success of the event.

Sponsorship ROI

A successful event usually has a good sponsorship ROI. What is it that your sponsors gain out of investing in your event? Tracking the return your event sponsors get is one of the key contributing metrics to measure event performance. It is also one of the top metrics that 40% of event professionals​ find it hard to track.​

The sponsorship packages you offer have to align with their goals which can eventually drive in revenue. Tracking ROI also becomes easier when you know of their expectations.

Session Content and Quality

Whether you’re holding a ​conference​ or a ​festival​, the quality of your sessions is of tremendous importance. Finding attendees trailing off into daydreams or stuck to their phones is every​ event professional’s​ nightmare; this is more likely to happen during ​virtual events.

Your audience’s satisfaction depends on the overall experience they have with your event. This starts right from registration experience and seamless check-in to finally informative, top-notch sessions. Providing value to your attendees at every touchpoint is a key aspect to consider while tracking content quality.

Speaker Popularity

The speaker for your sessions work as a representative for your company to the attendees. The knowledge, experience, and rhythm the speaker brings to the table is what attendees seek. Your speaker’s popularity and influence can get your event attendees to react positively to your event.

Whether they are sign-ups for the next event or more app downloads on their phones, tracking the results the speaker gets is another key event performance and engagement metric to keep in mind. Additionally, you can give your event attendees a way to interact with the speaker on the event tracking app.

Session Engagement

Ask yourself the question – ​did the event promote meaningful discourse?

A successful session is a two-way street. It’s important to know if the event stimulated informative dialogue between the event attendees, event speakers and organizers. A few ways you can do that are –

  • You can hold live Q&A sessions and encourage questions from the event audience.
  • If you’re an ​educational organization​, you can quiz your event audience about the session.
  • You can use your event attendee list to connect people with common event goals and
    promote networking.
  • You should keep in mind the duration of sessions to prevent them from getting boring and
    stagnant.

To Sum It Up

A majority of event attendees claim to view a company, brand or product being promoted in a positive light after the event. A well-planned and well-executed event can have a significant impact on your defined goals for the event. Whether it’s reaching out to new customers or growing your revenue, an event blueprint can help you in clearly defining the KPIs.

Apart from these key post-event performance and engagement metrics to measure success, you can take others into account as well. These can be – Net Promoter Score (NPR), cost per attendee, registration roadmap (registration trend over the course of events), website traffic, and more. Though KPIs differ vastly across different events, these event performance and engagement metrics should give you an ideal head start.

Plan Ahead With Sched

Event management might sound like a taxing process, but it doesn’t have to be. With Sched, you can automate admin tasks and create, publish and host your virtual, hybrid and in-person events with ease!

Illustration by Freepik Storyset

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Author: Rachel Drudi

As an event producer and creative collaborator, with a focus on community relations and a passion for design thinking, Rachel helps create and manage experiences on and offline; working at the intersection between ideation and execution. Rachel is here to help you set your business and event apart by focusing on the way your customers, clients, and community interact and engage with you. She especially loves working with companies that are just getting started.