Sometimes it is hard to understand how to measure event success. There’s so much to watch and so many details, or even hanging strings at the end of an event. What do you do? Here are some great ways to take all of that information and create something that can actually help you analyze your event and improve future events as well!
Set Realistic Goals
Before you even begin your event, you want to make sure that you are setting your own goals, which are completely different from key performance indicators (KPIs), which we will explore next. Goals are things that you want to reach. Here, it’s great to use the S.M.A.R.T. goal method, which uses the following definitions:
➔ Specific: You want to make sure what you are doing is as specific as possible because you want to be able to show shareholders exactly what you are doing. It also allows for additional feedback.
➔ Measurable: This is where KPIs come into play. It’s how you measure what is actually going with metrics that you collect.
➔ chievable: Don’t try to go above and beyond what can actually be done. You set yourself up for failure that way.
➔ Relevant: Make sure that when you are planning your goals, you are able to ensure that it relates to your event and the theme and goals that you have already set.
➔ Time-Bound: This one is rather specific because it relates to when your event actually takes off and how you put those goals into place.
Determine Key Performance Indicators
This is where things can get rather intense. KPIs are the way that you are going to be able to accurately and effectively measure the success of your event. Here are a few examples of KPIs:
➔ Return on investment
➔ Engagement levels
➔ Photographic Engagement
These are great ways to take the type of event you are hosting and pull out valuable information that is going to keep your event strengths up.
Gather Data
There are so many ways to gather data but you want to make sure that you are gathering that data via a correlation to your KPIs. For example, with photographic engagement, what would you look at? There’s social media which you could track with tags, and then there’s also making sure that you are available to be tagged through multiple social media platforms. With this, you can count your social engagement and the ways in which participants found themselves engaging with your event content.
The same can be said when you are measuring KPI for return on investment. You take what you spent on the event and then make sure that you subtract that number from the total amount earned from the event. That is going to give you the return on investment that you need to show shareholders and other people invested in your event
Registration Data
One of the most valuable forms of data that you can gather is going to be the registration data. That will give you people’s names, emails, addresses, demographics, professional relationships, and more. It all depends on what exactly you put out in your surveys.
The reason that you want this information is for future events. You want to make sure that the guests from each event are invited to future events. This means connectivity for your guests and a way for them all to continue loving your events.
Survey Information
The final piece of information that you are going to need is the final survey information. This is how your guests have responded to the event and what they thought about it. It’s important to understand that this information can be difficult to read and hard to parse. It’s hard to take what someone has written and quantify it in a way that can be used to assess information. However, try wording your surveys in a way that allows guests to respond on a scale. This will let you use numerical assessment to determine if you have met your KPIs.
Wrapping it Up
Gathering data and determining event success is going to be something difficult to do the first few times that you try. Once you get used to gathering data and analyzing it, things will get easier. You will be able to make sheets, graphs, and design post-event assessment sheets. All of this together is what makes for a successful event assessment that you can show to people who are invested in your work, and you can also use this information to show future shareholders how successful your events are.
