In all the digital marketing channels like email marketing, content marketing and advertising, most marketers identified events as the most critical tool of a successful marketing campaign, be it virtual or in-person.
With so many stakeholders involved playing different roles in planning and managing an event, how are you able to measure what you achieved?
This is why defining event success metrics is essential.
Regardless of whether your goal is to increase brand awareness, excite your audience or maximise your revenue, the following list of KPIs will help you measure your success in your version of events.
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This score asks users high likely they will recommend the event to friends and family. The score rates responses on a scale of 1-10, where those who score 9-10 are considered “promoters”. These are enthusiasts loyal to your brand and are potential promoters.
Those scoring 7-8 are “Passives” who are satisfied with the event but not loyal to your brand and are therefore likely to be swayed by other competitive offerings. 0-6 scores are “detractors” who have the potential to damage your reputation through negative reviews.+
The NPS scoring is as follows: %Promoters – %Detractors
This score will give you a precise picture of how much value the attendees attached to your event. All your stakeholders will be happy knowing this kind of information.
2. Event Check-ins
This metric will help you understand the number of participants who have checked in after arriving at the event. This is important because you need to know and compare the number of event check-ins with the total number of registrations.
If there is an unexpected discrepancy between these numbers, you will need to find out why you are losing people between the two points.
It would be best if you made sure that the number of check-ins is accurate for each day of the event to make a valid comparison with the number of participants at registration.
3. Attendee Satisfaction Survey
The simplest way of knowing if attendees were satisfied with your event is by asking them about it. This will help you understand if what you offered met their expectations and will equally inform your future event plans. To get specific and quantifiable responses, you need to use numeric options in your survey.
4. Understand the Number of your Active Community Members
Use this metric to understand the internal dynamics of your community. For instance, you need to know the current levels of your attendees and find a way to engage them. The best way to do it is by looking at the time spent with the app by an individual Community member. Having this kind of data will help you manage your Mobile App experience and help you identify which attendees you will need to engage.
5. Gross Revenue
By comparing your initial target Revenue and the actual gross revenue, you will get a clear picture of how realistic your revenue goals were. Total revenue will also give you a clear picture of how much your type of event demands.
6. Speaker Engagement
There is a lot of anticipation when a speaker takes on the stage, but their audiences measure their ability to deliver a good speech. One way to measure a speaker’s success is the number of views the speaker received in the app. Also, consider how the audience can interact with the speaker, like holding Q&A sessions, live polls, or responding to surveys after speaking.
7. Live Polls Response Rate
With the appropriate app or live polls solutions, you will be able to set engagements with your audience by participating in active surveys during the speaking participation. The response that you will gather on the live polls will indicate the level of engagement from your audience and which of the sessions are highly successful.
8. Social Media Mentions
Social Media mentions is an active channel to promote and keep the engagement flowing. It is a form of a shout-out where the audience uses a particular handle associated with the event or a hashtag to monitor on your end the level of engagement using the handle or hashtag. When doing handles or hashtags, make sure it is simple enough to type in, unique, and memorable.
9. Social Media Engagement
Social Media Engagement is when an audience of your follower reacted to a particular post either by an emoji or a comment. You can also measure social media engagement when by how much your post is shared or retweeted. This is effective when measuring how the event or speaking engagement resonated with your audience. Make sure that you have enough posts to engage your audience.
10. Total Registrations
The total number of registrations is an absolute measure of a successful event or speaking engagement. It is also the most immediate way of measuring success. Bear in mind to keep track of the total registrations religiously to better understand your sales track over time.
11. Registration By Ticket Type
Understanding the difference between the type of ticket your audience and followers can purchase can give you a better understanding of what is most appealing. This will provide you with a clear picture of what event you need to target next based on the number of registrations on the ticket type.
12. Gross Revenue
Gross revenue is an important metric to measure if your event is successful. You can have a comparison against your initial costs and your target revenue to know if you generated such income from the event based on your planning phase.
13. Cost To Revenue Ratio
You may consider that you are successful when you generate a higher revenue than your target, but you should also find the cost incurred during the event. The price should be deducted from your gross revenue to get the actual profit from the event.
14. Revenue By Promo Code
Let’s face it. Promotions are always appealing to your audience. The revenue that you may incur while having promotions will probably be higher than your income on your original ticket price. Consider having a separate measurement for your promotions so that you will understand what promo codes are more appealing to your target audience.
15. Sponsorship Page Engagement
Pleasing the event sponsors can be done through your KPI and metrics. They need to know that the sponsorship that they granted is worth every single cent. You ought to have a separate page engagement for your sponsors so that they will have the information on your metrics first-hand.
16. Sponsorship Satisfaction
Since sponsors are responsible for the massive cost of holding your event or speaking engagements considering, their satisfaction should always be on top of your mind. Sponsorship doesn’t end on receiving the grant; it shows the sponsors that they made the right decision in giving aids.
17. Sponsorship Revenue
Considering the sponsors’ satisfaction also means that the sponsorship revenue should also be high enough to give a total experience. This will also measure if you will receive the same sponsorship or even more on your next event.
18. Number of Returning Attendees
There are times that the event you held will have another event that is associated with that previous event or for totally another topic. It will be interesting to monitor if the attendees from your last event will again make their attendance on your upcoming events. This only means that you made an excellent impression on your audience, making them want to come back for more.
19. Number of Qualified Sales Leads
If one of the purposes of your event is to generate sales leads for your team, another indicator for a successful event is the number of qualified leads. A qualified lead is someone who will tend to require your product or service in the future.
20. Generation of Pipeline
The if profit and income if one of the purposes of your event, creating links between your qualified leads and the estimated number of revenue is an important metric to identify and look into. Your team will achieve this by tying an appropriate contract to every qualified lead that you have.
21. Accounts Influenced
Generated accounts or leads that are influenced by your event is one of the essential metrics to measure for success. The more accounts created from events, the more you can plan and strategise on using these events to generate more accounts.
22. Customer Acquisition
After you have a list of qualified leads, the next step is to determine if these leads will convert to actual customers. You have to make sure that the event marketing attribution is wiped clean and that the customers generated results from the event.
23. Cost Per Customer Acquisition
If one of the metrics for your company is to sell product-specific and to organise events that will acquire more customers, it is arguably vital to know the cost of customer acquisition through these product promotions and events. Make sure to set target revenue while generating value for these types of events.
Do you measure your events by any other metric? We’d love to hear.