From big concerts to small-scale exhibitions, the key to a successful event lies in the satisfaction of the people that attend. Any sound event strategy, from big concerts to small-scale exhibitions, should include multiple methods of maximizing attendee satisfaction. However, it’s important to understand attendee satisfaction as a quantifiable metric as opposed to a strictly qualitative variable. Additionally, it’s important to remember that attendee engagement and satisfaction, though closely linked, are not the same thing. The key difference is that engagement KPIs help to contextualize overall attendee satisfaction, creating a more robust and insightful post-event analysis (the degrees to which attendees are engaged during your event will be a clear indicator of their overall satisfaction level with the experience).

Including metrics for both attendee engagement and satisfaction, here are 6 KPIs that can be used to effectively measure attendee satisfaction.

 

1) Observing Live Social Media Activity: Social media has made it easy for event organizers to capture attendee reactions in real time. Achieving this will involve setting up a social media hub that collates social media content related to your event which helps you track the number of posts, shares, and likes that your event content receives across platforms. It’s also important to add incentives in order to get attendees to post about your event. For example, putting up a video wall that displays pictures uploaded to any social media platform with the event’s hashtag. Attendees love this because it gives them a moment in the spotlight.

2) Post-Event Online Buzz: Similar to live event monitoring, it is important to carry on the momentum by encouraging and capturing online conversations about your event even after it is over. An accurate way to measure post-event chatter is to use a brand monitoring tool that alerts you whenever there is new content on the internet related to your event.

3) Repeat Registrations: Remember that attendee satisfaction does not have to be isolated per event. One of the most important ways an individual can show delight for your event is by being a repeat attendee. Keep close track of all individuals who have come to your event for a second or even third time. Having a significant subset of loyal attendees is the base you’ll need to build a strong event audience.

4) Session Ratings: Sessions are a core aspect of the event experience for attendees and collecting feedback will help understand the larger picture of attendee satisfaction. Ideally, attendees would be able to rate sessions as soon as they are over since this is when the experience is freshest in their minds. This means that the event management software of your choice should have the capability to record session ratings within the conference agenda. This makes the feedback process intuitive and immediate for attendees.

5) Post-Event Surveys: The responses from this comprise the metric that ties it all together. In order to make this survey as useful as possible, try to keep most of the questions as one-click replies as opposed to open-ended responses. Multiple choice, numerical scales, and yes-or-no questions are ideal because it makes for a quicker experience for attendees and it helps you aggregate the results more easily.

6) Real-Time Written Feedback: For when simple 0-5 rating systems aren’t enough and more detailed feedback is needed to fully understand attendee satisfaction level. Including response text boxes in the rating sessions is an efficient way to solicit feedback from attendees. Placing these responses side-by-side with the post-event survey responses will help paint a clear picture into what positively contributed to the attendee experience.

Whenever you’re trying to evaluate a specific aspect of your event, utilizing event metrics to analyze the performance is a key best practice. Using the aforementioned KPIs will help you to pinpoint which variables contribute most to attendee satisfaction, thus enabling you to repeat your strategy for future enterprise event marketing campaigns.

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