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Are your virtual events fulfilling their objectives?

Sep 25, 2020

At the beginning of the pandemic, event profs were in firefighting mode and worried about the impact it would have on their jobs.Though in some parts of the world live events have returned, many other countries are still stunted by government and travel restrictions. The ‘pivot’ to virtual was a swift one with many rising to the occasion. Planners were forced to learn by doing. Whilst some of these early experiments failed the result has been the creation of some exceptional online events which demonstrate the core value of events; delivering unforgettable experiences. I attended my first hybrid event in July. An event I have been desperate to attend for years but could never quite stump up the money to go. They were going hybrid with a 4-day, 12-hour long conference and I was not going to miss it. What made that experience so engaging that I stayed glued to my laptop for the entire conference? The energy of the presenters was palpable, the interaction with the audience, and seeing everyone’s videos on those curved IMAX screens. Every hour we got up and jumped up and down to some music so our bodies and brains didn’t fall asleep (sorry downstairs neighbours). And just like that a 4-day, 12-hour long conference came and went and I closed my laptop feeling energised (said no one ever after a 4-day conference!) Being the event nerd that I am, I left that event wondering... What purpose/goal/mission were the organisers pursuing when they decided to take the risk of running this event? Were they looking to drive sales, raise brand awareness, increase brand affinity? I felt I had met my objectives but how could they, or any other organiser, measure my energy and excitement to understand whether or not the event had fulfilled its stated purpose? They did some up-selling where they provided an opportunity for attendees to purchase another course. This could have been the main objective for putting on the event. But not signing up for the upgrade doesn’t mean I had a bad experience. Therefore the organiser might look to my willingness to refer. They can measure my likelihood to recommend the event to family and friends using the popular Net Promoter Score. But again it doesn’t give the organiser a complete picture of my experience and the overall impact of the event. So what will? Here are 3 ways you can distil the experience of your attendees into metrics from Explori’s free Event Impact Playbook. If you want to get to the heart of your attendee’s experience you should try to measure these three things in your feedback survey: Cognitive impact Impact on sentiment Behavioural intention Cognitive impact What is the change in knowledge and understanding we would like to happen as a result of our event? Cognitive feedback questions will help you understand if your event succeeded in delivering the main communication points ie. the new features of a product. Did the necessary knowledge transfer occur? Impact on sentiment How should attendees feel after they leave our event? Sentiment feedback questions provide the perfect opportunity to learn how your event has impacted brand perception. Do attendees feel like your company cares about the needs of its customers and employees? Or do they agree that your brand embodies the core values it promotes? Behavioural intention What is the behaviour we intend attendees to take as a result of attending our event? This is particularly important for events which are part of a long communications/sales cycle. Within a week of the event you’re able to understand what behaviours your event has influenced. Are attendees more likely to purchase, remain employed or recommend your product/service? Behavioural intention is where you see the tangible value of your events for your business. Let’s look at this in the context of my first virtual/hybrid event experience. Just because I didn’t upgrade to the next course doesn’t mean the organiser failed in their objective. If they measured my behavioural intention they would be able to see that I intend to participate in their next live event. Through my sentiment score they would discover that I absolutely agree the company helps individuals and businesses succeed. And my cognitive score would highlight they had successfully communicated the message that ‘everything you need to succeed is already within.’ There is so much more when it comes to measuring attendee experience that I haven’t shared here. And if you’ve read so far into this article, please tag a friend or colleague who you think would find it interesting/useful. For a full list of attendee experience metrics you can measure for your next virtual/hybrid event, download the free Event Impact Playbook

What is NPS and why should event professionals care?

Jun 12, 2020

So what exactly is a Net Promoter Score (NPS)? Developed by Bain & Company and Satmatrix, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a way to understand a customer’s perception of your product or service. It’s widely used across many industries and allows different sectors to benchmark themselves against each other – for example event planners could use it to compare their performance to other events, or even to other service sectors like hospitality or banking. It is one of the most important questions we ask our clients to include in every post-event survey they conduct. It leverages advocacy – the likelihood to recommend to a friend or colleague – as a way of understanding many different drivers of perception including satisfaction, ease of customer journey and return on investment in a single question. Respondents, in this case event attendees or sponsors, are asked to rate how likely they are to recommend the event to a friend or colleague in the industry. This graph is an example of how respondents are categorised based on their response as Promoters, Passives or Detractors. Net Promoter Score is then calculated as the difference between the promoters and the detractors and is expressed on a scale from -100 to 100. So an event with a plus score has relatively more promoters than detractors, whilst an event with a negative score has more detractors. So why does this matter? The impact of NPS has been extensively researched across many industries. With a finite number of potential attendees and sponsors in most sectors, when advocacy is low, it will get harder and harder to attract new attendees and sponsors and the existing customers will be increasingly sensitive to any price rise and over time may even withdraw their support. It is an important “leading indicator” as to how your event might perform commercially in the future. Explori has conducted research with events around the world that shows a positive NPS from exhibitors and sponsors means an event is more likely to experience commercial growth in three key areas: Attendee numbers Exhibitor numbers Exhibitor revenue Interestingly events with a positive exhibitor NPS are growing their sponsor and exhibitor revenue faster than their exhibitor numbers, indicating they may also be finding it easier to up-sell their existing customers to new and higher value services. Want to know more about NPS and other aspects of event exhibitor and sponsor experience? You can download our full report here, covering the experience of exhibitors all round the world. NPS for virtual vs live events At Explori, we have been benchmarking attendee experience metrics including NPS for virtual events since March 2020 and the results are clear. Advocacy is higher for virtual events than for live events. The data indicates that attendees are more likely to recommend virtual events to their colleagues and friends. But we have to ask why that is? Are virtual events delivering a better experience than face-to-face events? It is highly likely that the reason virtual events are seeing a boost in their recommendations relative to live events is because of ease of access. There is much less heavy lifting involved with making a virtual recommendation. If you’re recommending an event halfway across the world that would require flying to another country, booking accommodation and taking time away from family and friends, you’ll probably want to make sure that is a must-attend event before making that recommendation. However if you are sending a colleague or friend a link that they can access from their computer in the comfort of their home it doesn’t require as much consideration past the point of the event providing good content. And this is just the tip of the iceberg with what we have been seeing in the data regarding virtual events experience. >>> Download our latest research on virtual events How to improve your event Net Promoter Score In some circles NPS is viewed as the holy grail of measuring attendee experience. Oftentimes it is the single metric monitored by event organisers to understand if their event is doing well. Though NPS is an important metric to measure, it is often better understood in the context of other key metrics, such as Overall Satisfaction. Overall satisfaction is highly correlated with NPS. If you measure attendee objectives and Overall Satisfaction in your post-event survey you can run a correlation analysis to discover which objectives are driving satisfaction at your event. By focusing attention on how to improve your satisfaction score you should see higher Net Promoter Scores for your events.

woman completes post-event feedback survey

Feedback surveys? Only for lovers or haters?

Apr 6, 2020

Whilst more and more event planners are turning to online surveys to gauge customer feedback, some still have concerns about the validity of the data if they are planning to use it to inform their event strategy - are they right? New clients sometimes ask us if people are only motivated to fill in online surveys if they’ve got something really good or really bad to say, missing the views of the “average” attendee. So what does the data say? Using a sample of 146,000 attendees who completed post-show surveys, from the database of over two and a half a million survey responses collected by Explori in the last 12 months, we examined the response to the question: how likely are you to recommend the event to a colleague / friend, to find the Net Promoter Scores (NPS). NPS response is divided into three categories: Those who give scores of 0-6 out of 10 are classed as detractors Scores of 7-8 are passives or neutral Scores of 9-10 are promoters In our sample, 11% fell in the detractor camp, 42% in the promoter band and 47% in the neutral or passive band. So there was certainly a large group of people with middle ground views who had chosen to give feedback. With almost a third of respondents sitting happily in the neutral camp, (with scores of 7 and 8) and another 15% “a little underwhelmed” with scores of 5 or 6, this group is more sizeable than both the “lovers” or the “haters”. When it comes to post-show online surveys, “Average Jo” is quite happy to give her opinion. Online surveys vs face-to-face But we also see more of a spread to the extremes of the scale, including 3.5% rating the show they attended as 0 or 1 out of 10. It is this group that can sometimes be under-represented in face-to-face surveys conducted during the event. By collecting your feedback online after the event, you have given your attendees the fullest possible time to form their opinion of the event. In this respect it could be argued that there is more validity to their response than one taken part-way through the experience. Think about the very direct feedback you get from your attendees (whether they will attend next year). Do you find their responses are more neutral (don’t know whether they will or not) at the beginning of the event and more polarised (they definitely will not) towards the end or shortly after the event? Which do you feel most represents their “true” opinion? Social nicety also comes into play. Many people temper their opinions when they are talking to a real person – an unconscious attempt to protect the feelings of the interviewer, or to appear a better person before them. This can particularly impact responses to questions around income, job seniority and attitude towards professional development, where some answers are perceived to be more socially desirable than others. It also buffers the results against very low NPS scores. In results published by a UK research agency*, it appeared not a single respondent had given a score of 0 when surveyed face-to-face. You could address the “nice-factor” by placing self-serve terminals at your event in an area you are confident will attract the full spectrum of your attendees, but the cost of build and loss of prime space can make this unappealing. So should you be concerned if there is a variance between the data you get online and the data you would get face to face? Well not if you compare apples with apples; if you consistently collect your data in the same way, you are not going to run into problems when you compare year-on-year. You should also look for data that has been collected in the same way if you are want to benchmark externally. You know your audience – are there any groups through demographic, or line of work not accessible through email? Or are you are looking for the views of a vital subsection of your audience? Then consider combining online and offline research to help you meet your objectives. Agencies with experience of both, or online platforms with offline partners, will be able to deliver both and work the data to give meaningful comparisons. So in conclusion, online surveys are cost effective and getting increasingly sophisticated at capturing the full opinion spectrum from lovers to haters and everyone in between. Their big sample sizes lend themselves to detailed analysis and comparisons of the experience of segments of your visitors and they eliminate the “human” bias. But you may well find you get differing responses between any research conducted at the show and online after the show. It would be limiting to see either as being the “true” opinions of your delegates – they both need to be treated in context when you are drawing conclusions and compared against appropriate benchmarks to help you turn your data into something meaningful to your event strategy. Find out more about how you can incorporate attendee feedback into your event strategy.

How to prove the value of corporate events

Setting measurable event objectives

Mar 6, 2020

In order to measure the success of your event you need to know what success looks like for you. For your team. For your organisation. This begins with establishing clear and measurable objectives. For example, imagine you are organising a prospecting event for a SaaS business. You have 300 people attending who have demonstrated interest in the product your company offers. What would you set your objectives as? The temptation might be to accept the event objective as increasing sales. However, for most B2B businesses the sales cycles are often long with many different touchpoints in between. The most meaningful objectives for event teams are ones that can be measured a few days after the event. These demonstrate the true value of the channel and are the most useful for ensuring your events meet the needs of attendees and stakeholders alike. So if not 'increase sales' what objectives should you consider setting instead? Events are often part of a wider campaign of activities. In this case there might be a number of things happening including sales training, online demos, outbound marketing and more that are impacting sales revenue. Metrics that events teams can measure is an attendee's intention following their presence at an event. How has the event shifted their intention to act following an event. This is where the Explori event impact tree comes into play. There are four parts to the Explori impact tree that helps organisers set measurable objectives that link back to their company objectives. Company goal This is the fruit of your tree. You wouldn't plant an apple tree and expect to grow oranges. Equally you wouldn't organise an event to contribute to increased sales if the aim was to impact on staff retention. Start with the end in mind and build all your metrics out from this point. Cognitive goal What do you want your attendees to know when they leave your event? This will differ if you are thinking about your trade show booth vs an internal training event. This helps you laser focus on what you are teaching your attendees. It might be about updating the sales team on a new product or feature or increasing your prospect's understanding of what problem your product/service solves. Sentiment goal How do you want your attendees to feel after your event? Sentiment objectives are where we begin to get into measuring brand affinity. This is a fantastic opportunity to understand how events are used to communicate brand values to attendees. i.e. how many attendees believe your company is a leader in eco-technology? Behavioural goal What do your attendees intend to do after the event? This is critical. As described at the beginning of this post often the success of an event hangs on the number of sales, subscriptions or partnerships that have resulted. This is often a flawed approach as there are several touch points involved which aren't within the control of an events lead. Setting a behavioural objective such as intention to remain an employee of your company or intention to participate in a follow up meeting are a better indicator of the usefulness of the events channel. Establishing the correct objectives for your event is the first step to successfully measure your events. And the great thing about this structure is it can be easily incorporated into your humble survey. By requesting quantifiable feedback from your events you'll be able to build powerful insights which highlight the value of the events channel to your company's core objectives. Take your learning further by downloading the Event Impact Playbook.

Consumerization of B2B events: The shifting priorities of attendees

Jun 6, 2019

One of the highlights of last month’s Experiential Marketing Summit in Las Vegas was a benchmark study revealed by Sparks and Event Marketer about the consumerization of B2B events. When I compared some of their findings to Explori’s Global Visitor Insights report a clear difference emerged. When people attend trade shows they have different event expectations compared to when they attend brand-led events. In the US trade shows are still one of the most profitable B2B media strategies, generating over $13.2bn revenue in 2018. But all events aren’t made equal, and the data suggests nor are the people who attend them. In the Sparks report, they surveyed attendees at brand-led events (i.e. Dreamforce, AdobeMax, Google I/O and more) to understand what today’s attendees want from B2B events. Consumerization came out top as being highly important. However, Explori’s Global Visitor Insights (GVI) 2018/19 report demonstrated something quite different. If you exhibit regularly at events, or organise your own shows, you'll probably be surprised by what the data suggests. What is consumerization in the context of events? Consumerization (or festivalization) is a megatrend that exploded on the B2B event scene in 2016/17. A stream of articles and reports cited the changing face of B2B events influenced by what was happening in the consumer events space. The growth of the experiential economy has created a convergence point for businesses and the creative industries. B2B professionals have been exposed to the high-end production of festival style events such as South by Southwest and now expect a certain level of fun and enjoyment from conferences. B2B events have been challenged to adopt creative elements from consumer events in order to engage an audience who are becoming more distracted and fractured. It does however beg the question, are there some cases in which incorporating consumer elements is not required? Could it even be detrimental? What does the data say about consumerization in B2B events? The Sparks report found that, “while a significant 68% of B2B brands see consumerization as an important trend, an even higher percentage of attendees (77%) feel consumerization is important.” The data here reveals that attendees of brand-led events want to have festival-style elements woven into their experience. It appears they go to these events, not only to be informed but to be entertained. A different picture emerges in the GVI report. We asked 13,000 trade show attendees if they would spend more time at shows that are more entertaining. Only 24% of people in developed countries agreed*. We also asked if they thought events should be more like festivals. The results showed a much lower interest in introducing consumer elements to the trade show experience compared to brand-led events. Even amongst the youngest cohort of our study. Only 36% of under 24s and 33% of 25-34s agreed trade shows should be more like festivals. This disparity surprised me at first. Why do the expectations of someone attending a trade show appear to be so different from when they attend a brand-led event? A deeper dive into the data revealed what drives this. The shifting priorities of event attendees In brand-led events, Sparks found that the top 3 priorities for attendees are: Education/Professional Development (73%) Networking (68%) See new products (55%) However, at trade shows we found the top 3 priorities are: To see new products and services (62%) To keep up to date with market trends (61%) Networking (50%) 59% of our respondents agreed that it didn’t matter whether or not trade shows were entertaining as long as they could achieve their business objectives. It appears that trade show attendees have quite clear cut goals when it comes to attending events. Fun is a “nice to have” but when it comes down to it, the real measure of success is whether or not they find the suppliers and solutions their business needs. On the other side, brand-led event attendees want to be educated and increase their network. They also want that to be wrapped in an experience that echoes consumer events with more unique event spaces, innovative environments, autonomy over how they learn and interact and more creative F&B. For event marketers/organisers utilising a mix of trade shows and brand-led events, this is something to bear in mind. If you’re hosting or sponsoring a brand-led event it may be more beneficial to focus on the experience of your event or stand in order to satisfy attendees who expect to be entertained. Alternatively if you’re exhibiting at a trade show you may want to strip back the experiential elements and focus on showcasing the product/service you offer in an innovative way to converge with attendee expectations. It’s not a one size fits all approach. It’s important to consider whether throwing in consumer elements across all your events, regardless of format is going to deliver the best return. In order to cultivate an event strategy that leaves a lasting impact; tap into the unique expectations of attendees and tailor your strategy to suit. Download the full Global Visitor Insights report here.

What can 13,000 Trade Show Visitors Tell Us?

Jan 16, 2019

We published the findings of our 2018/2019 Global Visitor Insights at the UFI Global Congress in St Petersburg. Produced in partnership with UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry and supported by the Society of Independent Show Organisers (SISO), the report represents the biggest ever global study of trade show visitor experience. In this article, first published in Exhibition World, report author, Sophie Holt discusses some of the findings... Overall the view of trade shows amongst our visitors is positive and stable. When we look at the Explori Global Benchmarks, which contain visitor feedback on over 1,600 trade shows, key indicators of visitor experience such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) have been stable over the last three years, at +5 in 2016 and now +7 in 2018 for trade show visitors. This is reflected in the responses to the survey; most visitors report trade shows are performing about the same, if not getting a little better. But is fatigue is setting in for some regions? We can see that visitors in markets where the trade show industry is more developed, such as Europe and North America, are more likely than visitors in developing markets to say trade shows are getting worse. 27% of visitors in North America think trade shows are getting worse, compared to only 14% in the Middle East and Africa. The most cited frustrations for visitors will be a familiar list to most organisers: seating, catering, parking and queuing. However, visitors with these frustrations generally like trade shows, find them beneficial and plan to attend them again in future. When we look at respondents who dislike trade shows and do not find them beneficial, they tell us about very different frustrations. Core drivers of visitor satisfaction Visitors with negative views are much more concerned about their ability to meet the right exhibitors. This supports the insight from the Explori global benchmarks, where we can map how closely different visitor objectives correlate with overall satisfaction. Again, we see that exhibitors are key to visitors meeting their most important objectives of “sourcing new products” and “staying up to date with market trends”. 29 show directors and senior marketers were interviewed to support the research. Many of them emphasised the importance of a seamless visitor experience and creating a “Wow-Factor” for audiences through tactics such as “festivalisation”. Organisers may be in danger of under-valuing the core role of the exhibitor in driving visitor satisfaction. This study allowed us to understand visitors’ overall views of trade shows as a channel to meet their business objectives. Again, the results were positive; across a range of business objectives, trade shows were the preferred channel ahead of social media, online market places and trade publications. Whilst visitors are most likely to see trade shows as the best channel to achieve their goals, they do recognise and at times prefer alternative formats. Shows that traditionally operate as buying forums are potentially at risk, and in fact 15% of visitors see online marketplaces as better ways to buy/source products, with this rising to 29% amongst under 24’s. Similarly, learning about the industry is facilitated by other channels such as trade media, conferences and social media, with only 34% who say trade shows are the best way to achieve this goal. Those aged under 34 and women of all age groups are more likely to prefer social media as a channel to find new ideas and innovation. It is important to note that whilst survey respondents said they expect their trade show attendance to remain stable, they expect to increase their use of all other media channels, potentially putting more pressure on the trade show model. Many organisers however, see this as an opportunity rather than a threat as trade shows partner with other channels to attract visitors, or become content creators themselves. Organisers refer to a desire to create communities around their events and provide content 365 days a year. However, some express concern that to be successful at this the structures and skill sets within their organisations will need to evolve beyond one designed to deliver a trade show over a period of a few days. Download the full report here.

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Explori Blog

Updates, announcements and articles you need from the Explori—all in one place.

Download 2024 Global Events Calendar

Are your virtual events fulfilling their objectives?

Latest trade show stats shared via UFI Connects Webinar

Positive findings released from global industry study

What is NPS and why should event professionals care?

Talking Exhibitor ROI

Webinar:UFI Connects on Exhibitor Experience

Webinar: Leveraging data for digital revenue

Feedback surveys? Only for lovers or haters?

Setting measurable event objectives

IMEX optimises first-time visitor experience

Consumerization of B2B events: The shifting priorities of attendees

What can 13,000 Trade Show Visitors Tell Us?

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