Explori Blog | Insights for corporate event organizers (2)

Is Your Corporate Event a Success? 3 Strategic Benchmarks to Watch

Mar 1, 2022

The old standard for measuring the success of each event falls short when it comes to predicting the health of your event and brand. You need to view event performance in context to understand whether you're on the path to growth and future success. Many corporate event teams judge the merit of their event on ROI indicators for that specific event, like how much profit it generated, the number of attendees, or a straightforward customer satisfaction metric like the Net Promoter Score® (NPS). But these in isolation only paint a small portion of the bigger picture an organization needs to understand how well an event is really performing. Siloed event data relegates you to making strategic decisions about the future of the event based on a narrow view of how it performed. You may think that the engagement was good, but compared to what? To discern the true health and viability of the event and brand, performance metrics like these need to be viewed in context. This is because a business event doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are previous iterations of the same event, other events within the organization’s portfolio, and in the case of a user-facing event, other events within the wider market to compare it to. The best strategy is to weigh its success in context with other indicators through benchmarking against Other iterations of the same event Other events in your organization’s event portfolio Other similar events within the market you serve Benchmarks allow you to go beyond the narrow ROI of a given event to determine how well it’s performing comparatively, and to establish trends that indicate where your event is going.  Event Benchmarks: Is the Event Actually Improving? Event benchmarks take a broader view of the data surrounding your event to help put its success rate in context with previous metrics for that same event. Rather than focus on the microscopic scale of whether an event made money or attracted the targeted number of registrants, tracking impact from event to event will better establish trends and show whether your event is continuing to deliver value over time or whether it’s being mired in habitual features and activations that eat budget without really adding anything. For example, let's say your first event in 2022 showed a 2% increase in engagement with your keynote. You might be thinking that you're on track. But if you look at your event’s historical NPS data and see that it drew a score of +63 in 2019 compared to this year’s +55, that could be a discrepancy worth examining. And if, upon examination, you were to discover that the score in 2018 was +68, and +70 the year before that, the trend is actually that your event has been delivering less and less value with every iteration, and that your current formula probably leaves something to be desired by your stakeholders. Establishing a trend helps you to begin to think about whether you delivering on the goals for the event, and whether changes need to be made to preserve its future. Organizational Benchmarks: Is the Event Carrying Its Weight? Organizational benchmarks compare the performance data of your event to an organization’s wider portfolio of events. There are a variety of reasons for a comparison against the benchmarks of the whole organization. How an event compares to others in the same portfolio determines whether it’s pulling its weight, how valuable it is for the organization, and whether it justifies the costs. The comparisons can also be used to influence your strategic decisions about that event, or indeed whether to even hold it going forward. If you have a quarterly sales meeting to keep your sales team apprised of the next quarter’s developmental pipeline, but the summer meeting consistently shows lower engagement because it interrupts a peak season in the sales cycle, you might consider alternative formats for disseminating the necessary information. Or maybe it makes sense to push it out and add a recognition element to keep people motivated. And if it’s a customer-facing event, could it potentially damage the brand reputation of the overall organization if it doesn’t meet the standards of the other events they are holding? There also could also be something to learn from other event teams within the organization. If your team is meeting its targets but trailing behind another department’s or another event series, it might be worth an audit and a knowledge sharing session to see if the performance can be improved using existing resources within your organization. Industry/Sector Benchmarks: Is the Event Resilient to Changing Market Factors? Industry or sector benchmarks provide market data that helps you understand how your event performs against other options in the market and how valuable or indispensable it is for the market it serves. Especially for user-facing events like product launches and user conferences, the best data points for establishing whether an event holds a robust position in the market are those that focus on what the customers think, like CSAT (customer satisfaction) or NPS. Explori uses a combination of sentiment and loyalty metrics to perform an analysis that determines whether people are coming to your event because meets their needs, or just because they feel like they have no other option. Attendees that fit into the latter category, labeled “hostages,” will switch as soon as another option pops up. If you have too many hostages, your event could be vulnerable to competitors discovering a need you are not satisfying and filling that void. But it’s critical to be able to appreciate these metrics in the context of the wider market so that you don’t prematurely pat yourself on the back for a positive NPS score that actually falls short of the industry average, or panic about the existence of hostages when other events tend to fare even worse. How Do You Establish Industry Benchmarks? The challenge is establishing these industry benchmarks. As individual events tend not to publicize their CSAT and NPS, how can you access a sample size of data that is big enough to be representative in your market? And in a time of relative upheaval, how reliable are these benchmarks anyway? The secret is in the supply chain. Tech and other suppliers support thousands of events across multiple sectors every year. They are often sitting on a wealth of data, and their databases are growing and replenishing constantly. For example, Explori’s industry benchmarks come from over 4,000 events across a range of market segments, and these form the basis of our performance analyses. This means that suppliers can establish robust benchmarks quickly and use all the historical data at their disposal to support their analyses. So Is Your Event Data Strategy Working? Benchmarks help you to set your event targets within the context of a trend so that you can go beyond whether an event was worth it this year and determine whether it’s on the right path in general. Event managers who neglect to track data over time and across a wider scope than the event itself are making strategic decisions without a view of the bigger picture. This can in turn make an event vulnerable to external market factors like competitors and alternative formats. Improve the resilience of your event brand by taking learnings from events in your portfolio that are doing well. Don’t assume a positive NPS or engagement score is a guarantee of success in future iterations, but don’t panic just because you have a few unhappy campers either. Use the data available to make an educated assessment of your performance.

Paving the Way to Higher Impact Expos with Event Data

Dec 9, 2021

How successfully are exhibitors connecting with qualified contacts? Are attendees finding the partners and suppliers they need? The answers to each of these questions rely on data, and the ability to deliver high-impact experiences to stakeholders depends on an event strategist’s ability to measure and interpret it. Measuring the impact of each event component offers a view to how both exhibitors and attendees experience an event, and tracking this data over time lends itself to better and more financially attractive events from one year to the next. Event organisers often track engagement and satisfaction across their stakeholders with simple post-event feedback tools, but there remains a lot of pandemic-related uncertainty around travel and the market is becoming more competitive. Associations and exhibition organizers are under increasing pressure both to deliver value and to substantiate it to exhibiting partners, sponsors, and other stakeholders. Measuring and benchmarking events and event components is essential to meeting that challenge. Avoiding Stagnation (or Worse) It may be tempting for long-running shows to treat a pattern of revenue growth as the rule. ‘We’ve been growing 3-5% per year for 10 years,’ they might say, ‘so we have nothing to worry about.’ The trouble with neglecting to measure things like satisfaction and impact on an ongoing basis is that organizers run the risk of missing changes in the market that might undermine a pattern of growth or positive impact. The crux of the problem lies in relying too heavily on lagging indicators. For example, let’s say you run an annual conference and expo that serves as a mainstay for your industry. If you’re plotting your revenue from year to year on a graph, you may see a comforting incline maintained by a loyal base. But if you’re not also tracking how actively satisfied that base is at every iteration of the event, you may not be picking up on pain points that need addressing -- or worse, a rising sense of discontent. What if a segment of the attendees wasn’t able to make relevant connections this year? What if they found the show less navigable for some reason? What if the exhibitors found the audience less qualified and the deals less lucrative? What if both camps simply come every year because they don’t feel they have another comparable option? In a world where exhibitors are increasingly prioritizing a highly qualified audience over sheer volume and customers are increasingly prioritizing highly curated, high-value experiences, show organizers can no longer afford to rest on the laurels of prior success. Intentional Data Mining Across the Customer Journey Gathering data across the attendee journey allows exhibition organizers to determine which steps of the journey drive value and which contain bottlenecks or pain points that need to be addressed. Understanding both is essential for ensuring a positive experience that continues to meet (or ideally exceed) stakeholder expectations over time and motivates the right behaviour at and after the event. There are plenty of tools in an organizer’s arsenal for tracking engagement and sentiment. These include surveys, social media engagement, polls, and analytics built into registration and other platforms. Sophie Holt, managing director of Explori, advises that organizers “consider which data sources will tell you the who, the what, and most importantly, the why?” in order to derive meaningful, actionable insights from event data. Being intentional about what you want to discover will help to set you up to track the right data points. For example, if you want to measure exhibitor satisfaction, purely looking at the number of leads generated is only one piece of the puzzle. Generating fewer leads at a higher conversion rate can be preferable to coming away with a higher volume that doesn’t amount to any revenue. Similarly, a high registration rate does not necessarily translate to a successful event or happy sponsors and exhibitors if it isn’t proportionally reflected in brand engagement. Only through tracking both registrations, engagement, and ultimately conversions will you gain perspective on the real value to each stakeholder category. Why might brand engagement have been subpar? Perhaps the show floor layout was suboptimal. Perhaps matchmaking could have been better utilized. Perhaps key brand activations were scheduled at times that competed with one another. Using the tools available to gather both quantitative usage and engagement data as well as qualitative feedback is the best way to discern these issues and ensure that an event maximizes its impact and drives desired outcomes for both members and exhibitors. You Have the Data; How Do You Know If You Did Well? “Using integrated research tools to benchmark an event’s success over time and against competitors allows a narrative to be drawn out of the data,” says Holt. Ultimately, it’s up to each organization to establish its own objectives and success metrics, but there are a number of common key performance indicators that are fit for purpose. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is perhaps the most common. Derived from the disposition of your attendees (or exhibitors) to recommend the event on a scale of 1 to 10, an event’s NPS is a fairly clear indicator of success. That said, NPS surveys should include an opportunity for qualitative feedback to facilitate actionable insights. It may even be worth personally following up with outliers that give an event an especially low score. Holt points out that “being able to demonstrate to attendees that their feedback has been listened to, and what steps have been put in place to address any concerns, is incredibly powerful” when it comes to engaging members and, ultimately, delivering greater value. This will also help to develop a sense of community around an event as it conveys a sense of influence over how the event evolves; listening to and actioning feedback underscores an organization’s commitment to serve the member community. But directly asking attendees and other stakeholders how much they liked the event only offers one piece of the puzzle. A more comprehensive analysis involves an array of data from a variety of sources. Text analysis from social media sources, engagement data on virtual platforms and event apps, and longer qualifying surveys all contribute to the bigger picture. However, a challenge many organizers face when collating that data is an inability to reconcile it across a single event, nevermind a whole annual event program. Inconsistent data formats on the part of disparate tools and systems makes it rather difficult to compare events. One way to side-step this issue is to set top-down survey standards for collecting attendee and exhibitor feedback. Asking questions in a consistent format with consistent language across all events reduces the guesswork and interpretive lift when comparing one event to another. In this way, it makes it a lot easier to establish benchmarks as well -- and benchmarks are the ultimate goal for measuring progress in your event’s impact. Whereas a trend of moderate increases in revenue can come from a number of mechanisms (increasing ticket prices, higher volume registrations), the trend of consistent improvement in the user experience is what leads to a legacy of meeting objectives and changing behaviour -- in other words, value. While internal benchmarks give associations insight into how well their events are doing relative to other events they’re putting on, the same principle can be extrapolated for all the events within a given industry. In other words, your fall conference might be doing better than your spring conference, but only through industry benchmarks can you know how well either are doing in a more objective sense. Operating with established industry data conventions allows you to tap into insights that go beyond your specific organization’s event portfolio. Not only does it streamline the process for collecting feedback by somewhat answering the question of what to ask your stakeholders for you, but it allows the data you get back to stand apples to apples against the industry standard. Intentionally gathering and analysing data in consistent formats allows conference and exhibition organizers to not only demonstrate the strategic impact of their events, but to determine how they fare against the rest of the market. Want to find out more? The Event Impact Playbook which aims to help event organisers measure the impact of events so that they can underpin their next strategic event is available to download for free here.

How do corporates really feel about returning to live events?

Nov 19, 2021

This month, Explori’s Sophie Holt was invited by M&IT magazine to shares findings from the latest Global Recovery Insights study 2021, which reveals how corporate event professionals and their businesses really feel about returning to live events… Originally created for M&IT Magazine The great comeback One year on and businesses who regularly exhibit at trade shows are still sorely missing live events. While the absence of trade shows has meant some resources have been diverted into other channels, businesses have been unable to replicate the value of trade shows in key areas. 66 per cent of businesses reported reduced networking opportunities and 44 per cent felt fewer leads had been generated due to the lack of live trade shows. As a result, both visitors and exhibitors are now eager to participate in events at roughly the same frequency as they did pre‐pandemic (2018/19). With 72 per cent of existing visitors saying they plan to attend trade shows at the same or increased frequency, this indicates a positive appetite from attendee audiences for the return to the show floor. For exhibitors at trade shows, the intention to participate in future events has also returned to pre‐pandemic levels, with 62 per cent planning to exhibit at the same or increased frequency as before. Will the money return? While some event marketers are still having to reduce their trade show budgets, overall the cuts have been less severe and less widespread than feared. Three quarters of exhibiting businesses expect their budget to return to pre‐pandemic levels within 12 months. Spending on corporate events may also decrease, but like trade shows, the impact seems less severe than was suggested in 2020. Interestingly, there is evidence that event marketers are prepared to protect investment in the shows they do choose to support, suggesting that high‐quality shows could be protected from budget cuts. Of the marketers who will reduce their spend, three quarters are looking to exhibit at fewer shows and half will reduce their spend on travel and accommodation. However, of the respondents planning to save money by exhibiting at fewer shows, 60 per cent will maintain their spend on design and build and 67 per cent will continue to invest the same amount in floor space. Unlike previous years where visitor numbers were the driving factor, 86 per cent of businesses exhibiting stated visitor quality is a large influence on their decision to support a show, against 67 per cent who are influenced by visitor numbers. This ‘quality is judged primarily through previous experience at a show, suggesting established shows with high Net Promoter Scores (NPSs) are well placed to attract investment, but shows that are highly recommended are also valued, with over half of respondents saying this has a bearing on their decision. Going digital Across the entire survey, there is no evidence to suggest a wholesale shift away from live events towards digital – budgets for virtual events have remained flat. Whilst visitors appreciate the time and cost savings offered by digital and find it a convenient way to consume content, live events are still preferred across every aspect of the experience due to their unique ability to offer a high quality of networking and overall experience. For exhibit marketers and sponsors, the live experience is still valued across all aspects, and above hybrid. Only 64 per cent of exhibitors have participated in a digital event, up from just 52 per cent 12 months previously. Explori’s exhibitor NPSSM benchmark for digital events sits well below that for live events. This suggests exhibitors’ experience at digital events is a significant challenge for organisers who wish to pursue revenue for a digital model. Is hybrid the best of both worlds? Hybrid events would seem to have the potential to combine the best of live networking and discovery with the best of digital content consumption. However, the cohort of visitors who have experienced a hybrid event were not enthusiastic about them. While better than a purely digital event, hybrid was seen as a detraction from the live event and there is evidence that hybrid events are waning in popularity as live events return. Is there any future for digital and hybrid? Previous studies have shown that digital had the potential to attract new audiences, particularly where the show was new. This has been borne out by the many events which have seen an increase in visitor numbers to their digital shows. It appears this new digital audience has the potential to convert to a live audience in future, with around half of exhibitors and visitors saying they would be highly likely to attend an event in‐person given the chance, having previously discovered it digitally. The Panel For the first time, the Global Insights report surveyed a senior group of UK and US decision-makers who had no experience of using trade shows as part of their marketing mix prior to the pandemic. The results revealed that this group had been much more digitally engaged over the previous 12 months, having been much more likely to sponsor a digital event or organise their own than our exhibitor respondents. This group is also interestingly more likely to convert from digital participation to in‐person participation than either current visitors or exhibitors. They were also highly likely to continue to participate in digital with over two‐thirds saying they would continue to run their own digital events and sponsor and exhibit at third‐party digital events. Most strikingly, 55 per cent of this group now believe that they will exhibit at in‐person trade shows more frequently. What will the future of trade shows look like? The research identified four key findings regarding the future of trade shows. Digital has the potential to broaden both the exhibitor and visitor audience. It will play a part in enhancing communities around the event, providing better access to content and a more curated experience. The quality of the audience over quantity of numbers will rise in value. Future organisers will focus on engaging the highest quality audience and the narrative will shift away from selling based on the number of attendees. As a result, the floor plan will change. Future organisers will offer a range of sponsorships and activations to help exhibitors capitalise on more curated, meaningful engagement with high-quality visitors, rather than focusing on footfall. Booth design and exhibit strategy will change accordingly. Future organisers will also work more collaboratively with exhibitors at trade shows to ensure that the value proposition, both on and offline, is designed in conjunction with the exhibitor’s objectives and maximise investment is fully understood. In summary The Global Recovery Insights survey reflects the optimism felt by the exhibition industry that live events are returning to pre‐pandemic levels. Budget cuts have not been as harsh as predicted and spending is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels within an average show cycle. Quality shows are likely to be protected and digital has opened up new opportunities to convert naysayers to the power of live! The research was conducted by the live events research specialists Explori, in partnership with UFI and supported by SISO, has just been published. The global quantitative survey of trade show visitors and exhibitors, carried out in the summer of 2021, collectively gained 15,000 responses representing trade show participation in over 30 countries. The full Global Recovery Insights report is now available to download here.

Watch the ‘Metric Gap’: Measuring the Impact of Events on Business Objectives

Sep 7, 2021

Originally created for Exhibition News ahead of International Confex Explori, the leading metrics and benchmarking specialists to the events industry, are set to kick off the International Confex Keynote Theatre programme when the event returns to ExCeL London next week. Hosted by Explori’s Associate Research Director, Guy Garside, and Relationship Manager, Alex Temple, "Measuring the Impact of Events on Business Objectives" will delve into the vital role that event data plays in helping event managers understand and demonstrate the impact of events programmes. We spoke to Guy and Alex ahead of Confex to understand what event professionals can expect from this keynote session: The must have metrics Explori recently conducted corporate research in collaboration with in-house corporate event planner network ICE, and identified the ‘metric gap.’ One of the challenges facing event managers is capturing the must-have metrics needed to decipher value and the impact of events in delivering business objectives. Speaking to these challenges, Alex explained: “Measuring the impact an event has on wider business objectives has always been a challenge for planners. Anecdotal evidence or top line tactical surveys don’t give event managers the complete picture, yet we know 77% of organisers want the ability to benchmark event performance across their organisation.” Benchmarking across areas such as attendees’ future behaviour and their changing opinions and feelings give organisers a much better understanding of the true value of their event in respect of the overall objectives such as lead generation or employee retention. How to branch out Due to the recent surge in virtual events, the availability of data is greater than ever before. Attendees to this session can expect the Explori team to cut through the jargon and breakdown the subsequent challenges attained from data overload, drawing particular attention to audience feedback data: the epicentre of event impact analysis. By drawing on Explori’s highly respected Event Impact Playbook, the session will illustrate ‘how to leverage your event tech stack’, providing direction on how to layer data from different technologies to deepen your understanding of the attendee experience. Analysing event impact Explori will be breaking away from traditional methods of analysis by delving deeper into the potential of all the data sources at your disposal, such as engagement with content and connections made. Currently only one in five event organisers measure the impact of events on their attendees’ future behaviour and brand awareness, clearly indicating a misalignment between the organiser’s needs and the insight they currently have. Focusing on a case study with a positive outcome, the session will tackle the relationship between event data and wider corporate goals. This practical and visual demonstration will provide attendees with an immersive session on how to track and improve event impact. The takeaways This session will explore ways of interpreting event data from various perspectives enabling event professionals to implement tangible objectives specific to their event in order to evaluate their current measurement process. Relevant to event planners, agencies and event tech professionals, Guy and Alex will provide a thought-provoking session surrounding the direction of future event experiences: what data is out there and how can it be made to work harder? Attendees will leave with a greater understanding on how to assess their next event objectives with direction on how to propel forward into the strategies of the event world. Missed the session at International Confex? Speak to a member of the Explori team to find out more.

How to monetize your virtual events

Mar 3, 2021

11 most important post event survey questions for attendees

Jan 27, 2021

How do you know if your event is a success? Better yet, how do you know if your attendees will be back next year? The explosion in event technology means organisers have more data than ever about how attendees are engaging with events. From the number of meetings booked to sessions attended and questions asked. However, this data isn’t capable of telling you why. Why are attendees engaging, and will they come back to your next event? This is where surveys come into play. For the last decade, Explori have been helping organisers use surveys to gather post-event feedback to develop more customer-centred event portfolios. We benchmark attendee experience for over 3,000 events globally, and analyse over 3 million data points on attendee and exhibitor sentiment. We are a trusted research partner for the Global Association for the Exhibition Industry (UFI) supplying annual reports to organisers. Our expertise lies in creating surveys that provide strategic insights to event teams. In this post we will share with you our definitive list of post-event survey questions. We will give you nine questions you can use in a live or virtual event survey and two bonus questions to include in your virtual event survey. What is a post-event survey? A post-event survey is a questionnaire. It is normally distributed via email to visitors, exhibitors, speakers, people who registered but did not attend, and any other participants. The survey normally consists of a combination of multiple/single choice and open-ended questions. The purpose of sending a post-event feedback survey is to understand the event through the eyes of attendees. Post-event surveys are crucial to any organiser interested in adopting a more customer-centred approach to their events. Types of survey questions There are different types of questions you can include in your post-event survey depending on the type of data you want to collect: Rating scales - measures the level of agreement with a question that can be quantified for reporting. It’s best to use a 5-point scale to avoid skewing survey responses. Multiple choice - useful when there are a few different options that could apply ie. when asking attendees about their reasons for attending your event. Open-ended - brings the attendee experience to life. It produces qualitative data which tends to be more emotive and specific at outlining sentiment. Screening questions At the beginning of your event survey it is important to include screening questions to ensure the integrity of the data you are collecting. When creating client surveys the first question we ask is ‘Did you attend [eventname] from [eventdates]?’ If the respondent says no they are routed to an exit screen. We then include a second screening question which asks ‘Did you attend as…’ and provide a single choice option of either Visitor, Exhibitor or Member of the press. If the respondent is not the intended recipient of the survey (i.e. an exhibitor receives the visitor survey) they will be rerouted to an exit page with a link to the relevant survey for their group. By including screening questions you can ensure your survey is being completed by the right members of your audience. Post event survey question examples Use these questions in both your live and virtual post-event surveys for attendees 1. Overall how satisfied are you with [eventname]? This question allows you to directly measure attendee satisfaction and get a more bird’s eye view of how the event went overall. This is a great way to gauge the success of your event. You can also use it to unpick which aspects of your event are driving satisfaction by creating crosstabs with other questions in your survey. 2. What were your main reasons for attending [eventname]? In other words, what is your event helping attendees do? Our studies show that the top five objectives of trade show visitors are: attending the conference, attending seminar sessions, seeing new products and innovations, keeping up to date with market trends and seeking new business partners. When using this multiple-choice question include a list of common objectives and allow respondents to select more than one. 3. Please state how well you met each of your objectives at [eventname]? Allow respondents to state how well they were able to meet each of the objectives they selected at your event. This will give you an indication of what objectives you’re helping attendees achieve versus the objectives that are going unmet. For example, across the 3,000+ shows we have benchmarked, we found there are three common attendee objectives that are poorly met at trade shows: Keeping up to date with market trends Seeking new business opportunities Seeing new products and innovations Most importantly we discovered these three objectives are highly correlated with overall satisfaction. This suggests that if you improve the ability for attendees to achieve these objectives you will see an increase in attendee satisfaction. 4. Overall, how well did you meet your objectives? Not all objectives are created equal. This is why getting an overall score is important. Earlier in the survey attendees may select five different objectives and only score one as being well met. But that one could have represented their main objective for attending the event whilst the others were ‘nice to haves’. This question will give you an overall view on how successful your event is at helping attendees achieve their objectives. Alternatively with a tool like Explori, this can be calculated automatically based on the previous question responses. 5. How likely are you to recommend our event to friends or colleagues in the industry? Net Promoter Score is an industry standard when it comes to measuring attendee experience. This allows you to measure your attendees’ likelihood to recommend your event and can be included in your post-event surveys for both virtual and live events. Respondents rate their likelihood to recommend on a scale of 0-10 and are banded into groups based on their scores. Promoters (9-10 rating) Passives (7-8 rating) Detractors (0-6 rating) The Net Promoter Score is then calculated by subtracting your percentage of Detractors from your percentage of Promoters. Organisers often ask what is a good Net Promoter Score. Technically speaking anything above zero suggests you have more Promoters than Detractors and is therefore a good score. The Explori platform benchmarks NPS for live and virtual events globally. This allows clients to compare the performance of their events against the industry standard and get a real sense of how their events compare to the industry benchmark. 6. Please tell us why you gave that score? i.e. recommending the event to a friend or colleague Open questions are a great way to collect qualitative data that can be used to explain scores. We always suggest adding an NPS reasoning question. It allows you to do some meaningful analysis of your detractors and promoters. For example, in the Explori platform clients can filter by NPS score to see all the responses given by detractors or promoters. Filtering in this way can give you a sense for why some attendees are detracting and why some are promoting. 7. Considering the total investment of your time spent, how would you rate the value you received? As event organisers we are in the business of creating value for our attendees. Asking a question about their perceived value of the event is a great way to measure the usefulness of the event relative to the time cost. Our latest research found that attendees score virtual events as being better value for time than live events. Including this question in your post-event survey will allow you to spot commonalities between attendees who rate virtual as better for time and those who do not. 8. What was your favourite aspect of [eventname]? The main aim of gathering feedback is to understand how to improve your event. However it is important to keep an eye on what is going well to make sure you don’t eliminate those aspects from future events (ie. a networking format that attendees enjoy). This open-ended question can provide some useful information about what is working at your event. You may also be able to use these responses as testimonials if you ask respondents to opt in. 9. Do you have any suggestions on how the event could be improved? Including a question about improvements is an easy way to spot what aspects of your event haven’t landed well with attendees. Depending on the tool you use, you can filter based on satisfaction or NPS to see what improvements are suggested by attendees. Virtual event survey questions For use in your virtual post-event surveys for attendees 10. How likely would you be to attend future virtual events from the organisers of [eventname]? This question provides a double benefit. On one hand it can communicate a level of satisfaction with the virtual event you organised, but it can also indicate whether or not your attendees are likely to attend future events. This is particularly important as you might be assessing what role virtual events will play once we return to organising live events. 11. Overall, how would you rate the delivery of the virtual event? Whilst you might still be finessing exactly how to deliver virtual events this could be a great question to add into your post-event survey. Pair it with an open-ended follow up question where respondents can explain why they have given it that rating. Final point To create strategic events that keep its customers at the centre organisers need to collect consistent feedback. Post-event surveys are the only tools built to give organisers an insight into their attendees and exhibitors. If you would like to start measuring your events take a tour of the Explori platform.

How corporate event planners are measuring virtual events

Optimising the virtual event experience

Nov 16, 2020

This week at Cvent Connect, ICE’s Strategy Director, Anita Howard announced the release of the second ICE Research study supported by Cvent and conducted by Explori. The report shares a number of insights into budgets, reporting structure, measuring sustainability and more. There were two insights which I found particularly interesting: Using metrics to measure the effectiveness of events is still a top challenge for event professionals. Across all key metrics virtual events are being measured less compared to their live event counterparts. In the 2019 study it emerged that one of the top challenges for organisers over the next three years was using metrics to measure the effectiveness of events. The latest report maintains that this is still top of mind for organisers. However, when respondents were asked which metrics they use to measure their live and virtual events, this is what emerged from the data (zoom in to see the details); Across all metrics respondents are measuring their virtual events less than in-person events. When it comes to attendance, customer feedback, social media engagement, app usage and measuring the impact of the event on future behaviour, we can see large decreases in measurement for virtual relative to in-person events. This stood out to me because one question I am hearing a lot from organisers lately is ‘how do I make my virtual events better?’ What the ICE report seems to suggest is that organisers are missing out on crucial insight that would help them optimise the virtual event experience. The upside is with virtual events there is a wealth of data available that organisers can tap into for little or no extra cost. It’s important to note that this data was gathered from May through to August 2020. It’s likely that organisers who had organised a virtual event at this point were early adopters. Earlier on in the year there was a real sense of ‘done’ being the metric of success. The feeling that as long as the event ran with no catastrophic mishaps then it was a success. But as we all get more comfortable with delivering virtual events, and with more people agreeing that the future (of at least some event formats) will be hybrid, there has been a real shift to optimising the virtual experience. How do you optimise the virtual event experience? I’m not going to overstep any boundaries and suggest I have all the answers to this question because I don’t. However from a data-driven perspective what I know is the events that achieve the best results are ones which are plugged into the objectives and desires of their attendees. The way to do that is by developing a robust feedback strategy. We need to close the gap between in-person and virtual events measurement by collecting structured attendee feedback. I asked our Customer Success Manager, Mitch Deeming about how organisers can generate insightful feedback using their surveys to inform event strategy. Here’s what he had to say, “It’s important for organisers to pay attention to the questions they are asking and the insights they will be able to pull from these questions. For example if an organiser wants to know how their event is performing overall they can ask about overall satisfaction and Net Promoter Score which they can benchmark to compare against in-person and other virtual events. To understand attendee experience they can ask attendees about their objectives for participating in the event and how well they were able to meet those objectives. Where it gets really exciting for organisers is asking impact questions. These are questions which get to the heart of how your events are changing how attendees think and feel but also what they intend to do after the event. That's where event profs begin to demonstrate the impact of their events on business goals." As the report highlights, using metrics to measure the effectiveness of events is an ongoing challenge but so too is delivering hybrid and virtual events. As organisers seek to optimise the virtual experience over the coming years measurement will play a crucial role in unpicking exactly what makes a good online experience. The Event Impact Playbook If you are interested in understanding how to demonstrate the impact of your events on business outcomes then download our free Event Impact Playbook. In it you will find information about: how to structure your event objectives, how you can optimise your events by combining your demographic, engagement and sentiment data, and how you better develop insights from your survey data to demonstrate the strategic impact of the events function.

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.

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