Persuading as many people as possible to become event attendees is definitely a good strategy for maximizing revenue. However, if you blindly go for quantity, quality suffers. To estimate the real value of an event and gain the tools for improvement in the future, event PROFIS should master the right event marketing metrics.
Why event metrics is important.
Event metrics help break huge pieces of data into smaller segments responsible for the specific event success indicators. Measuring event success is crucial because it helps you understand which ticketing types are the most popular with attendees, whether the event website does a good job, and how your event contents resonate with the interests of investors. If you’re able to respond to each metric in a smart way, the chances are high that your next event can be more efficient than the previous one.
Which metrics you should use for measuring event success.
The abundance of the event ROI metrics makes it challenging for event professionals to choose the right tools. Here are some cherry-picked metrics that will help you build an effective plan for event success evaluation:
Ticket sales
Price elasticity, early-bird offers, and changes in price over time impact the number of registrations. Therefore, tracking the behavior of buyers over time is essential for building a smart ticketing strategy. Check out some suggestions on how to influence event ticket sales:
- Try the Decoy Effect. With this approach, building a pricing model that adds a third asymmetric option to two target price categories increases the chances that more buyers will make their choice.
- Leverage price elasticity. For some events, a big change in price doesn’t impact buyers’ decisions. While others have to be very cautious with ticket price modifications. Study the behaviors of your event registrants over time, and you’ll get an idea of how to stick to an ideal pricing framework.
- Use the power of “9.” The most common trick in pricing is the use of the digit “9.” Since our eyes tend to focus on the first number, establishing the ticket prices like “$2999” or “$199” can turn the odds in your favor. Analyze how it works with your audience and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Attendance rates
Not by attendance alone. This is the Golden Rule of any event measurement strategy because by focusing on attendance many event planners miss many other essential aspects. Nevertheless, it can’t be denied that measuring attendance is one of the easiest ways to verify whether your investment in the event paid off.
To get the most out of the attendance evaluation, look at three core aspects:
- The increase/decrease of attendance rates in comparison with the previous event.
- The progress of attendance over a specific period of time.
- The rates of returning attendees and newcomers.
Website optimization
Event attendance is greatly dependent on how well optimized your event registration page is. The biggest mistake of many event planners is that instead of focusing on the quality of a website, they choose to blindly drive the audience to the registration page. Instead of wasting their resources on promotion campaigns, the professionals should invest in website optimization, measure the bounce rate, and build a better “conversion trap” on the registration page.
Sponsorship activities
Marketing event metrics is a great tool for showcasing your expertise and proving the value of an event. Every sponsor needs to understand whether it’s worth investing in your event or not. By providing the data that reflects on the engagement with the sponsor’s pages as well as some general statistics on the target audience and attendance rates, you create strong, valuable data for the sponsor.
Onsite registration
Queue-free registration is great proof of a well organized check-in process. By monitoring how well the onsite team works, which forms of check-in are prefered by attendees, and at which stages difficulties emerge, you gain valuable insights into onsite registration. To avoid problems with onsite registration all together, check out the automated tools for effective check-in.
Engagement
Content is crucial. One of the core goals of every event planner is ensuring great engagement for attendees at the event. To perfect this, you have to measure how people respond to diverse types of event sessions and shape your strategy based on received data. Consider that different event types require different engagement forms, which is why it may be a good strategy to split engagement metrics in several segments.
Capture feedbacks
Lastly, don’t forget that the opinions of the event attendees should be the guiding light for you as an event organizer. To capture honest feedbacks and impressions, consider using electronic surveys at your events. Survey data can help you understand which sessions worked the best and which organizational processes were the most challenging from the attendees’ perspectives.
How to choose the right metrics.
Key event metrics should be chosen based on the goals that an event planner sets. To make the decisions less daunting, consider several working tips that can help you measure the success of an event:
- Choose the best analytics platform ever. Metrics involves much analytics which means that a strong platform can really win the race for you. To avoid the hustle and bustle of switching from one app to another, look for the integrated solution that allows you registration tracking, email marketing, and performing onsite surveys in one place.
- Assign responsibilities. Even with a top-notch platform, handling all the event data on one’s own is a challenge. To reduce stress, assign responsibilities to your team members and collect all the pieces of the puzzle after an event.
- Don’t stop at the “success point.” Many event planners make a huge mistake when they stop analyzing once the desired indicators have been reached. It’s crucial to remember that there’s always some space for improvement; don’t stop with achieved results!
Conclusion
Event metrics that provide a reflection on registration, attendance rates, and event engagement can help you make the most out of your event planning expertise. Get started for free with Gevme and gain all the core metrics in one place.
