Post Event Evaluations & Reporting

Once your event is concluded, it’s tempting to box everything up until next year and sleep for a week. However, it’s actually time to ensure that you delivered on the organization’s goals for an event. 

First, you’ll need to capture feedback, both from organizational leadership, staff, and volunteers, as well as from your sponsors, exhibitors, and attendees. To make this process easier, be sure to have your survey tools and questions prepared in advance of the event. There are many survey tools available, but most event platforms (virtual event tools, mobile apps, etc.) include some form of session and event evaluation surveys. Be sure to look into the functionality of the tools you are already paying for, before adding to the list of technology you need to manage. 

To ensure that you receive actionable feedback, divide your surveys into three groups: 

Internal stakeholders

This group of individuals should include everyone involved in the planning or production of your event, including leadership, staff, and vendors. You’ll want to ask questions both about their experience of the project management or planning process and producing the event day-of. You’ll want to ask questions about the cadence of tasks, changes to the planning process, and what experiences they might exclude from or add to future events. This feedback will help you to fine tune the experience when planning the next event and make things smoother for everyone moving forward. 

Sponsors and exhibitors

This survey group should include both your pre-planning contacts for all sponsors and exhibitors and on-site staff. Ask questions about the booking process, what information their leadership might look for to make future sponsorship decisions, and their experience on site and suggestions to improve their experience at future programs. This feedback can allow you to improve their experience by making necessary adjustments to the booking process and the on-site schedule. Collecting this feedback from major sponsors is critical, as attention to their concerns will surely affect future decisions, so going beyond a digital survey with a phone call is a worthwhile investment.  

Attendees

For this survey, you’ll want to ask questions about their reasons for attending, overall event experience, their participation in various event elements, suggested content topics for future events, other vendor types of interest to them, and their likelihood of attending again or recommending the event to a colleague. This feedback allows you to stay in touch with your attendees shifting priorities and continue to build events that have them returning year after year. 

Each of these groups can provide valuable feedback that allows you to improve upon past successes. However, your best marketers are your happy customers. Be sure to include a field in each survey for anecdotal feedback, and ask permission to quote them or use the feedback in future marketing pieces. Having this feedback in writing, rather than in passing by word of mouth at the event, is critical to convey this information to your leadership and future potential customers after the event. 

This anecdotal feedback and the collective analytics of your survey responses allow you to make better informed decisions as you move forward in planning your next event. Being able to back up decisions with data will lend more credibility to your decisions, especially when you are potentially sunsetting any of your organizations “sacred cows”. 

As a final action, develop an impact report. This document should quantify the details of your event by sharing attendance and exhibitor numbers, notable speakers and sponsors, as well as a summary of the best feedback coming out of your event. Building this document and sharing it with your organization’s leadership as well as your sponsors will capitalize on the rush of enthusiasm and support for your organization created by your event. 

Do you already put out all three of these survey types?

Do you have any specific survey questions that have solicited interesting feedback from your events?