Actual article date: Nov 5, 2014

The Digital Edge for Events 2

In this week’s article, we dive further into The Digital Edge for Events. We will find out more about how to manage your event’s big data and build on it to gain an edge in the ever competitive, yet highly exciting and engaging, events industry.

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Measure Your Event’s Success!

Measuring the success of your event, be it exhibitions or conferences, helps you size up the ROI of the project. For example, you can compare results with other marketing efforts and analyze what worked and what didn’t to improve on your current and future events. Success can be measured in terms of direct results, such as new sales leads, or indirect results, such as improvements to your company’s and event’s brand recognition.

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In this current “Big Data” era, there are huge amounts and varied structures of data available to us. The following 4 simple steps show how you could determine what to measure, how to measure, and most importantly how to use the data in a meaningful way to measure your event’s success.

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1. Determine the purpose and objectives of the event

It is essential to use the right metrics to determine how well your event went. Is the event intended to increase sales? Then we would need to measure the quality and number of attendees who attend the event as well as what they have purchased. Is it to increase brand awareness? If so, track your company’s social media presence and your industry’s mention in business magazines. Should it be to boost recognition of the host as an education leader, organisers can measure factors such as the media coverage of speakers’ presentations or the number of delegates who request for the presentation slides after the event. Objectives like these will determine what data should be collected to measure success.

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2. Start collecting event data pre-event

Find out what makes the event valuable to your attendees even before your event, such as why they are coming to the event, what they hope to gain, as well as the topics that they’re most interested in. With networking as the number one incentive right now, it would be useful to find out who or what type of trade visitor, exhibitor, and speakers are most sought after. With data like that, the insights can be used to attract the right mix of attendees. A pre-event survey can help find out what social networks your attendees use and how they found out about your event. Knowing this will be instrumental and highly useful for future marketing efforts.

3. Evaluate the usefulness of your mobile app

Event organisers and marketers find huge ROIs when using apps at their events on the condition of high adoption rates. The wide adoption of a networking event app directly fuels the growth and engagement of the event. That is why mobile apps, for events, are being leveraged by organisers to add value to their events. We understand how important an app is for your event. That is why Jublia is the simplest event networking app to use that allows attendees to find and connect with the relevant people. Jublia also offers data analytics so that you can quantify and quality your attendee data and networking potential finally. These insights allow you to determine successful brand exposure of your stakeholders. It would also help you determine how useful the app was. By doing so, helping you better prepare for your next event.

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4. Integrate real-time feedback systems

Emails, forms, and SMS are just a few avenues to obtain feedback from your attendees. By asking questions such as how they heard about your event, whether they managed to meet the relevant people, and what else they’d want to see in a future event, would help you assess what content was or wasn’t useful to your attendees and if your promotional strategies were effective. This would also help you assess the overall success of your event.

With data and business intelligence at your fingertips, you can now have a better picture of how successful your event was. Through these insights, you can also better understand your attendees’ needs, create custom experiences, and make the current and future events even more successful!

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