You’ve planned and executed another great event. Or at least you think so – it’s hard to know exactly if you weren’t tracking event metrics as closely as you could have.
An easy way to prevent feeling unsure about the success of your event is to consider metrics at every stage of the event process. Event metrics can help you justify your event strategy, evaluate the return on your investment (ROI), and determine the ultimate success of your goals and objectives.
Crunching the numbers may not be quite as fun as hosting the event, but using the data is incredibly useful—and it’s easier than you think! In this article, we’ll take you through the tried and true key performance indicators (KPIs) that you should be tracking to see your maximum ROI.
First, we’ll explain why tracking metrics is important. Then, we’ll dive into what you should track and how to measure and report these metrics, including:
- Total registrations or tickets sold
- Attendance
- Event engagement and participation
- Cost of the event
- Email engagement
- Survey results
- Social media engagement
- Website traffic
- New customers or partners
- Total revenue
- Testimonials
Let’s get started!
Why track event metrics?
After any event, you’ll be left with two important questions: Did the event pay off? How so? Tracking event metrics can help you answer these questions and do the following:
- Determine if your event was a success. Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and comparing actual results to desired results will let you know how your event stacked up to your expectations.
- Inform future events. Your KPIs can show where you may need to change or improve things for the future.
- Improve the attendee experience. Gain insight using metrics that understand your event from an attendee’s perspective to improve attendee engagement and enjoyment.
- Show value. Having a variety of metrics allows you to show your event’s value to a leadership team, sponsors, and the like. With the numbers from your event metrics in hand, you’ll be able to confidently prove that your event was a hit.
“There are two sides to every event: the business or resource management side and the attendee experience side. Most KPIs will speak to the business side because those things are easy to measure. Marketing, sales, traffic, etc. These are essential when determining the success of your event from that perspective. On the other side, the attendee experience side, you need qualitative feedback. Which means things like survey responses and testimonials are likely the most important data to collect out of everything. This is where you learn if your event provided value to your attendees or if you missed the mark.”
–Nathan B. Weller, Product Marketing Manager for The Events Calendar
Event metrics to track
We know there are many, many metrics to consider, and it can be a time consuming process to pay attention to them all. However, you don’t need to track each one if it doesn’t serve you, your event, or your organization. The specific metrics that you’ll focus on depend on your objectives.
Here are some of the most useful ones to keep an eye on:
Total registrations or tickets sold
This event metric shows the number of total folks who signed up for your event or paid for a ticket. You can also track when people register or buy a ticket.
How it helps
This number gauges the initial interest folks had in your event. It’ll also give you a starting point for understanding revenue, if you’re selling tickets.
Paying attention to when folks sign up allows you to adjust your marketing plan to focus on peak windows, such as early bird promotions or last-minute ticket releases.
How to track this
A plugin like Event Tickets can help track your tickets and registrations. With Event Tickets Plus, you can collect attendee information through RSVPs and use this information to start generating reports for this and other important event metrics.
Attendance
This number is the count of folks who actually came to your event, either in person or virtual.
How it helps
Your actual attendance can give insight into how successful your promotions have been, how “can’t-miss” your event feels, and the success of your event reminders leading up to the event.
How to track this
Tracking actual attendance is easy with QR code check-ins, which is possible with Event Tickets Plus. You can also use our Attendee Report feature to quickly compare total attendee check-ins to total tickets issued.
Event engagement and participation
This metric measures how attendees feel and act while at your event and if they take advantage of all that your event has to offer.
How it helps
Gauging engagement and participation helps you understand how interesting and relevant your event has been to your targeted audience. For example, if you have a high dropout rate during your virtual event, then perhaps the information was not helpful to attendees.
How to track this
You can pay attention to this metric both throughout your event and in follow-up surveys. For example, for virtual events, monitor live chat, polls, time spent on the platform/app, and so on.
During live events, notice the audience’s interactions with peers and guests/speakers, participation in breakouts/workshops, and the like. After the event, send a survey on the level of engagement and what folks participated in the most to gain some quantifiable data.
Cost of the event
This event metric compares your total cost of the entire event (promotion, speakers, advertising, materials, travel, venue, and more) against your projected budget to get a better idea of your actual spending.
How it helps
Tallying up your total cost can help clarify a few things. First, it will let you know how off-base (or on the mark) your budget was for this event. It can inform you if you need more sponsorships in the future to cover high-than-expected costs. You can also compare this number to your total revenue to see if your event lost or made money.
How to track this
It’s best to track total costs using a budget tracker or template and to fill in actual numbers as they add up. Create a budget spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, or consider using a software specifically made for budgeting.
Email engagement
This metric tracks how many folks opened your emails and clicked through to either learn more about your event or to register for your event.
How it helps
Email engagement gives a glimpse at how well your email marketing efforts are working. You can estimate early interest in your event as well.
After the event, open and clickthrough rates (and unsubscribe rates) can help inform you of the event’s effectiveness and perception.
How to track this
Begin with an email marketing tool and connect it to your Events Calendar through Zapier to automatically create email campaigns for each new event. Additionally, Promoter from The Events Calendar is made for event email marketing and also provides metrics you can track.
Survey results
This is a questionnaire you can send to your attendees, typically after the event, to gather some more information on the effectiveness of the event from their point of view.
How it helps
A survey provides direct feedback (both positive or negative!) about the event that you can use to improve the next one.
As mentioned, surveys can help you see how engaging the event was. You can also ask for more information about the attendees, what they liked the most, and if they would come back.
How to track this
This is as simple as creating a survey and sending it out shortly after your event. However, it’s important to ask the right questions. For example, you can ask attendees:
- Yes or no questions (Was this your first time attending an event?)
- Multiple choice (How many sessions did you attend?)
- Ranking questions (On a scale of 1-5…)
- Demographic info (What is your annual household income?)
- Open-ended (What could be improved?)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) (How likely are you to recommend our events to a friend?)
Social media engagement
These are the posts you make across your social media accounts (typically Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and Facebook) about your event and how many comments, likes, and shares the posts receive.
How it helps
This metric gives insight into what others are saying (or not saying) about the event online. It’ll also show how expansive your reach is and provide another indicator of interest in your event.
How to track this
Look at your social media mentions, shares/reposts, comments, DMs, and likes. Most social media sites have built-in metric platforms for tracking performance.
You can also use UTM parameters, which are fragments added to URLs that provide insights on link performance. This information helps you see if folks came to your website from one social media platform more than the others.
Website traffic
Web traffic is not just the clicks on your web pages. It also includes new users, engagement time, page views, and conversion rates.
How it helps
Your overall traffic shows how your event pages are leaving impressions on attendees and partners. It could also indicate a higher interest and increase in your brand awareness.
How to track this
Look at your site data in Google Analytics. In Google Analytics, navigate to Reports to find Acquisition and Engagement overviews. These pages can show you data like where your website visitors come from, how long they’re spending on your site, and which pages are most popular.
New customers or partners
What new people did you bring to the organization? What alliances or partnerships did you form? This is the metric to track those!
How it helps
This event metric helps demonstrate your conversion rate and gives information about your bottom line – or your end goal.
For example, if your event is being held as a way to promote your new product, then ultimately, new customers buying your product is a perfect way to determine if your event was a success.
How to track this
Track your event leads and follow up with salespeople and your CRM to see who is converting. The Events Calendar integrates with Hubspot so you can track all of your customer data in one place.
Additionally, talk to new partners directly to see how you can forge a relationship going forward through multiple events.
Total revenue
This metric refers to all of the money that your event brought in for you or the organization.
How it helps
This number gives a high-level overview of what the event contributed monetarily to the organization.
You can subtract your total costs from your revenue to find your profit. For example, If ticket sales are the revenue driver, then you’ll take your total ticket sales revenue minus total event cost to find your net profits.
How to track this
Calculate all of your ticket sales, merchandise, donations, and so on earned from your event and track them in a spreadsheet.
For a detailed look at revenue and profit, you can also include estimated or exact value for new customers, depending on your product/service sales cycle.
Testimonials
These are the blurbs or stories that event attendees share with you after the event ends that give a glimpse on what it was like to attend the event.
How it helps
Testimonials provide first-hand experiences from participants on what the event did for them. Make sure to grab testimonials from your speakers, sponsors, and attendees to see a well-rounded view of your event.
How to track this
Reach out directly and ask for testimonials. You can do this in an email follow-up, on social media, as a survey question, or in direct asks. The more personal and heartfelt your request, the more likely attendees may be to gush about you – especially if they had a fabulous time.
How to use event metrics
With these numbers in hand, now you can use your data to your advantage in several ways. Here are some of the best ways to turn your metrics into shareable results:
Measure event ROI
Your event ROI will depend on your event goals plus the corresponding KPI. For example, to track your ROI on attendance, you’ll calculate:
Total attendees ÷ Total registrations x 100
This could look something like 1000 attendees ÷ 1500 registrations x 100 = 66%. This lets you know that two thirds of registrations actually attended the event.
There are a number of ways you can set goals that are specific to your event. In fact, defining event goals and objectives should be one of the very first things you do in event planning!
Create an event report
Essential metrics can go right into a nice event report that can then be shared with stakeholders and other interested folks. Reporting is important for any event as it’s a place to gather all of your data and prepare for future events. The best part is that it can be done easily with The Events Calendar.
If you’re using Event Tickets Plus as well, you can also add custom fields to capture additional information about your attendees. You can also track your ticket sales and payments by hovering over the Orders tab where you edit your events.
Improve your future events
Event metrics can paint a picture of what others thought of your event and your brand. A good metric to track here is event engagement. Pay attention to the metrics that show how excited attendees were about the topics, agenda, and speakers; this is often tracked in post-event surveys or in social media comments.
Remember that both good and bad results are important to look at. Both can inform future events and create a baseline for comparison to see if you can meet or exceed this engagement level at the next event.
Exploring event metrics with The Events Calendar
Event metrics are crucial to understanding how your event performed and if you achieved a positive ROI. Metrics empower you to quantitatively measure your event’s success, demonstrate tangible value, and validate your overall event marketing strategy.
Tracking a lot of metrics may seem like busy work, but it’s made easy with tools like The Events Calendar and Event Tickets. With Event Tickets Plus, you can also capture event metrics right in your WordPress dashboard and create helpful reports. Some of the metrics you can track with Event Tickets Plus include total check-ins, total tickets issued/sold, and attendee information.
Try out Event Tickets Plus on a demo site to see if these features are what you’ve been looking for. With power like this, all on WordPress, you’ll be prepared for your next successful event!
The post The Ultimate Guide to KPIs for Event ROI appeared first on The Events Calendar.