Evaluating Your Event

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  4. Evaluating Your Event
Event evaluation is a critical part of the event planning process, providing valuable insights for future iterations.

Event evaluation can help identify whether an event was successful according to your goals and objectives, highlighting areas for improvement and helping you to understand your event’s future viability.

Doing this effectively requires a holistic assessment of your event using a range of measures and approaches to determine its impact and performance, including pre-event, during the event, and post-event. 

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Event measurement 
  • Event measurement is a continuous process of:
    • collecting and analysing data
    • obtaining insights, and
    • taking action.
  • Event measurement helps us make better decisions and tell better stories.
  • There are a number of benefits of measuring events for the event/event owner, including:
    • ensuring contractual obligations are met
    • aiding evaluation and continual improvement
    • enabling smarter decision-making
    • empowering events to develop and better tell their story, and
    • supporting opportunities for event growth and increased funding/revenue. 
Event measurement framework  
  • Having a consistent measurement approach and framework helps organisers understand and act on what worked well, what drove success and potential areas of improvement.
  • Download the Event Measurement Framework document, which outlines key steps of a successful event measurement process. 
Five pillars of event impact 
  • Five key pillars of a holistic event impact assessment include:
    • Attendance and engagement 
    • Social 
    • Economic 
    • Environmental 
    • Media
  • Download the Five Pillars of Event Impact document, which outlines each pillar, useful measures, and helpful KPIs for pre-event, during the event and post-event. 
Event evaluation tools 

There are multiple event evaluation tools that can be used to gather, analyse, and interpret data related to your event, including: 

  • Surveys: 
    • Can be used before the event to understand the expectations and preferences of potential attendees/participants and ensure your event better caters to them. 
    • Can be conducted during the event (intercept) to capture immediate feedback. 
    • Can be sent to attendees/participants after the event (post-event) to assess their overall experience, satisfaction levels and suggestions for improvement. 
  • Ticketing and registration data: 
    • Analysing ticket sales, attendance numbers, and demographic information can help you and other key stakeholders or sponsors understand the reach and appeal of your event. 
    • Insights from the registration process, such as peak registration times and attendee preferences, can help you structure your marketing and event programme better in future. 
    • Learn more about Ticketing and how to ensure ticketing service providers meet your data capture and reporting requirements. 
  • Observation: 
    • It is useful to have a number of observers attending the event (direct observation) to make notes on attendee engagement, logistics, crowd behaviour etc. 
    • You may also want to have observers participating in the event (participant observation), to gain firsthand experience and provide insights.
  • Social media analysis:  
    • This typically involves reporting on engagement metrics that measure likes, shares, comments and overall reach on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.  
    • Social media analysis may also track mentions, hashtag use and sentiment related to the event across social media platforms. 
  • Website analytics:  
    • Using tools like Google Analytics to track event website traffic, user behaviour, and conversions (e.g. ticket purchases) can provide evidence of reach and provide valuable insights that can be harnessed in future years. 
  • Email campaign analytics:  
    • Analysing open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates from email marketing campaigns can help quantify impact and guide the frequency and content of your future email marketing messages. 
  • Event management software:  
    • Some event management platforms offer integrated tools for registration, ticketing, and post-event analytics that can save you a significant amount of time. 
  • Event apps:  
    • Some mobile apps designed for events can collect real-time feedback, session ratings, and provide engagement metrics. 
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS):  
    • Short NPS surveys asking attendees how likely they are to recommend the event to others can provide a quick measure of overall satisfaction. 
  • Event debriefs and meetings: 
    • Meetings with your internal event team, including volunteers, can help to determine what went well and what could be improved. 
    • Discussion with external parties, such as sponsors, partners and other stakeholders, can be used to gather in-depth feedback.  

For a comprehensive event evaluation, you can utilise a combination of these tools to provide key insights that support future event planning.  

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HAVE YOU CONSIDERED?

  • What are your goals for your event (attendance targets, participant satisfaction levels, revenue goals etc)? Ensure these are clear and measurable. 
  • What data collection and analysis tools will you use to gather information before, during and after the event (ticketing platform analytics, surveys, interviews, observation etc)?