The Event Attendee Survey is the final report card on all your efforts to create a meaningful and memorable experience for your target audiences. It’s also a key indicator of whether or not you’ve achieved your business, brand, marketing and sales objectives.
According to a study by Cvent, event organizers who use surveys to collect feedback are 2.7 times more likely to report increased attendee satisfaction. It’s no wonder so many put so much stock in creating and deploying a useful post-event attendee survey. Here are 10 core questions to get you started.
1. Overall Experience
“Please rate your overall experience with Experiential Event.”
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Poor” to “Excellent”
Follow-up questions: “What worked well?” / “What didn’t work well?” Alternatively, “Favorite part of the event?” / “Least favorite part of the event?” with open text fields.
Why it’s great: It helps event marketers understand attendees’ perception of the overall experience from top to bottom. It also helps identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as attendee needs and expectations. This can provide organizers with valuable insights that can be used to improve events and design experiences that better meet the needs and expectations of their target audiences.
2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
“How likely are you to recommend Experiential Event to a business associate or colleague?”
Answers: 10-point scale. Total Promoters (9-10 score) – Total Detractors (1-6 score) / Total Responders (1-10 score) * 100 (for percentage)
Scoring: Rage -100 – +100. <0 = Poor, 0-10 = Fair, 11-30 = Good, 31-50 = Excellent, 51+ = Outstanding
Why it’s great: NPS provides a simple and standardized way to measure attendee loyalty and satisfaction over time. By tracking NPS scores, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, as well as track the effectiveness of event adjustments aimed at improving attendee satisfaction.
In addition, NPS is often used as a benchmark to compare a an event’s performance against other events in the portfolio, competitors events, or industry events. This can help companies identify areas where they may be falling behind and focus their efforts on improving those areas to gain a competitive advantage.
3. Relevance
“How relevant is Experiential Event to your work?”
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Not at all relevant” to “Extremely relevant”
Why it’s great: Relevance questions provide insights into attendee needs and interests, as well as the effectiveness of content and experiences at the event. Relevance questions can also be asked at the individual session level to fine-tune content offerings.
4. Value
“Considering your reasons for attending, what is your rating of Experiential Event in terms of the value you received compared to the time and money you spent?”
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Poor” to “Excellent”
Why it’s great: Just because an event is relevant, it doesn’t mean it was valuable. By asking attendees to rate the value they received from attending the event, organizers can gain valuable insights into how attendees perceive the cost-benefit ratio of the event. This information can be used to adjust pricing or to make changes to the event content or activities to ensure that attendees perceive the event as a good value.
5. Event Effectiveness
This is typically a two-part question which ranks reasons for attendee participation against the event’s ability to deliver against each area.
“Please rate the importance of the following reasons for attending Experiential Event.”
These reasons are pre-determined and may include things like “Networking Opportunities”, “Education”, “Access to Experts”, “Ability to Identify New Partners or Suppliers”, etc.
“How Satisfied were you with Experiential Event in meeting each of these reasons you rated highly important“
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Not at all important” to “Extremely important” / “Not at all satisfied” to “Extremely satisfied”
Why it’s great: By examining importance against satisfaction for each area, event planners can identify gaps which areas to prioritize focus on in the event, as well as understand where there are gaps in event performance for each area for continuous improvement moving forward.
6. Content Breadth and Depth
Another two-part question which gauges breadth of content against depth of content to ensure event content meets attendee expectations based on their organizational role.
How do you feel about the depth of content at Experiential Event?
How do you feel about the breadth of content at Experiential Event?
Answers: 3-point Scale, “Not broad / deep enough” to “Too broad / deep””
Why it’s great: This series of questions can help meet attendee expectations based on their roles, and how they perceive the content of the event. By plotting the depth and breadth of content on a quadrant chart (breadth on the x-axis / Depth on the y-axis), you can have a visual representation of how on the mark you were with overall event content. From here, you can use the session surveys to understand exactly where you were successful or not, and develop a content action plan that gets you closer to center.
7. Content Effectiveness (Familiarity)
“As a result of Experiential Event, How familiar are you with content / product / solution / process / company, etc.?“
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Not at all familiar” to “Extremely familiar”
Why it’s great: This is a simple gauge to measure message retention. especially powerful when paired with a pre-event survey asking a similar question. Can also be paired with a simple quiz to “test” attendees on their knowledge if you want to confirm message and content impact on attendee knowledge.
8. Operational Elements
Using a similar approach as Event Effectiveness, this question rates the performance of each operational element of the event.
“Please rate the each of the following operational elements of Experiential Event.”
Operational elements may include things like “Registration”, “Event Communications”, “Event App”, “Hotel Availability”, “Way-finding”, “Transportation”, “F&B”, “Help Desk”, etc.
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Poor” to “Excellent”
Why it’s great: This question gives you a targeted approach to identifying which elements of the event may have impacted overall attendee experience. Using this data will help identify specific areas of improvement for future events.
9. Future Attendance
“How likely are you to attend Experiential Event next year?”
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Definitely will not attend” to “Definitely will attend”
Why it’s great: Give a sense of the impact the event make across attendee profiles. Can be used as one input to forecast future attendance. Secondary indicator of attendee satisfaction and value.
10. Future Intent
“How likely are you to consider / use / purchase / apply / reach out / etc. X as a result of Experiential Event?”
Answers: 5-point Likert Scale, “Not at all likely” to “Extremely likely”
Why it’s great: Major indicator of performance against business objectives. Especially valuable when paired with hard metrics like pipeline influence, velocity, or value.
Of course, the questions you ask on a post-event survey are virtually limitless. It’s important to note that the shorter the survey, the more likely attendees are to complete it, and the more accurate the results tend to be. This core set of questions is an excellent place to start. For information on event survey best practices, please check out Event Survey Best Practices: How to Get the Data You Need.