Event surveys are everywhere. You may rely on a simple post-event attendee survey, speaker / session surveys, or partner / sponsor surveys. You may even conduct a pre-event survey, several pulse surveys throughout the event, or even employee surveys to gauge performance. There are dozens of ways to measure the impact of your event on meeting your objectives, and diagnosing performance for continuous improvement. Chief among them are surveys. Here are some event survey best practices to keep in mind.
Always Start with Objectives
Before creating a survey, clearly define your goals and objectives to ensure that you use the right tools and ask the right questions and gather the information you need. These should be tied directly to your event objectives. You may find that a survey (or a specific question) isn’t the right / best way to get at the data you need.
Offer Incentives
Offer incentives such as discounts, gift cards, or major prize drawings (sweepstakes) to encourage participation and completion of the survey. The bigger the better (but don’t break the bank).
Keep Your Event Survey(s) Concise
Focus on questions that are “must-have” vs. “nice-to-have” and eliminate anything that’s not absolutely necessary in providing data you can and will act on. 10-15 questions is about the maximum for high completion percentages without survey length bias (respondents get lazy toward the end). Also, the most important questions should be up front and required.
Use a Logical Flow
Organize your questions in a logical order that makes sense and flows well. This will help survey respondents stay in the right mindset for the questions, and allow them to complete the survey with ease.
Use Skip Logic
Use skip logic to ask only the relevant questions to each respondent based on their previous answers. This will help respondents flow through the survey more easily, and give you nuanced information when necessary.
Provide a Progress Bar
Provide a progress bar or indication of how much of the survey is remaining to encourage respondents to continue.
Use Clear and Concise Language
Use clear and simple language that is easy for respondents to understand. Avoid jargon and technical terms.
Event Survey Demographic Questions – Is There Another Way?
If it’s possible to use registration questions to capture demographic data, and then tie this data to survey responses, this can save you a few demographic questions on the survey. Be mindful of PII and GDPR. Data sets should be based on database index numbers, not names.
Use a Mix of Question Types
Use a mix of question types, including multiple-choice, rating scales, and open-ended questions, to gather diverse data. Limit open-ended questions to areas where you’re looking for specific nuances. Analyzing thousands of open-ended questions is challenging at best, even with the latest language and semantic models.
Randomize answer options
Randomize answer options to prevent order bias and ensure accurate results. Otherwise your survey results could be overly positive or negative.
Send the Survey Promptly
Send the survey promptly after the event (or the session for speaker / session surveys), while the content, experience, and delivery are still fresh in the respondent’s mind.
Follow Up
We’ve found that 3-4 follow up emails over the course of 2-3 weeks following an event maximizes responses. Remember to remind attendees of the fabulous prizes they can get, as well as the value of the survey to you and your gratitude for their time and opinions.
Following these event survey best practices should help you create and send your survey, and maximize responses. In a future post, we’ll examine what types of questions to ask on Attendee Surveys, Speaker / Session Surveys, and Partner / Sponsor Surveys. Stay tuned!