In the era of virtual events and event technology now shifted to virtual technology with virtual event platform in place, event success still acts as the centrifugal force.
How do you measure the success of a virtual event then?
Analytics plays an important role to measure the success of any event be it a virtual or an in-person. For organizers to understand and improvise on their budget, interactions, tools, and investments; it’s crucial to gather event data and analyze them.
There are multiple means to measure the success of a virtual event. And yes, they all revolve around Event Data.
There may be too many metrics that come into play while considering the success of a virtual event. One of the most basic being the attendance but what about pre-event and post-event? Let’s have a look at the list of virtual KPI’s to gauge your event’s success.
The number of registration is always a good metric to start off your analysis for any event. How many people registered & how many actually participated in your conference can be found out through the dashboard of the virtual event platform you have opted.
You can also segment the data with filters like demographics, age groups, and so on.
These numbers also help an organizer to optimize their sales and marketing strategies in order to gain more participation. By knowing what day, date, time, a month had the maximum event registrations & interest to be a part of your event, you can achieve your next set target accordingly.
As an event organizer what’s your aim to organize a virtual conference? Just to get registrations or create an interesting & engaging event for attendees?
Unless the audience feels engaged, your virtual conference is a big FAIL.
Take proper measures beforehand to maximize audience engagement. This can be achieved by using a virtual conference software and built-in features like gamification and contest module.
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Would this feature do any good?
Yes, definitely! Not only will this keep you, attendees, on their toes and engaged but also provide you with measurable outcomes! Yes, it is indeed a great KPI to measure ROI for the event.
So, isn’t this a great add-on for your next virtual event?
Hosting a virtual conference? What’s that one vital KPI you must keep in mind to measure the event ROI?
The answer is Attendee Retention
Keeping in mind that your event isn’t just a one-time occurrence or even if it is, any company/organizer/partner/exhibitor/sponsor would want some leads and conversions.
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To stay updated, tracking how many attendees are returning is important. It will give you an overview of how much your event resonated with your attendees.
Additionally, it’d be of an immense necessity for exhibitors at least to learn about how many leads they have converted and acquired from the event!
You can get all this amount of data from a single platform. Yes, no need to go asking from individual exhibitors or sponsors on how well did their virtual stall does. Simply log in to the dashboard of your virtual event platform and VOILA! Here you get all the metrics in terms of leads and repeat attendees.
Also, to retain attendees it is crucial to make your virtual event less boring with long sessions & more engaging with hosting live q&a, discussion, breakout sessions, and much more.
Your victory lies in how satisfied the audience is! This increases the WOM from their end & they end up becoming our event advocates.
This is one of the common KPI’s when it comes to measuring the ROI for either a virtual event or an in-person conference. If you are creating an event website in collab with a virtual conference software, you can definitely get the analytics from the tools itself. Otherwise, if you already have an existing website you can measure the website traffic on a particular landing page with Google Analytics.
So what are the elements that can spike up the registration number via your website?
Nowadays, event apps are as popular as any other application present in your play store. Many event planners and tech enthusiasts have created event apps for their annual events, employee engagement events, and so on. The number of downloads can be a good metric to gauge the success of an event especially when things are virtual and apps are a handy way to get people on board.
Email campaigns are a wonderful way to communicate with your audience and participants pre, during, and post-event. Almost all email marketing platforms allow you to measure the performance metric of emails like click rates, open rates & unsubscribes. But there is always limitation when it comes to free versions of email platforms while mass mailing.
To ease up your efforts and save time and money both, why not opt for event marketing add-on in the virtual event platform.
The pros of taking this decision would be that you'll have all the data starting from the number of attendees, registrations, app downloads, and email lists. You can also filter out the audience and send personalized emails…
The insights from email campaigns would surely help you build meaningful connections and relations with the attendees.
With your virtual event platform on which the conference is hosted, you can gather post-session and post-event feedback from the attendees. It can be a simple poll after the session ends or the breakout session ends or after any one-to-one meetings.
The feedback is one of the best KPI to assess the success of your virtual event. Why, you ask? Because it’s personalized and coming from actual experience. You can utilize this to improve your event’s performance for the coming sessions or events.
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Social Media Metrics are significant contributors when it comes to measuring the success of a virtual event. You must be promoting your event on social media channels and hence you can easily monitor analytics and measure the activities. Keep a check on which post is working the best and promote it more to keep the audiences engaged.
Try to integrate social channels or hashtags on the social walls of your virtual conference. The attendees can easily view and participate in activities. give a shoutout to increase social mentions. Praise them an audience and actively solve the complaints if any.
Keep a check on metrics like Engagement metrics. Likes, comments, and shares. And Awareness metrics. Watch time, views, viewers, and viewers at peak etc.
Keep track of the reaction to posts, likes, shares, and retweets. This will show how much the post is working in favor of the audience.
Last but not the least, Revenue generated is the biggest metric to measure your virtual events and conferences.
The always set purpose of an organizer to host a virtual event is to generate revenue.
Calculating the revenue generated from your ticket sales, sponsorships, funds collected and others can help you assess the event ROI in financial terms. The ticket sales and information can be seamlessly maintained in the virtual event platform dashboard.
Many online event platforms are calculating and even setting their price on basis of headcounts at an event i.e. per attendee basis.
If you haven’t generated enough revenue in your first virtual conference, don’t get disheartened as these tips will ensure you choose the right way in promoting and calculating the ROI.
So, are these tips helpful to calculate and assess one’s virtual event’s ROI?
If you wish to add more points, feel free to reach out to us on social@hubilo.com
Do check out our latest feature updates on the virtual conference software here!
Juhi Purswani is a major in Information Technology. Currently a Content Developer in Hubilo, she is a passionate writer and loves to research and explore new and unique topics. Working in an event-tech company, she is getting accustomed to the technological revolutions that are taking place in the event management industry. Fond of Dan Brown books, she is an avid reader of fiction. In her relaxation moments, she pens down her thoughts in the form of poems and quotes. You can follow her on twitter on @19_juhi.
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