To organize an event involves a large mobilization of resources, so being able to see the impact it has had is a requirement that we must set ourselves from the moment we establish the objectives we want to achieve.
It may seem complicated to measure the success of an event, but we assure you that thanks to the advance of technologies, digital marketing and social networks, we can obtain the necessary information to measure its impact. To do this, it will be crucial that while we set our objectives, we define indicators, such as KPIs, to measure its impact. Here’s how to measure the success of an event through KPIs. Let’s get started!
What is a KPI
When we start any project, it is important to set our objectives, not only in quantity, but also in quality. In order to measure the success of these objectives, they must go hand in hand with some indicator that specifies that we are achieving what we have set out to do. The ideal would be to establish a series of KPIs, but what is a KPI?
A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a Key Performance Indicator, and is used to evaluate the performance of the strategies and actions we have implemented to achieve our objectives.
The requirements of a good KPI
Para escoger unos buenos KPIs, estos deben seguir las mismas especificaciones que cuando definimos los objetivos, es decir, los KPIs que establezcamos para nuestro evento deberían seguir la regla SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely):
- Specific: the KPIs we set should be as specific as possible in relation to the metric we want to study.
- Measurable: our KPI must be oriented towards measurable and calculable data.
- Attainable: we must be realistic and establish achievable metrics.
- Relevant: we must choose indicators that provide real value on the information we need.
- Timely: our indicator must be based on a limited time frame.
In addition to following the SMART rule, our KPIs must be adapted to the format and characteristics of the event. An online event will need different KPIs than a face-to-face event, although they may share some, they will not be 100% the same.
The best KPIs to measure the impact of an event are as follows
- Registration or ticket sales: we can establish as a metric the number of tickets sold over the number of tickets available. In the same way, we can measure the registration performance of the event by contrasting the number of registrations made with the established seating capacity.
- Attendees: one of the most important KPIs that will measure the success of our event is the level of attendance. For this KPI we can use the attendance rate metric: [(number of tickets sold / total number of tickets) x100].
- Satisfaction: one of the main objectives of any event should be that attendees have a good time. If we want to evaluate attendee satisfaction, we can create a simple survey with closed answers. In it, we can ask the attendees to evaluate from 1 to 10 their level of satisfaction with the event, or duplicate these questions to different aspects within the event such as catering, services, etc.
- Event participation: we can measure the level of participation in our event. For example, in a conference we can use the metric “number of questions asked during a presentation” to measure participation. Another example is if we have organized some activity within our event. To do so, we would measure the number of participants involved by setting a scale to indicate the success of the participation.
- Profitability: to measure the viability of an event we must take into account the income (tickets, sponsorships…) and expenses generated (campaigns, materials, suppliers…). This way, we will be able to obtain the total cost per ticket and/or action carried out.
- Notoriety: if we want to measure the brand awareness produced by the event, we can resort to a digital channel: social networks. We can measure our notoriety through social listening in social networks, the measurement of mentions in networks or the number of mentions in the media. We must evaluate whether these mentions are positive or negative.
- Sales or leads generated: if one of the objectives of our event is to generate leads or sales, we must establish a KPI for this, the metric used can be the number of sales achieved after the event through a UTM (personalized urls that allow us to control the origin of the traffic to our website) if a link has been shared. Another example of measurement of leads generated can be, if we have distributed elements that include a QR code, to measure the traffic generated.
Measuring the success of an event through technology
The good thing about being living the most technological moment so far is that technology is able to provide us with data. In events, data is essential to measure their success.
New technologies allow us to obtain real-time data with which we can evaluate our KPIs in parallel to the course of the event.
An example of this immediate data collection is obtained through Gofun technology. One of the applications of Gofun in events is the use of NFC technology, which together with Business Intelligence, allows us to keep an exhaustive control of our entire event.
Some examples of metrics that this technology allows us to analyze are:
- Attendance registration.
- The capacity of the venue.
- Consumption within the event: hours of highest consumption, best-selling products, average consumption per attendee, etc.
If we do not measure what we do, we will not know if we have done a good job or not. Data and KPIs, in addition to helping us measure the success of our events, help us make more informed decisions that are consistent with the results. Grab a pen and paper, or a keyboard and a spreadsheet and start setting the objectives of your event and the KPIs you will need to measure the impact it has had.
