Managing Data Post-Event: 4 Metrics to Consider

Managing Data Post-Event: 4 Metrics to Consider

Managing post-event data helps refine your organization’s strategies for the future. Throughout your event, your organization can gain valuable insights into your members to help advance various elements of your strategy. For example, you can analyze which speakers or topics garner the most registrations at your conference to source speakers that appeal to your audience in the future.

The information you gather can help your organization build stronger relationships with event attendees. When you measure their satisfaction and implement changes, it shows that your organization values their input and helps you understand what attendees want and expect from your event. Once you make these discoveries, you can start adjusting events to better address attendees’ needs and expectations.

To uncover these insights, your organization should consider analyzing these metrics after your event is over:

1. Attendance Rates
2. Attendee Data
3. Marketing Success Rates
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Some of these important metrics can be obtained from the waivers and registration forms you collect on your website before the event even begins. Other metrics, like satisfaction rates, will need to be collected after the event.

Once you’ve gathered the data, it’s important to know what to look for to help you make valuable changes and data-backed decisions for future events. A good starting point is to learn which metrics to look for and how to interpret them. Let’s get started!

1. Attendance Rates 

One of the first and most important data metrics your organization should analyze from your event is the attendance rate. While this metric seems simple, it can help you identify issues that could be limiting registration and measure the success of improvements made from year to year (like switching to a more streamlined registration software). 

Some of the ways you can use the attendance rate include comparing: 

• Pre-registrations vs. check-ins. How many people registered to attend but didn’t attend the event? How many attendees bought a ticket at the door rather than registering in advance? These simple comparisons can help your nonprofit better understand your attendance pipeline and pinpoint where supporters or interested members who miss the event are falling off.
  
  
• Attendance rates from one year to the next. It’s likely that one of your top priorities is to grow your event each year. If attendance rates drop, try to find the reason why so that you can remedy any problems and continue growing in the future. On the other hand, you can also use this metric to measure positive changes that occurred as a result of improvements you made.
  
  
• Actual vs. expected attendance. Look at your actual attendance rates and compare them to the number you expected to attend. This comparison can help you shape your expectations for future events. If you determine an average percentage of actual vs. expected attendees, you can limit waste on things like catering, brochures, programs, table settings, and other relevant supplies.

This data can be pulled from your registration software or even your waiver software solution. If you use a digital waiver software solution like Smartwaiver, you can encourage people to register in advance, provide the data you need to host the event, and sign liability releases all at once. Then, download the participant data directly from your waiver solution immediately after the event and start analyzing.

2. Attendee Data

Personalizing your organization’s interactions with attendees (by using advanced targeting and highly-relevant messages, for example) is one of the most impactful strategies you can use. In fact, 89% of marketers indicate that personalized communications lead to a positive marketing ROI. 

Here are some of the data points you can use to learn more about attendees and customize future communications: 

• New attendees. Keep track of both who is new to your event and brand new to your organization. Make a list of new attendees, and reach out right after the event to continue the engagement with your organization. 
• Highly-engaged attendees. If one attendee frequently engaged with your organization in the past, they’d be a great person to reach out to in order to support you in other ways. For instance, if you need donations or volunteers, they may be more likely to contribute in those ways. 
• Low-engagement attendees. If an attendee came to your event last year but not this year, consider reaching out to them to see why they didn’t come. This may help save a supporter from lapsing in their engagement. 
• Types of events attended. You can learn more about attendees’ interests and passions by studying which events they attend. If you run an association, make note of a member that attends every event and meeting about a specific topic. Then, send them promotions and messages related to that topic, like an upcoming conference or a new course you’re offering within your AMS platform.
• Demographics and contact data. Make sure to collect the specific demographic and personal information in your attendee registration process that will help you address each person. Common demographics include age, gender, geographic location, and marital status.

Say your organization is using digital waivers for a charity race. You can add flags to specific waiver questions to make attendees' responses stand out so you can pick up on unique insights.

3. Marketing Success Rates

Marketing is what spreads the word about your event and helps fill seats, but it requires consistent work and dedication. To improve marketing outcomes and ROIs, organizations need metrics to diagnose and remedy problems. 

For example, if your email open rates are low, the issue may be that your subject lines are too long or not engaging enough. On the other hand, if many recipients open the email but don’t take any further action (like registering or making a donation), your call to action may be weak or unclear.

When it comes to enhancing event marketing, your organization should consider:

• The registration funnel. Carefully consider the path to the final registration. The initial outreach to a potential attendee might not convince them to attend your event. However, when you provide multiple touchpoints about the event (e.g., an initial email, social media messages, and a link to the required waiver on your site) you are more likely to convince them to register and attend.
• Communication preferences. Measure which of the outreach platforms best resonate with your supporters. You may find that different age groups or demographics respond better to some platforms than others. Take note of this for future marketing.
• A/B testing. A/B testing involves creating two different marketing strategies and testing both of them on different parts of your audience to see which is more effective. If you used A/B testing leading up to your campaign, make sure to use these results after the event is over to best appeal to those you reach out to. 

Make sure your organization has marketing tools and strategies specifically designed with the unique challenges and characteristics of your industry in mind. Double the Donation’s guide to nonprofit marketing can help you identify how your organization’s marketing efforts and appeals should differ from those of for-profit companies.

4. KPIs 

Before your event even starts, you should define the key performance indicators (KPIs) for the event. Make sure to choose KPIs that are closely related to your goals so you can measure what your organization defines as “success.”

Some common KPIs organizations track for their events include: 

• Attendee satisfaction. Sending out a satisfaction survey after the event can help you better understand how happy attendees were with the experience. Ask additional questions that help you to understand what attendees expected to get out of the event so you’ll have a solid idea of what to include in the future. 
• Social media engagement. Generally, this is a secondary KPI. Check your social media analytics during and after the event to see when the most people were liking and following your organization. Invite them to post using your unique hashtag or by tagging your organization in their images from the event. 
• Donations collected. If your organization is collecting donations at your event, you may include that in your list of KPIs. Make a list of the different donation collection pages and opportunities you have available to supporters. Then, see which of those was the most effective. 
• Number of new attendees. Many organizations host events to engage new supporters and begin new relationships. In this case, track the marketing initiatives that brought in the most attendees and make sure to emphasize that initiative for your next event too. 
• Total event revenue. Whether you’re collecting donations or simply collecting registration fees, many organizations include the total revenue in their list of KPIs. This will help you determine the profitability of your event, which is particularly important if you are fundraising or have a set budget to stick to.

Make sure the software you’re using will allow you to measure each of your KPIs effectively while still providing positive experiences to your attendees. For example, your waiver software will provide valuable insights to your internal team but should also allow you to embed your digital waiver onto your website, creating a seamless front-end experience for attendees.

It can be time-consuming and even expensive to gather attendee data you need to improve future events. Before investing additional resources or funds into collecting this data, look at what you already have on file from registration and waiver data. With so many industries using digital waivers, from salons to nonprofits, there’s no reason not to employ them as both a safety measure and a way to aggregate data.