Does event data analysis form a part of your event strategy? If not, then you are missing out on the most effective way of understanding attendee behavior, preferences, and interests, as well as measuring the impact of the event on your company’s goals and objectives.

Now, is it just about making your attendees fill a form about their preferences? The answer is- No! Event data can be collected at different stages of an event and by different methods depending upon the goals of event.

Types of Event Data

Before The Event:

1. Demographic information like attendee names, email addresses, job titles, company names.
2. Data on which sessions or activities attendees are interested in attending or participating in.
3. Data on how attendees learned about the event. This will help you determine which campaigns were most effective.

During The Event:

1. Data on which sessions or activities attendees attended, how long they stayed, and any interactions they had during those.
2. Data on how attendees engaged with the event, such as through social media activity, booth visits, or conversations with other attendees.
3. Data on attendee satisfaction with the event, including feedback on specific sessions, activities, or the event as a whole.

After The Event:

1. Data on attendee follow-up interactions, such as whether they responded to a survey, downloaded materials from the event, or contacted a sales rep.
2. Data on long-term engagement with attendees, such as whether they attended future events, engaged with the company on social media, or became a customer or partner.

How to Gather Event Data?

How you gather data depends a lot upon the information you want and the type of event you are hosting. Here are some ways that you can consider:

1. Registration and Ticketing Systems: If your event require attendees to register or purchase tickets, you can easily collect information like attendee names, contact information, and ticket type.
2. Surveys: Consider using open-ended questions to get more detailed feedback, and closed-ended questions to collect quantitative data. You can use online survey tools like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, and Typeform to create your surveys. While you can always give out paper surveys on-site, sending them via email or embedding the survey in a mobile app is more economical and eco-friendly.
3. Social Media: Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram can be a valuable source of event data. You can track hashtags, mentions, and engagement to see how people are talking about your event. There are many social media monitoring tools available out there to help you like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Brandwatch.
4. Mobile Apps: If your event has a mobile app, you can use it to collect data on attendee behavior and preferences. This can include session attendance, networking activity, and session ratings. Consider using gamification or other engagement strategies to encourage attendees to use the app.
5. RFID and NFC Technology: RFID (radio-frequency identification) and NFC (near-field communication) are wireless communication technologies that can be used to track attendee movements and interactions at an event.
6. Feedback Forms: Feedback forms can be distributed during or after the event to collect data on specific sessions, speakers, or other aspects of the event.
7. Interviews: If you want to collect more in-depth data, you can conduct interviews with attendees, speakers, or sponsors. This can provide valuable qualitative data on the attendee experience and event impact.

Sounds a lot to do? Well, outsourcing this job to an event management company can be a smart choice if you want want to ensure that your events are executed efficiently while leveraging the latest event technology and data analysis techniques.

Why does Event Data Matter?

1. Measure Event Success

Event data provides quantifiable and objective metrics that can be used to evaluate the event’s performance. Factors like session attendance and duration of engagement helps you learn about attendee satisfaction.

Further, social media metrics such as shares, likes, and comments can help you figure out the reach of your event and the level of engagement and interest generated by the event. Post-event evaluations through feedback forms helps the organizers to find out if event was well liked or not.

If your event is a paid one, event data can also help you measure the revenue generated from ticket sales, sponsorships, and other sources. This can be used to evaluate the financial success of the event.

2. Improve Future Events

By tracking attendee engagement, you can make alterations in your future events. These changes could be around agenda, format or even venue.

If the data shows that attendees were not satisfied with certain aspects of the event, such as the quality of the food or the availability of networking opportunities, you can make changes to address those concerns. You can also see what marketing channels worked best by tracking ticket sales, social media engagement, and website traffic.

3. Identify Areas Of Improvement In Your Solutions/ Products

Event data can provide you with a wealth of information about how users interact with your product or service. For example, your attendees can share if they are being offered something better by your competitors, what are the kind of problems they are encountering with your product or service, which parts of the product or service are most confusing to them and so on. This data can also help you identify the price sensitivity of your product among your target audience.

4. Personalize Future Events

Whether it’s B2C or B2B events, personalization has become the standard practice. But why do you need event data to personalize future events? When you gather information like which sessions were most popular, which speakers were most engaging, and which networking opportunities were most successful, you can tailor future events to match your audiences’ preferences.

Further, you can take event personalization a notch higher by segmenting attendees based on their interests, job titles, or other relevant factors, and personalize the event experience for each group. Another way you can personalize your events is by sending targeted emails with information about sessions and networking opportunities that are most relevant to each attendee’s interests.

5. Identify Potential Customers

Event based data can be held synonymous with customer data. It provides information about attendees, including their job titles, company names, and industry affiliations. This information can help you identify potential customers who fit your target demographic.

Further, in-depth information like which exhibitors or sessions the attendees visited, which products they interacted with, and which activities they participated in, you can identify people who are most likely to get converted.

Many events have an active social media presence, and monitoring these channels is also a great way to see who all are expressing interest in your organization or its products/services. Then of course you have feedback forms that can help you find out who all are interested in learning more about your products/ services.

Once you have all the data points you need, all you need to do is consistently nurture these attendees and turn them into customers.

Conclusion:

Remember, it’s important to be aware of privacy and security concerns when collecting and storing data. Make sure you have the necessary permissions and safeguards in place to protect the data you collect.

Now that you know the power of event data, the types of data you can collect, the metrics you can track, and the tools you can use to analyze data, you can make the most of it to drive success. However, measuring event data can be challenging, especially when dealing with large amounts of data or data that is unstructured or incomplete. It is important to have a clear understanding of what data is relevant and how it can be collected and analyzed effectively in order to derive actionable insights. Event planning skills and technology have got to do a lot with this!

Looking for a physical, virtual or hybrid event agency in India? With 25+ years of experience, we, at Channel Technologies, offer end-to-end event management services across the country!

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