Feb 21, 2023
Read how BI WORLDWIDE approaches measurement to help plan corporate events that inspire attendees and deliver measurable business results for our clients.
Anybody who’s ever delivered any type of event knows just how all-consuming the planning can be. With the costs to run an event rising and squeezing budgets, measuring the success of corporate events is more important than ever. Organisations need to be able to demonstrate the impact of the event, allocate resources effectively, showcase a return on that time and cost investment and ultimately make informed decisions for future events.
Measuring the success of an event is essential. The insights gained from the evaluation process can prove valuable for both short-term and long-term planning. Here are some key reasons why measuring the success of an event is important:
Return on Investment (ROI)
Events often involve significant financial investment. Measuring success helps determine whether the resources allocated to the event generated a positive return on investment. This evaluation is crucial for financial planning and future budgeting.
Continuous Improvement
Assessing the success of an event provides valuable insight for continuous improvement and allows organisers to evaluate their performance and identify areas of strength and improvement. This feedback loop is essential for continuous learning and enhancement of event planning and execution skills, providing opportunity to learn from both successes and challenges, and refining processes and strategies for future events.
Attendee Satisfaction
Understanding attendee satisfaction provides insight into the effectiveness of the event in meeting expectations. Positive feedback can contribute to positive feelings and increased loyalty towards your brand or company, and a higher likelihood of future attendance.
Goal Achievement
Events are often organised with specific goals and objectives in mind, such as brand promotion, lead generation, or networking. Measuring success helps determine the extent to which these goals were achieved and provides a basis for refining future objectives.
Resource Allocation
Understanding the impact of different aspects of the event allows for more effective resource allocation. Organisers can identify which elements contribute the most to success and allocate resources accordingly in future events.
Stakeholder Satisfaction
Events often involve various stakeholders, including sponsors, partners, and speakers. Measuring success helps in evaluating their satisfaction, maintaining positive relationships, and fostering future collaboration.
Marketing and Branding
Positive event outcomes contribute to positive brand perception. Measuring success helps understand the impact of the event on brand visibility, reputation, and overall marketing efforts.
Accountability
Measuring success adds a level of accountability to the event planning process. Organisers can demonstrate to stakeholders, including management and sponsors, that their efforts have tangible and positive outcomes.
When it comes to events, true ‘measurement’ can be hard to come by. With the help of our analytics and insight experts, we’ve developed a structured methodology to help plan events with purpose that give you measurable results.
Establishing your purpose and the event objectives early empowers you to identify the necessary data, experiences, and tactics required for a successful event.
Start by taking the time to understand you, your brand, your messages and your goals.
To ensure you get the right objectives nailed and the right event solution designed, we recommend running a design conference process. This is designed to mitigate and overcome any biases that can arise in the planning process and follows three distinct phases:
Planning and insight seek to confirm objectives and gather data from a broad range of stakeholders and event attendees around their perceptions about existing and desired behaviours or programmes aligned to your objectives. This process typically takes the form of surveys, collating historical feedback and in-person interviews.
The design conference brings key stakeholders and decision-makers together to review those insights through a series of exercises with the objective of revealing the event scope and agenda.
Post-design conference, the findings and outputs are woven into the solution You can now. apply the right creative mechanics and content to each section of the agenda to ensure the messages are brought to life in an engaging way that will land with the intended impact to achieve the objectives. The final part is defining and agreeing the next steps, the delivery plan, budget, and roles and responsibilities.
Whilst there are no hard and fast rules on what an event’s objectives should be, some events may have one focused objective; other larger events may have multiple, concurrent objectives that generally fall under these areas:
We distil this down into three key points; what do you want your audience to KNOW, FEEL, DO.
KNOW - Define what you want your audience to know.
This may relate to training, product knowledge, understanding big-picture company objectives, or desired behaviours.
FEEL - Define how you want your audience to feel.
Every event has a unique tone. How would you want your attendees to describe their state of mind to friends and family?
DO - Define what you want your audience to do.
What actions would you like your attendees to take after the event? These behaviours should feed directly back into the purpose statement.
Now we know what success looks like and we have a clear set of objectives, we then need to establish a useful metric against these goals and how we’ll collect the relevant data to track and measure the results.
Including diagnostic metrics allows us to evaluate what worked and what didn't during the event, offering insight into the effectiveness of various elements to refine future strategies.
Using our three key points - KNOW, FEEL, DO - these metrics could look something like this;
KNOW - Attendee Comprehension
FEEL - Attendee Engagement
DO - Attendee Action
Critically, as part of your corporate event planning process you need to establish how and when you’ll be able to collect the data required to properly measure success. Typically, there will be collection points pre-event, during the event, and then at set milestones which could include 0-, 30-, 60-, and 90-days post-event.
Some examples of the way this data can be collected are:
Polls, surveys and feedback
A fast and effective way to gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback on multiple metrics throughout the event journey. Look to build consistency into this process where possible so you can track progress in metrics throughout the event period. If the event is repeated either throughout the year or annually, look to extend this consistency so you can compare impact event to event.
Business KPI data
If your event is intended to drive progress in specific business measures (sales, learning, retention) look to gather data from existing business systems to monitor changes in results pre- and post-event.
Knowledge assessments and quizzes
The easiest way to test knowledge is through pre- and post-event assessments. Depending on the intensity and depth of the information this could be in the form of simple quizzes or more detailed examinations.
Event Data, Analysis and Insights
Analysis and insight are important! They save the trouble (and expense) of making the same mistake twice and prove the validity of a strategic approach. We use in-house Data Analysts who are experts in evaluating data, so we can support by providing you with the results you need to demonstrate the success of your activity along with recommendations for the future.
Regularly reviewing and analysing the data collected means making informed decisions for future events and continuously improving the overall event strategy.
Using the KNOW, FEEL and DO metrics, what data can we gather to analyse and gain insight into the impact and success of corporate events, under the areas previously mentioned (Engagement, Sales Impact, Brand & Perception, Financial Performance)?
Covering all the above, compare the actual results with the initial objectives and goals set for the event.
Click here to download our handy reference guide for event measurement.
So, that’s how to do it! At BI WORLDWIDE, we always start with the end in mind, and for us and our clients, measuring the success of an event is a fundamental aspect of effective event management. It provides a basis for learning, improvement, and strategic decision-making, ultimately contributing to the overall success and sustainability of an organisation's event strategy.
So, when it comes to your event, what do you want your audience to KNOW, FEEL, DO?
Ready to speak to us about how we can help you? Contact us today.