Why and how can you collect feedback from your attendees?

An event does not sim­ply end when the doors close and the par­tic­i­pants go home. After the event, the analy­sis and main­te­nance of the rela­tion­ship with your par­tic­i­pants is fun­da­men­tal, espe­cial­ly for the suc­cess of future edi­tions.

Par­tic­i­pants are the best source of the mea­sure of suc­cess for your event and there are many ben­e­fits to col­lect­ing their feed­back.
Find out why it is impor­tant to get their feed­back and how to do it.

Summary

1. Why seek feed­back from par­tic­i­pants?
2. When to use which type of ques­tion­naire?
3. How to pre­pare for col­lect­ing pub­lic feed­back?
4. Set­ting up the feed­back form

1. Why seek feedback from participants?

At the end of your event you may think you can mea­sure its suc­cess on the basis of your own expe­ri­ence. This ini­tial analy­sis is impor­tant, but is also incom­plete.

Tick­et sales, atten­dance, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the var­i­ous activ­i­ties, absence or increase in inci­dents, con­sump­tion of food and drink… All this data is fun­da­men­tal and you must analyse it. But don’t under­es­ti­mate one of the keys to the suc­cess of your event: the pub­lic’s expe­ri­ence.

Beyond mea­sur­ing the suc­cess of your event, col­lect­ing feed­back from par­tic­i­pants has very valu­able ben­e­fits:

• You show them that their opin­ion is valu­able to you. Giv­ing your audi­ence a voice strength­ens the rela­tion­ship with your event and builds loy­al­ty.
• Par­tic­i­pants high­light spe­cif­ic areas for improve­ment that you may not have iden­ti­fied. Their views may show you that things you thought were impor­tant but are not so much, and that things you thought were less impor­tant are high­ly val­ued. Imple­ment these sug­ges­tions in future edi­tions and you will not only improve your event, but also the rela­tion­ship with the par­tic­i­pants, who will feel heard.
• You col­lect addi­tion­al data that will help you seg­ment and bet­ter under­stand your audi­ence.
• Well col­lect­ed and man­aged feed­back can gen­er­ate con­tent to share on social net­works. It is always best if the audi­ence is the one to tell you how much they like your event and why. This will help you to attract new par­tic­i­pants.

2. When to use which type of questionnaire?

To col­lect feed­back, you need a strat­e­gy: not all types of sur­vey are the same or serve the same pur­pose.

Sur­veys about your event can take place dur­ing or after the event. The choice of tim­ing will influ­ence the type of feed­back to be col­lect­ed.

Feed­back sur­veys con­duct­ed dur­ing the event should be very short to avoid inter­rupt­ing the par­tic­i­pan­t’s expe­ri­ence — although, when used well, they can be anoth­er ele­ment of the expe­ri­ence. They are use­ful for quick­ly and quan­ti­ta­tive­ly mea­sur­ing a spe­cif­ic aspect of the event, such as the pre­sen­ta­tions or even the atten­tion paid to the audi­ence at a par­tic­u­lar time. For this pur­pose, sur­veys that are rat­ing-based or that require no more than one click are very use­ful. You need a fair­ly large num­ber of par­tic­i­pants to respond in order to draw con­clu­sions.

When you want to col­lect feed­back on the event in gen­er­al and gath­er more detailed com­ments from par­tic­i­pants, it is advis­able to con­duct the sur­vey after the event. How­ev­er, do not give your par­tic­i­pants too much time oth­er­wise they will for­get the expe­ri­ence!
These sur­veys can be longer, with open ques­tions and com­ments. They take more time so par­tic­i­pa­tion rate is often low­er but each answer has great val­ue.

To encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in sur­veys, you can reward respon­dents with dis­counts, gifts, or enter them into a raf­fle with good prizes. Ask your­self what would per­son­al­ly moti­vate you to respond to such a sur­vey?

3. How to prepare for collecting public feedback?

The col­lec­tion of pub­lic opin­ions must be planned. To do so con­sid­er the fol­low­ing points:

a) Collecting data

The best way to col­lect data and to be able to process it effi­cient­ly is in dig­i­tal for­mat. With most post-event sur­veys you will need to have the atten­dees’ email address­es in order to send them the link to the sur­vey.

If you have devel­oped a good infor­ma­tion form for your event reg­is­tra­tion process, you already have valu­able data. If your tick­et­ing or reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem is also con­nect­ed to your CRM and access con­trol sys­tem then you will be able to col­lect and use data on atten­dance, num­ber of tick­ets pur­chased for this event or pre­vi­ous edi­tions…

b) Finding a survey solution

Sur­veys to gath­er feed­back from par­tic­i­pants can take var­i­ous forms, with respons­es being pub­lic or pri­vate, in the shape of a form or a note. Find the solu­tion that best meets your needs and allows you to process the data appro­pri­ate­ly.

Usu­al­ly you will pro­vide a link to receive feed­back. With an e‑mailing tool, you can man­age the send­ing of sur­veys to all par­tic­i­pants quick­ly and eas­i­ly. It is good prac­tice to send a thank-you email in which you also include the link to the sat­is­fac­tion sur­vey.

c) Setting goals beforehand

As Seneca said: “If a man does not know what har­bour he is mak­ing for, no wind is favourable”.

Goals, Key Per­for­mance Indi­ca­tors (KPIs) all guide your actions in a mean­ing­ful way and show whether you have achieved them or not. If you know exact­ly what you are ask­ing for feed­back on and what is most impor­tant to you, it will be much eas­i­er to design a good sur­vey and col­lect qual­i­ty feed­back. Whether the feed­back is good or bad, the impor­tant thing is that it is use­ful to you.

d) Segment participants

Cre­ate dif­fer­ent sur­veys for dif­fer­ent audi­ence seg­ments.
For exam­ple, if you have just changed your food and bev­er­age sup­pli­er. You can :

• Ask first-time atten­dees if they liked the food
• Ask return­ing atten­dees if they pre­ferred the food at this event to the last.

The more detailed the data you col­lect, the more accu­rate your future cam­paigns will be.

4. Setting up the feedback form

When design­ing the feed­back ques­tion­naire, remem­ber these points:

• Make it clear and sim­ple to com­plete the sur­vey.
• Keep the sur­vey as short as pos­si­ble to achieve your objec­tives.
• Keep the ques­tions as con­cise and clear as pos­si­ble.
• Avoid non-essen­tial ques­tions.
• Alter­nate between closed and open ques­tions.
• Ask ques­tions about things you can do some­thing about.

Now you have the keys to gath­er­ing feed­back from your event par­tic­i­pants — don’t for­get to thank them for their coop­er­a­tion and, above all, make good use of this valu­able feed­back!

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