What Data Should You be Tracking for Your Next Corporate Event

This article first appeared on The Collective by BCD M&E

There’s a wealth of data at your fingertips when delivering events - from the attendee information you gather at registration to post-event analysis. These data points can help to guide every element of event design - from how a teaser campaign is performing to which speaker resonated best with your audience. Here at The Collective by BCD M&E, our analytics experts have compiled all the data you should be tracking at your event, whether you’re considering live, virtual or hybrid.

Tracking data for corporate events

Registration data

• Promo Code Uses

  By tracking promo code uses vs. non-promo code uses, you can establish the success of offering a discounted rate. Consider different promo codes per channel to assess which channel drove the most registrations.
  
  

• Registrations by Ticket Type

  When running an event with multiple tiered ticket types, track which tier is the most popular. This will help you determine whether certain tiers are redundant and which to use at future events.
  
  

• Registrant Demographics

  Getting to know your attendees is extremely important. Knowing where your attendee is attending from can help you to tailor your event content and structure.  Capturing identifiers such as job title, industry sector or country can help event planners to get a wider overall view of their attendee base – both new and repeat.
  
  

• Registration Method

  We are able to track how an attendee became a registration for your corporate event. This could be by a personalised invitation from an existing database, via social media or via the event website directly. Understanding how your attendees register, can assist with where to concentrate planner effort when attracting potential event attendees for future events.
  
  

• Session Popularity

  Allowing registrants to register or mark interest as part of the initial registration process can help planners to understand the most popular topics or speakers, even before the event has taken place. This can help planners to adjust, increase or improve their content based on what attendees are looking to see.  Capturing session info in advance also makes it easier for planners to adjust event spaces & conference rooms for sessions, based on their popularity or expected turnout. This helps to upsell to potential session sponsors too.
  
  

• Transport/Travel Method

  Capturing how attendees are planning to arrive onsite can help improve the attendee check in experience. Understanding how and when your attendees are likely to arrive can ensure that enough staff and registration desks are planned, and entry is smooth with minimal queues. For example, if there is an underground station outside the venue or the venue is well connected via public transport, we can expect arrivals in groups every few minutes, likely with high volumes. Likewise, if there are many large hotels in the vicinity, we can expect attendees to arrive on foot, therefore likely steadier and more consistent.
  
  

Related article: Creating Event Community In A Remote World

Corporate event marketing data

• Website/Registration Site Visits

  When driving registrations to an event, it’s important to assess website visits regularly. This will help you determine whether a marketing campaign performs at its optimum. Break down visits by channel to help you understand if paid, organic or social are the key drivers to the site.
  
  

• Bounce Rate

  Are you investing in a marketing campaign to drive registrations, and you’re receiving a high bounce rate? Perhaps your annual company conference microsite also has users arrive on the site and take no further action? The bounce rate will help you understand if your site isn’t set up to convert.
  
  

• Email Open Rate

  Email is likely to be one of the predominant ways you will communicate with attendees. Measure your email open rate to understand engagement. A/B test emails to understand if the open rate increases at particular times of the day and with certain subject titles. Also, aim to break down your open rate data by registered and non-registered attendees.
  
  

• Email Click-Through-Rate

  When sending out event emails, throughout the campaign there will be particular actions you’ll want your audience to take. This might be ‘register for the event’ through to ‘give us your feedback’. Measure how many people click on these links and take further action.
  
  

• Traffic to Key Website/Registration Site Pages

  Monitoring traffic throughout your website is a great way to see if marketing efforts are driving users to the correct pages of your website. Are users exploring the agenda and speakers' pages? By understanding where attendees are viewing on the website, you can better assess whether the flow of the site is working correctly. 
  
  

• Media Coverage

  What was the reach of content? Did you have brand and industry mentions? Which publications referenced the event?
  
  

• Advertising Campaign Effectiveness

  If there was a paid campaign surrounding the event, how effective was it? Did it drive registrations to the event? What was the click-through rate? What was your average cost per click?

Event session data

• Absence Rate

  Did attendees register and then not turn up? By measuring your absence rate, you can determine whether your comms strategy was strong enough between initial invites and the day of the event.
  
  

• Time Spent in Sessions

  By establishing the time spent in sessions, you can understand how engaged the audience is with the content. Does the audience flit from one session to another, or are they fully engaged with the topic throughout the timeslot?
  
  

• Live Polling Sessions

  When including live polling in your session, it’s important to analyse whether it was a successful audience engagement mechanism. What percentage of the audience used the live poll? What was the data gathered from the poll, and how can this guide future actions?
  
  

• On-Demand Session Replays

  The event might be finished, but it’s key to still stay on top of On-Demand session replays. Users might better engage with the replay content, dictating that live event timings didn’t suit them. Or, if there’s a lack of views, should the post-event marketing campaign be ramped up?
  
  

• Event App Adoption Rate

  The event app adoption rate is a key KPI to understand how well an audience used the event app. Low adoption rates might indicate there’s a lack of incentive or a lack of clarity about its existence. Perhaps the audience doesn’t understand the value that it brings to the event and more marketing efforts should be placed around this area.
  
  

• Messages Sent via the Event App

  Are the app users engaging with each other? Are there multiple messages to the support team? Is there a particular time of the day that more messages are being sent? By looking into how the app users are messaging, you can determine engagement levels across the event.
  
  

• Total Session Views

  When delivering a virtual or hybrid corporate event, ensure you measure total session views. This will help determine the content that is grabbing attendees' attention.
  
  

• Number of Questions Asked

  An easy KPI to track at an event is the number of questions asked. Virtual platforms will record this or use a tool such as Slido at live events to monitor questions asked by the audience.
  
  

• Types of Questions Asked

  As well as tracking questions asked during sessions, distil this down to the types of questions asked. Was the audience interested in a particular subject? Understanding the most common themes might help you determine future content sessions.
  
  

• Pre-recorded Session Engagement vs. Live Session Engagement

  If you delivered a virtual event with a mixture of both pre-recorded content and live-streamed content, was there a difference in engagement? Did users feel they could more easily dip out of pre-recorded sessions vs. live, or were engagement levels the same?
  
  

• Daily Number of Attendees

  Does your event cover a few days? Tracking the daily number of attendees is a great way to understand if certain days of the week receive better attendance than others.
  
  

• Drop Off Rate (by session)

  The drop off rate means the number of people who abandoned a session before it was finished. Sessions that aren’t engaging attendees might receive a high drop off rate, or scheduling could also affect a drop off rate, i.e. before lunch or end of day elements on the agenda.
  
  

• Audience Engagement

  Measuring audience engagement will vary by event, depending on the platform used, whether it was face-to-face or virtual and what techniques were used to engage the audience. The KPIs that could be measured could include live poll usage, the number of messages on the event app or event hashtag usage.
  
  

• Behaviour Analysis and Heat Mapping

  We are now able to leverage technology to create anonymised aggregated data insights to assess mood and behaviours of potential leads. For example, we are able to track how long a person dwelled at a booth, and produce metrics such as impressions, demographics (age/sex), and positive sentiment (happiness) over time/visit.

  This same technology can also be used to measure speaker and or event success, by analysing audience composition, sentiment, and attendance.

Social media data

• Sentiment of Posts

  If you’re delivering a large-scale corporate event that’s likely to get a lot of social media engagement, then it can be worth analysing sentiment. This will assess the tone of posts and give data on whether people are speaking positively or negatively about the event.
  
  

• Social Media Mentions

  Tracking social media mentions of your event will help determine how engaged your audience is with the event. Is your audience positively mentioning the event across their social media channels? Are your social handles clear across all comms, so the audience can easily tag the event in their posts?
  
  

• Social Likes, Comments, Hashtag Uses

  Was particular event content liked and engaged with? Did particular channels receive more likes overall? Did event hashtags get more use on LinkedIn vs. Instagram? By tracking these KPIs, you can better assess where to place your marketing efforts in the future. 
  
  

• Social Media by Channel

  Did the event drive notable engagement or hashtag usage on LinkedIn or was the audience going big on Instagram stories? Understand where your audience is sharing their corporate event content, so you can leverage the channel for your marketing efforts.

Sponsors data

• Total Number of Booth Visits

  Ensure you’re tracking the number of booth visits (whether virtual or F2F) to understand which types of sponsors are better engaging with the audience. This will help you to decide which sponsors to approach for future events.
  
  

• Clicks and Impressions on Sponsor Banners

  Were attendees engaged with sponsors and wanted to know more about their solution? Were particular sponsors more successful in driving clicks to their banners?
  
  

• Sponsorship/Exhibitor Satisfaction

  Were the event sponsors satisfied with the set-up? Did they meet potential leads? Do they feel they got value for money? Ensuring your sponsors were satisfied is key to driving supporting sponsorship revenue for future events.

Speaker data

• Speaker Profiles Bookmarked

  Speaker profiles bookmarked is a great way to establish early on who might be the biggest crowd draw. Can you leverage that and look to draw in speakers of a similar calibre?
  
  

• Downloads from Speaker Sessions

  Did the keynote speaker have an accompanying document supporting their content, or were there supporting articles, checklists, guides etc., referenced in sessions? Track the downloads to understand how well the audience engaged with the supporting content. 
  
  

• Highest Rated Speaker

  Understanding how well your speakers are perceived is integral to the success of any corporate event. Well-respected speakers are a huge draw for future events. Looking at who was the highest-rated will help you determine future content sessions.

Post-event data

• Attendee to SQL

  If you’re using your event as a sales tool, then one of the key pieces of data you should track is whether your attendee becomes a sales qualified lead (SQL).
  
  

• Attendee Satisfaction

  Were your event attendees satisfied at your event? By implementing a post-event survey, you can discover all the areas where your delegates were or weren’t happy. Did they enjoy the F&B? Did they feel the communications throughout were excellent? Use your post-event survey to discover all the pain points to help support you in the delivery of future events. 
  
  

• Returning vs. New Attendees

  If the event takes place regularly, whether that’s annually, monthly, or even weekly, it’s a great idea to track new vs returning attendees. This data can give you insights such as, is the content engaging enough that attendees what to keep returning or is your marketing working well enough to drive awareness of the event to bring in new attendees. 
  
  

• Post-Event Survey Completions

  Post-event surveys are hugely important when it comes to measuring the success of the event. Keep track of how many completions you receive. Low completion numbers might show that you need to incentivise responses or that your email campaigns aren’t clear enough.

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