Conferences, trade shows and seminars are some of the largest line items in the B2B event marketing budget. As times toughen and budgets are trimmed, measuring the success of live events cannot be based merely on brand exposure and media perception. You need crucial insights and analytics to gauge the ROI of your events and to create more personalised experiences for attendees.
The issue is, the amount of attendee data generated before, during, and after the event can often be overwhelming for event organisers. Attendees leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs at multiple touchpoints. You need to figure out how to collate this vital information and integrate it into easy-to-understand custom reports and how to calculate ROI.
Here are the different ways you can track the digital footprints of your attendees:
Online Surveys
One of the best ways to understand what happens inside the mind of attendees is survey them before, during, and after your events. You get meaningful feedback and insights into different aspects of the events, like the sessions, speakers, food and beverage, sponsors, accommodation and travel.
- Which sessions saw the maximum participation?
- Who was the most popular speaker?
- Which stands attracted the most crowd?
This information can be further analysed to highlight areas of improvement and evaluate how successful your event was.
Wondering where to look for a good online survey software for your events? Explore Cvent’s web survey software to streamline data collection, qualify leads and measure your programme’s effectiveness.
Event Management Systems
Event management software acts as a centralised system that helps event organisers capture, track, and report on meaningful, real-time information across multiple events. This includes registrations, attendance, session selections, payments, revenue, and profits. As it also integrates well with leading CRMs, there is a seamless flow of data and better interoperability between different business systems.
Event registration is an integral part of most event software platforms and is often the first touchpoint to track digital breadcrumbs left by attendees. You can collect the names, addresses, contact details and even more personalised data if the registration software offers customised attendee paths. By segmenting your audience into various categories like attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, and VIPs, you can build more complete profiles and map their needs and motivation.
Good event management software should be robust and flexible enough to meet all your needs – from organising small meetings to larger, more complex conferences. Discover how Cvent’s online event management software helps you achieve all this.
Mobile Event Apps
Mobile event apps have become a mainstream event tech tool to boost attendee engagement. From driving pre-event conversations to providing networking opportunities and timely push notifications, they have truly transformed the way attendees interact with events. With in-built analytics tools, you can map data from your event app and create a digital trail of each attendee. This information can be further analysed to highlight attendee interests, in-app actions they take, and the areas of improvement.
How do leading industry players leverage mobile event apps to achieve the highest adoption and engagement rates? Download the Mobile Event App Benchmark Report to find out more.
Social Media Tools
An excellent way to maximise social media outreach is to use analytics tools like Hootsuite, Oktopost or BuzzSumo that measure engagement numbers on social networks. These social media tools can help you figure out what content your followers are sharing and what engages them emotionally. The information you collect will be tied into your CRM platform and used to nurture long-term relationships with customers.
Your event strategy goes beyond conventional social media posting. Learn how you can plan a social media strategy that focuses on enhancing attendee experiences, increases engagement and builds event loyalty.
Web Analytics
Web analytics tools are essential for capturing leads, as they tell you how people are interacting with your event website. Tools like Google Analytics help you calculate prospect journeys, dwell time on your site and the results of things like A/B tests to see which pages perform better. Ultimately, analytics tools provide information that tells you if your marketing efforts are actually converting into results. The data collected through web analytics is way more holistic than manually collected event data, as it goes beyond the basic details to provide insights on demographics, preferences, interactions, and conversion rates.
To attract the maximum users to your event website, you need to ensure it has a gorgeous design that aligns with the theme of your event. Read Event Website Design 101 to learn how you can build, design and manage an event website from scratch.
RFID/NFC Tools
RFID or NFC are tools used to track real-time data around your visitor’s footprint on the show floor. Such tools allow exhibitors to track exactly who is visiting their stand and offers organisers insight into how attendees are moving and interacting around the venue.
Chatbots
Chatbots have rapidly gained popularity to provide 24/7 customer support and handle website visitors. With the cost of implementing a chatbot significantly decreasing, you can easily interact with attendees through machine learning on your event website or Facebook Messenger. The interactions on chatbots are logged and available for analysis and reporting, which helps you undertake sentiment analysis and provide a better future attendee experience.
After you have tracked, collated and mapped the digital breadcrumbs, what lies next? Harness this data and transform leads from net-new to sales-ready in less than 24 hours! Learn how by exploring The Marketer’s Interactive Guide to Identifying Buying Signals at Live Events.
