21 Feb 15 Post-Event Survey Questions to Ask Attendees
What do your attendees think about your event? How about sponsors? Are they likely to support your event next year? What was the experience like for in-person versus virtual attendees at your hybrid event?
It’s hard to measure how well an event went when you only have your own experience to guide you. That’s why event tools like event surveys and event evaluations are critical for measuring attendee satisfaction. Pre-event and post-event survey questions help you gather important stakeholder feedback that would otherwise get lost in the shuffle or never shared at all. You can pair the insights you gain from event surveys with event KPIs pulled from your event platform to create a fully developed picture of how successful your event was, and how you can improve it in the future.
Don’t forget: All feedback is good feedback. Although negative feedback can sting, it’s essential for optimizing your event strategy and delivering the kinds of event experiences your attendees need, want, and expect.
With a post event survey, you’ll learn what attendees thought about the event, how they heard about it, and what they enjoyed most.
Types of Event Survey Questions
There are several different ways that you can pose questions to stakeholders, including the following:
Net Promoter Score (NSP) Questions: A multiple-choice question that asks participants to rate an item on a numeric scale. The resulting values determine the net promoter score (NPS)
Yes-no Questions: A binary question that is often followed by an open-ended question based on conditional logic
Open-ended Questions: While harder to analyse en-masse, open-ended questions can provide valuable qualitative feedback
Here are some good starting points to gauge attendee satisfaction:
1. What is your level of satisfaction with this event?
Question Type: NPS
Survey questions like this one are pretty straightforward. It’s a good starting point for the questions that follow and allows you to get the big-picture idea of how the event went in general and if it met expectations. A best practice in event surveys is to start more general and get more granular towards the end.
2. Which elements of the event did you like the most?
Question Type: Open-ended
Survey questions like this help you get an idea of what is worth repeating for future iterations of the event. Keep track of each point and tally the number of times it was mentioned. Rank them in order from most votes to least and prioritize the winners next year.
3. What, if anything, did you dislike about this event?
Question Type: Open-ended
Although you may be hesitant to ask this question, knowing your shortcomings allows you to learn from them. Don’t write a survey that forces respondents to leave a glowing review. Instead, show them how much you value their opinion and display those changes at your next event.
4. Are you likely to participate in one of our events in the future?
Question Type: NPS
This one is very important because it reveals how enthusiastic the survey participant is about your event. Compare these numbers to the actual number of attendees who come back next year. While plans do change, you should ideally see the majority of them return. If not, consider what adjustments need to be made.
5. How likely are you to tell a friend about this event?
Question Type: NPS
Using an NPS to inquire about referrals is another great way to measure event success. While some people may have enjoyed the event themselves, the true test of their experience is to see whether or not they’d subject a friend to it. Follow up on positive responses to this question with referral links and special offers.
6. Is there anything else you would like us to know?
Question Type: Open-ended
Open-ended questions allow participants to give you feedback on anything your event survey may not have covered. You won’t be able to cover every aspect of the event in the survey. This question serves as a catchall for any additional feedback.
While it would be great to ask all the questions mentioned above, be respectful of participants’ time and keep your survey short.
7. Why did you choose to attend our event and what are you hoping to take away from the experience?
Question Type: Open-ended
Use this question before the event to make schedule adjustments or other tweaks that magnify the most coveted aspects of the experience. Give the people what they want and show them that your focus is truly on their experience
8. Please indicate your satisfaction with the following aspects of the event:
-Venue/ Event Platform
-Speakers
-Quality of Sessions
-Amount of Sessions Offered
-Date(s) of Event
Question Type: NPS
All of these big-picture event characteristics shape the experience for attendees. You may find some surprising insights for the next time you plan an event. And because all of these factors are within your control, the changes will be easy to make and measure in the future.
Note: In the era of hybrid events, the virtual event platform you use to power your experience is the venue. As a result, you should be evaluating the experience of attendees in navigating it similar to how you would ask an attendee to rate a traditional venue.
9. How satisfied were you with the networking opportunities provided?
Question Type: NPS
Networking is a key element of events, but with the rise of virtual events, networking has become more complicated. According to the Evolution of Events Report, 68.8% of event marketers believe it is more difficult to provide networking opportunities when hosting a virtual event. Ask this event survey question to make sure you have found the right solution for your attendees. Be sure to have a text box along with the NPS rating so participants can elaborate on their experiences.
10. Did you have any issues registering for or attending this event?
Question Type: Yes-no
This event survey question can illuminate areas where your event platform or registration software may not be a user-friendly experience and cause frustration with attendees. If you realize there is a pattern in the responses, talk to your event platform provider or user-experience team to improve on the experience. The last thing you want is for attendees to have trouble even accessing the event because it sets the tone for the rest of the event.
11. How satisfied were you with the speakers and sessions at our event?
Question Type: NPS
Attendee satisfaction is one of the key indicators that people will come back to your events. Making sure your speakers and sessions are interesting and valuable is a top priority to ensure attendees are satisfied with the experience. Questions like this one help you get an idea of what is worth repeating for future events.
12. What topics would you like to see more of at our next event?
Question Type: Open-ended
Your post-event survey can be a launching point for ideas for your next event. Attendees may have suggestions and interesting perspectives you otherwise wouldn’t have known. Ask attendees what they want to see and design your next event with their feedback in mind.
13. Were you happy with the time for discussion during sessions?
Question Type: NPS
We’ve all been to an event where the session ran out of time leaving nothing for discussion, and quite frankly, it’s a letdown. If attendees felt like there was not enough time, consider carving out more time for attendees to participate in the discussion.
14. How did you feel about the duration of the content?
Question Type: NPS
Content length is especially important for virtual events. Attention spans are getting shorter and tuning in from home provides a plethora of distractions. In our Virtual Benchmarks Report, we found the average virtual attendee only watches 68% of a virtual session that is 20 minutes or longer. That comes out to just over 13 minutes. By asking this event survey question you can gauge if your sessions were the appropriate length for your audience or use the insights to take action to improve durations for the next event.
15. How did you hear about this event?
Question Type: Open-ended
The main objective of this question is to find out where attendees first heard about your event. Use the information you gather from this event survey question to see what marketing channels are working the best for your event, and where you need to improve.
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