Event data means different things to different people, but one thing is clear: having a data-driven event strategy is the best way to improve your events, measure ROI, and ultimately boost engagement. Knowing where to get started with event data can be daunting, but it is actually easier than it looks. These 3 steps are the basis of any data-driven event strategy:
Collect The Right Event Data
The first step in moving toward a data-driven event strategy is collecting the right data. First, you need to determine what information you want to collect directly from attendees. The best time to collect attendee info is during the registration process. Using online registration forms with custom fields allows you to collect whatever information you want from registrants.
Beyond information from registrants, it is important to record data on the behavior of your invitees and attendees. Basic metrics like the number of attendees are very important but you’ll also want to track detailed information on no-shows and walk-ins. After your event concludes, send out a post-event survey to get valuable feedback on your event. Collecting all of this information will aid you in tracking engagement with your attendees and determining success of your event. Using event management technology with event registration, check-in, and survey capabilities is the easiest way to collect all of this important event information.
Sync With Your Database
Okay, so you’ve collected all the right information from your event and your attendees. Now what? All of that great event data is useless if you can’t connect it to your database. You’ll want to find to find way to automate the process as much as possible. I’ve heard horror stories from organizations that still use printed out spreadsheets to record event attendance and then have staff manually transfer attendance records into the larger database. Manual processes like this waste time and resources while causing inaccuracies in your data.
Exporting event data from your event management platform to a .csv and then importing into your database is a very easy solution. When importing event data into your database, you can ensure that the information is automatically assigned to the correct contact by using the same contact IDs (or whatever you call unique identifiers for contacts in your database) between your database and event management platform. If you use a common database from companies like Salesforce or Blackbaud, you may be able to directly sync between your event management platform and your database to further automate the process.
Determine Success And Drive Engagement
It’s understood that events are one of the best ways to engage your customers, donors, or alumni. Without data, engagement is impossible to truly measure or even define. That means event data plays a huge roll in measuring engagement. On the event level, you’ll want to be measuring the success of each of your events and calculating your event ROI. Understanding what’s working and what isn’t will allow you to determine how to improve poorly performing events based on your more successful events.
On the contact level, using engagement scoring is a great way to make use of the event data and any other information you have about contacts in your database to track their engagement.You can also analyze the characteristics of high value attendees and use that information to create more appealing events in the future. All of this insight is extremely valuable in planning for maximum benefit at the minimum cost. Moving to an event strategy where decisions are made based on data will allow you to better engage your attendees and prove the true value of every event.
This post originally appeared on Attend’s Event Management Blog
