You’ve just wrapped up an event, and you can still hear the applause from the last evening’s awards banquet. But success can’t be measured by the applause alone. Instead, uncover the data-driven insights that can be found in post-event reporting. Although you might be excited to get back into the nitty gritty of corporate event planning, you’ll benefit from taking a step back and reflecting on your post-event reports.
These reports summarize what aspects of your event were successful, where you can replicate tactics, and what areas might need a bit more attention. Improving corporate events isn’t just about creating new experiences; it’s also about reflecting on the experience you can re-create and improve.
Quick Links
- Why Post-Event Reports Are Important
- Event Data to Include in Post-Event Reports
- How to Collect Event Data for Reports
- Five Steps to Create Reports Using Event Data
Why Post-Event Reports Are Important
Post-event reports give event planners a holistic look into the entire event experience from several different perspectives, including attendees and vendors. Without understanding the effectiveness of various aspects of your event and their execution, event planners might not be able to make data-driven decisions for upcoming events.
Event planning based on appearances rather than experiences can leave planners and hosts open to avoidable mistakes. Plus, aggregating event data is helpful when it’s time to have conversations with stakeholders or company leadership about overall event successes.
To gain these insights, post-event reports can help organizers evaluate their event objectives. Did you meet attendance goals? Were guests engaged in each session? Were resources adequately distributed as needed? Event reports identify where event planners fell short of their goals and what changes should be made for the next event.
Additionally, post-event reports give planners a better idea of where guests found the most value throughout a corporate event or incentive travel experience. For example, attendance records can provide insights into what activities were most successful. Take a look at certain sessions, speakers, or entertainment options. Were some closer to capacity (or at capacity) in comparison to other options? For the next event, consider incorporating more of these highly successful options for your guests.
On a similar note, post-event reports help identify areas for improvement. When reflecting on your event goals, you likely went in with expectations and set metrics for success. Sometimes, events fail to meet those expectations, and that’s okay! Looking at what went well and what didn’t meet expectations can help you determine where to focus your efforts for the next corporate event.
Finally, post-event reports are an excellent way to evaluate ROI. This is another way to assess the value of an event and what was accomplished. For example, you might look at revenue generated from registrations and sponsors. With this information in one report, you can evaluate whether or not you reached your goals.
Event Data to Include in Post-Event Reports
When looking at your event data, you’ll likely find you have a lot to work with. So what metrics do you need to prioritize to get a holistic view of your event? The factors below provide essential insights and information to help you make informed decisions for improved future events.
Event Goals
When compiling your data, a good place to start is reviewing your event goals. Did you want to increase registrations? Boost responses to post-event surveys? Introduce any new skills to company employees?
In addition to event goals, it’s also a good idea to provide an overview of the event in this portion of the report. This includes the overall purpose of the event, where it was located, and any important metrics.
Attendee Data
Speaking of metrics, be sure to include relevant attendee information. How many people registered, and how many people showed up the day of the event? What demographic information did you gather? How many departments participated, and which ones were underrepresented? Does your attendee data meet your expectations? A thorough look into attendee data can provide vital insights into the overall success of your event.
Budget
In your post-event report, it’s also important to include information regarding the budget for the event. Be sure to include any portion of the budget spent as well as any additional costs that were not accounted for ahead of time.
With a good idea of your financial picture, you’ll be better equipped to understand your spending goals and where you may have exceeded your budget. When planning your next event, this information will be useful to help you see where you can cut spending and where you need to allocate more funds.
Activities
For incentive travel programs in particular, you’ll want to include an overview of any activities, excursions, entertainment, or other special events that were part of the trip. When reflecting on corporate events, the activities portion of your post-event report will look at event data regarding breakout sessions, event activations, networking activities, or keynote speaker information. Make a note of which activities were well received and which didn’t meet your expectations to make appropriate adjustments for your next event.
Event Feedback
Post-event surveys can be great tools to help you learn more about attendees’ expectations, preferences, and overall experiences. When gathering event data for your reports, look for any patterns that emerge. You might find a large number of attendees loved a speaker or entertainer. Or you might be surprised to find that there were some hiccups with the format of the event or the agendas that were distributed. Whether your findings are positive or negative, all of the feedback you collect can help to improve your next event.
In addition to feedback received from surveys, check in with event staff and see if they received additional feedback from attendees, speakers, or vendors. You might also look at social media to see how attendees shared or interacted with the event from a digital perspective. This is why it’s advantageous in event marketing to include some event-specific hashtags for social media.
Without this information, you might not know that some of these roadblocks existed. So taking a closer look at any outliers in your event data might uncover important information that will be useful when planning your next event.
How to Collect Event Data for Reports
Of course, to evaluate event data you first need to accurately collect it. Thanks to various event technologies, gathering insightful data can be done quickly and easily.
Let’s start at the beginning. To bring people together, you need them to register for your event. So you might turn to an event app or website (or in many cases, both). Not only does this help planners collect important data, but it also helps facilitate a positive experience for attendees since all of the information they need will be easily accessible.
Online registration is excellent for pre-event and initial attendee information, but what if you’re also interested in day-of behaviors? Consider using smart event badges and kiosks to monitor which activities or sessions were actually attended in comparison to how many people registered. This will give you a more accurate depiction of attendance compared to initial expectations.
Five Steps to Create Reports Using Event Data
With all of your data ready to go, the next step is to put it all together into a cohesive report. This report will be vital for addressing concerns and using what was learned to improve future events.
Plus, once you begin analyzing your event data, you’ll have a benchmark that will act as a starting point for any upcoming events. You’ll easily be able to see what worked, what didn’t, and what you should change the next time around. Having this data in place will be useful when sharing important insights with clients or other key stakeholders.
1. Gather and Organize Your Data
To get started with building your report, you’ll need to gather event data from all of your sources. This will include registration information, budget data, event app engagement, post-event survey results, social media posts, promotional email content, and more. The more data you have to work with, the more in-depth your findings will be.
2. Analyze
When putting it all together, numerical data will be important, but you also need to draw conclusions from that data. Use charts, graphs, and images to make the information understandable. And if you have it, don’t forget to use previous event data for comparisons to see where you’ve improved over time. This is also a good time to include the goals you established before the event, and add notes where necessary regarding where you met these goals and how you were able to achieve them.
In the analysis portion of your post-event report, point out any areas that stand out. Did you see any results that you weren’t anticipating? If so, try to determine why you think that might’ve occurred and what you can do differently next time.
3. Generate Actionable Goals
Once you’ve gathered and analyzed your event data, the next step is to draw insights and set goals based on what you’ve learned. This could be new ways to allocate spending, new ideas for entertainment or workshops, a higher registration goal, or various other objectives that you wish for your event to achieve.
Based on what you’ve learned, it will be beneficial to set goals that are both challenging and attainable. While extending your goals is always a good idea, you need to do so in a way that gets your team excited about the future. Based on your metrics, push the bar a bit further. This could be recommendations for event staff, larger venues, or more off-site excursions and activities.
4. Create an Executive Summary
When wrapping up your report, combine all of your findings into an executive summary. Even though this is listed as one of the final steps in your post-event report process, this information should be included at the beginning of the report.
This will be a shortened overview of what was accomplished, where you fell short, and what steps you plan to take based on what you’ve learned, which will be a good introduction to the finer details of your event data. During this section of the report, you’ll have an opportunity to drive home what was achieved, such as event ROI, and how you plan to move forward.
5. Share the Report
Finally, when your report is finalized, share it with key stakeholders. Once they’ve had a chance to reflect on the event, they can share their feedback, which will help you make informed decisions based on their recommendations.
This will also prompt collaborative discussions regarding the reasoning behind some of your findings. You may discover variables, challenges, and obstacles you didn’t foresee and better prepare for them. During these discussions, use the feedback received to address expectations and how you plan to achieve event goals moving forward.
Thorough post-event reports are a vital part of the event life cycle. With your event data in hand, you’ll be set up for success when reflecting on your goals, what you’ve accomplished, and where you’d like to improve in the future. Bishop-McCann’s team of expert event planners is ready to help you achieve your corporate event goals. To get started, don’t hesitate to reach out today!
