How to Measure Event Success: Audience Engagement Edition

Stronger brand awareness. More deals closed. Higher customer retention.

No matter why you host events, measuring event success can be tricky. It requires a commitment to attribution, a solid tracking system, and accurate data.

In fact, Splash’s 2024 Outlook on Events report shows that many businesses aren’t measuring event impact. Of the US-based marketers who responded to the survey:

• 54% aren’t tracking event registrations
• 53% aren’t tracking opportunities created
• 40% aren’t tracking attendance rates

And if they aren’t measuring what should be table stakes to understand event performance, they likely aren’t measuring audience engagement either.

There’s not a one-size-fits-all way of measuring engagement. It’s also challenging because your executive team may not care about these numbers. When tracking and reporting on your audience engagement metrics, it’s important to present them in a way that’ll tie them to the company’s bigger goals.

Below, we cover 15 KPIs that can tell a story around audience engagement. We break them down into three categories: event attendance, event engagement, and event technology engagement.

Event Attendance KPIs

Event attendance simply means how likely your audience is to actually attend your event.

You’ve probably spent weeks, or even months, preparing for the big day. You want to know that all the hard work pays off in the form of people joining your event. 

Here are the KPIs we recommend tracking:

• Registration rate: How many people register for your event out of the total number of people who view your event

• Attendance rate: How many people attend your event out of the total number of people registered for it

• Attendance duration: The average time attendees spend at your event (it can also be helpful to look at where there is a significant drop)

• Meetings booked: The number of meetings you schedule at the event

• Meetings held: The number of meetings that actually take place

• Meetings held rate: The number of meetings that actually happen compared to the number that are scheduled

When reporting on event attendance KPIs to your leadership team, focus on the meetings booked, meetings held, and meetings held rate. They will be most interested in these, since they show how many people are qualified and more likely to turn into actual business opportunities.

Event Engagement KPIs

Event engagement means how much your attendees are participating while at the event.

When you hear the phrase “audience engagement,” this is probably what you think of first — it’s the interactions they take to show they’re interested in what you’re saying. 

Here are the KPIs we recommend tracking:

• Material downloads: How many people download, click, or engage with a piece of content, one-pager, or anything else available to attendees

• Poll participation: How many people take the polls you launch at your event and the results of those polls

• Q&A participation: How many people ask a question at your event and themes of those questions

• Chat participation: How many people engage in the chat at your event

When reporting on event engagement KPIs to your leadership team, focus on themes. What topics are people talking about in the chat? What kinds of questions are they asking? Details here can help you and your leadership team better understand what the audience cares about, how you can help them, and what will actually land deals.

Event Technology Engagement KPIs

Event technology engagement means, quite literally, how much your event attendees are participating using event technology.

This can take many forms, from your event marketing platform to social media to an event app.

Here are the KPIs we recommend tracking:

• Social media engagement rate: The level of interaction your event attendees have with your social media channels, in the form of likes, comments, shares, and clicks

• Event app downloads: How many event attendees download the event app (also track the download rate, or how many people download it compared to the number of total attendees)

• Event app social feed posts: How many people participate in the social feed and how many total posts you have

• Event app messages sent: How many people send in-app messages and how many total messages were sent

• Attendee NPS: The overall satisfaction of your attendees at the event

When reporting on event technology engagement KPIs to your leadership team, focus on how these channels support stronger brand awareness. They don’t usually result in ROI immediately, but are the first step in what could ultimately become closed-win business.

Conclusion

Although we often think that audience engagement metrics don’t tell a strong story, that’s not necessarily true.

They can show which attendees are likely to become opportunities, what topics and challenges your attendees are thinking about, and how brand awareness is faring. All of these can be healthy indicators of event and business performance.

The key is presenting your audience engagement data in a way that your leadership team wants: by tying the numbers to the bottom line.