For so many years, marketing teams have hosted events to generate opportunities, drive revenue, and strengthen customer relationships. In fact, 77% of marketers say events are the most effective marketing channel for their company.
But you can’t just host an event and assume it’ll be effective because it’s an event. There are a lot of factors that contribute to how successful your programs are: when you host the event, the speakers you invite, the content you create, and even the technology you use (to name a few).
All of these things also support strong audience engagement. And while that’s not a metric that your executive team is necessarily clamoring for, it can be a powerful indicator for how effective your events will be.
Keeping audience engagement high, though, is a big challenge today. It’s easy for attendees to get distracted or just go through the motions, whether they’re at an in-person, virtual, or hybrid event.
And with limited attention spans comes limited tolerance for anything that doesn’t keep attendees interested and invested.
In this guide, you’ll learn proven strategies for increasing attendee engagement before your event, during it, and afterwards using event technology. You’ll also get ideas for measuring audience engagement (in a way that makes your executive team happy).
01
How to Increase Audience Engagement
Audience engagement isn’t just about attendee interaction. (Although it’s certainly a big part.)
It’s also about how much time they’re spending with you, the feedback they’re giving you, and how inclined they are to join your community.
The bottom line: Audience engagement is all about how connected your event attendees are to you and other attendees before, during, and after the event. The more connected they are, the more successful your event will likely be.
Engage Your Attendees Before the Event
Too many event attendees and event organizers alike think that the event starts, well, at the actual event. But creating buzz ahead of your event and giving attendees the opportunity to engage with your content early will jumpstart audience engagement.
Create an engaging event website. Contrary to popular belief, the event website isn’t just for event details and FAQs. It’s also a great place to start getting your attendees immersed with your content. Think:
- A registration form that includes a custom question or two that gets your attendees thinking and gives you some extra material for the big day (just don’t add too many that it turns them off from registering)
- A thank you page that includes social sharing options, related content they’d find interesting, and a next call to action
Connect with your audience on social media. This is just a given today. And as more of event audiences are part of Gen Z, social media engagement will become even more important. Here are some ways to use social media pre-event:
- Create an event hashtag to make it easy for people to join the conversation before the event (and throughout the entire journey). Combine it with hashtags that already exist in the industry for even more reach.
- Share content — especially videos — that gets people excited for the event. If you’re hosting a large event, you may have a sophisticated promo video to share. For smaller events, ask your speakers to record short clips to preview what they’ll talk about.
- Gamify your social content to encourage registrations. You might consider offering free tickets to a paid event or an exclusive experience if your event is already complimentary.
- Promote your speakers. Tag them (and their companies) in your social posts, but don’t stop there. Give your speakers a promo package that they can use to share on their own channels. The more you can do for them, the more they’ll be inclined to share.
Get your partners involved. Even if they’re not speaking at this particular event, your partners may be willing to help you promote it (especially if they’re attending themselves). Always consider which thought leaders or brand advocates you can tap into for more promotions and engagement.
Host a pre-event webinar on a tangential topic. This can be an effective way to generate interest for your main event by promoting registration to everyone in attendance.
And if you’re feeling extra bold, you could offer a raffle: anyone who registers by the time the webinar is over will get a chance to win a gift card, some special swag, or whatever else you choose.
Encourage early app downloads. If you’re using an event app to support audience engagement, include that as part of your pre-event strategy. Give people access to download the app before the event. They’ll be able to start making connections early, build their agendas, and get excited about new speakers and content.
Create an Exceptional On-Site Event Experience
If you’ve created engagement opportunities ahead of time, you should already have a leg up on the on-site event experience. People are ready to go, enjoy themselves, and (ideally) be so engaged that they help you create even more content in the moment.
Make a great first impression. Once you’re on-site, the pressure is really on. For attendees, nothing is worse than standing in a long line or dealing with an inefficient check-in process. If you’re still using a spreadsheet to check people in, it’s time for an upgrade to a mobile check-in app.
Continue leveraging social media. A decade ago, live tweeting was the thing. Maybe it still works for you. Today, vertical video is all the rage, and all the major social networks have this functionality. Use Instagram Reels, TikTok, or whatever works for you to share short-form content from the event.
Connect attendees with an event app. Give your audience (especially the introverts) the chance to chat with their peers through messaging and an event-specific social feed. Event apps do more than just improve audience engagement — they can also support better on-site communications (think push notifications and wayfinding).
Use the event to boost your social following and extend thought leadership. If you’ve been to a Splash webinar, you know we regularly host a raffle where attendees have the chance to win something if they comment on our LinkedIn post from that day. The question is always related to the webinar topic and is a fun way to get conversations going.
This would also work at your in-person events. It might sound counterintuitive to engage your in-person attendees by sending them to their phones, but it also gives them a chance to connect with their fellow attendees for longer-term relationships.
Launch polls to tailor your content. Ask your attendees related questions that’ll help you have more productive conversations on-site, whether that’s in person or virtual. Plus, polls often give you additional information that you can use in post-event content and communications.
Keep session duration in mind. Some reports have shown that the shorter the events, the better. We don’t necessarily agree. You know your audience better than anyone else. Do they tend to leave after 20 minutes or is the content you’re creating in need of a longer session? If you have good content and speakers that can keep engagement high, we say don’t stress about the timing.
Use what you know from pre-event engagement. If you add one or two custom questions on your registration form, use them to tailor your discussions. The more you can reference topics that your attendees requested to talk about, the more they’ll want to stay engaged.
Keep Your Attendees Engaged After the Event
Just like the event starts well before the actual day, the event doesn’t end as soon as the final chair is put away. Maintaining audience engagement after the event will keep the conversation going, strengthen your relationship with attendees, and ultimately, drive more business results.
Get feedback quickly. If you can get event feedback while you’re actually at the event, that’s best. But we know how quickly events go by, and how busy you are at them. Aim to send your feedback survey email no later than 24 hours of the event to get the most accurate feedback.
Encourage attendees to continue networking. If you had an event app, attendees should be able to keep uploading photos, commenting on the social wall, and messaging people they met there.
Make your event on-demand. If your event was in person and you have any of it on video, offer that content in full to your attendees. Consider making it available to others for more lead generation.
If your event was virtual, convert it into an on-demand offering so it’s available to anyone and can help you generate more leads. With the right event technology, this can be done in just a couple quick steps.
Let your event fuel additional content. Extending the life of your event content is one of the best ways to speed up content creation and reach more people. It’s also one of the key tenets of event-led growth, which is how many of the most successful marketing teams are driving business results. Some of the ways you can use every part of the buffalo, so to speak, are:
- Write a recap blog post. Share nuggets of wisdom from the event. And if you can include quotes or insights from people in your audience, even better. Get their blessing to be included, and encourage them to share the blog post on their own social channels.
- Turn your recorded sessions or webinars into podcast episodes. Another podcast episode, without having to record, edit, and do everything else that comes with one? Yes, please.
- Chop your recordings up into short snippets for social media. This is especially important as event audiences and buyers are increasingly younger and looking to social media for information.
- Build an email mini course from your event content. Some people don’t have the time or budget to attend events, but may find value in what you shared via email. Plus, if your content is evergreen, this course could serve up new leads for years to come.
- Create a related, high-value piece of content. This could be a guide, a thorough case study, or a usable template. Give your attendees early access to this piece of content.
Send personalized follow-ups. Share guest list details and survey results with your internal team to continue conversations one-on-one with prospects and customers. Send them a piece of related content or follow up on a question they had during the event.
Invite attendees to join your community. Find ways to engage your audience throughout the year, whether that’s on Slack, LinkedIn, or somewhere else. Communities are ideal places to promote future events and encourage connections in between meetups.
02
15 KPIs to Measure Audience Engagement
Measuring event success can be challenging no matter what metrics you’re focused on. In fact, Splash’s 2024 Outlook on Events report noted that businesses are falling short when it comes to measuring event impact. US-based marketers in particular aren’t tracking event registrations (54%), opportunities created (53%), and attendance rates (40%).
Putting numbers to audience engagement can be tricky. There’s not a one-size-fits-all way to measure how engaged people are. You also want to make sure you’re keeping an eye on the metrics that’ll tell an impactful story for your executive team.
Click on what you want to measure below to find audience engagement KPIs and where to track them:
What it is: How likely your audience is to actually attend your event
CRM, event marketing platform
CRM, event marketing platform
Reporting Pro Tip
Out of everything listed in this section, your leadership team will likely be most interested in your meetings booked, held, and held rate numbers. These are the numbers that will most accurately reflect how many qualified prospects are in your audience — and these are the people who will most likely turn into opportunities sooner than others.
What it is: How much your event attendees are participating on-site or virtually
Event marketing platform, event app, website analytics
Event marketing platform, event app
Event marketing platform, event app
Event marketing platform, event app
Reporting Pro Tip:
Polls, Q&A, and chat can all be goldmines of ideas for future content. Include some noteworthy details from these to show your leadership team what is and isn’t resonating with your audience. It’ll help them (and you) better understand what topics matter the most and actually help land deals.
Social Media & Event Tech Engagement
What it is: How much your event attendees are participating using technology
Social media engagement rate
Event app downloads / adoption rate
Event marketing platform, event app
Event app social feed posts
Event marketing platform, event app
Event marketing platform, event app
Event marketing platform, event app
Reporting Pro Tip:
Focus on reporting your social media engagement rate and social feed posts. Both of these can be good signs of strengthening brand awareness, which usually doesn’t result in ROI immediately, but can be indicative of future success. Brand awareness is the first step to closed-won business, so your leadership team should want to know how your brand is being perceived among your target audience.
03
Conclusion
So much of marketing these days is digitized. Events are the sole survivor of face-to-face marketing, which is one reason why they work so well. People crave those in-person experiences. And even the best virtual events have a level of connection that can satisfy that craving.
But to create those connections, audience engagement has to be a priority for your events. It’s not always easy to do, but the good news is that there are a lot of ways you can make it happen (as evidenced by all the tips here).
The other challenging part of audience engagement is measuring it. Executives don’t always care about it, but as you learned in this guide, there are ways to report on audience engagement that will resonate with them.
If you already have a successful events program, great. If you think there’s room for more audience engagement, get ready.
You’re in for even more impactful events.
