Getting guests to RSVP and check into an event is one thing. Keeping them there and keeping them engaged is quite another.
When guest engagement at an event is low, it’s a good indication that your guests aren’t enjoying your event the way you intended. Low engagement rates can result for a variety of reasons, including poorly timed or poorly structured sessions, speakers or entertainers who don’t interest guests, and a lack of interactive elements to intrigue, educate, or entertain guests.
If you’re an event planner looking for new ways to boost guest engagement, here are seven easy methods to track and improve the guest experience at your next event.
1. Create a Hashtag
By creating a unique hashtag for an event you can increase excitement and interest prior to your event and boost audience engagement during the event.
Monitoring your hashtag during the event is a great way to see what attendees are posting on social media in real-time. While you can’t expect all attendees to post during the event, the ones that do can shed insight into whether they’re enjoying the experience or feeling disappointed about a certain aspect of the event.
In addition, designating staff to share live updates using your event hashtag can also boost real-time engagement. Guests are likely to check their phones at some point throughout the event, and seeing notifications with the hashtag attached can encourage them to create their own posts or react or respond.
Check out this article for more tips on how to create an effective event hashtag.
2. Conduct Live Polls
Live polls are an easy and effective way to improve guest engagement during events. People want to be heard, and you can gather responses on all sorts of event-related issues by reaching out to the audience for direct feedback.
To keep it interesting for your audience, consider using a combination of live polling formats, including multiple choice questions and answers, true or false questions, ranking polls, word clouds, and ratings polls.
Event organizers can use polling data to gain insight into audience behaviors and attitudes. And regardless of the poll response, the poll response rate alone is yet another indication of how many people are (or aren’t) participating. To encourage more people to participate, display live polling questions and answers for the entire audience to see.
3. Conduct Surveys
Conducting surveys after an event is critical, as the feedback you can collect can help you better measure the success of your event and understand attendee behavior. Yet, like live polls, conducting on-the-spot surveys during the event can also improve guest engagement in real-time.
Depending on your audience, it may be difficult to get attendees to pick up and fill out a paper survey. Instead, post a QR code that links to a digital survey and allows guests to respond at their leisure and submit honest feedback with a simple click.
Event surveys can be about any specific element of the event, such as the food, the entertainment, the décor, or the ease of check-in. At the end of the survey, be sure to ask guests to rate their overall experience.
4. Utilize Attendance Tracking Software
Event attendance tracking software is one of the easiest ways to see who has checked into the event and what sessions or breakout events they’re spending the most time in. This includes the use of QR codes, barcodes that guests must scan as they make their way throughout the event, and wearable tech, like RFID bracelets that track the movements of all attendees on site.
Event tracking software can inform you of the elements of your event that are garnering the most engagement as well as provide insight into sessions where attendance is dwindling or engagement is waning. When the data shows that engagement is minimal or slowing down, try to pivot and make immediate changes to re-engage the audience in the moment.
Check out this article to learn the key features to look for when choosing an event attendance tracking app.
5. Do a Post-Event Analysis
A post-event analysis of all attendance data and behavior won’t help you improve engagement in the moment, but it will help you plan better events going forward.
To better understand attendee engagement for events that include sales or sign-ups for services, track leads. For events focused on brand or product launches, track post-event sales and brand interest online. For charity or social events, analyze survey data to determine what guests thought of your venue, food, and entertainment options.
This information will make it easier to plan future events that encourage better guest engagement.
In Conclusion
Easy ways to improve guest engagement include creating an event hashtag, conducting live polls and surveys, using attendance tracking software, and doing a full post-event analysis. Make these tips part of your event management process and you can improve attendee engagement, boost brand awareness, and make guests excited to attend your next event all at the same time.
