Congratulations on successfully organizing your event! You put in the hours of work, sweat, dedication, and whatnot. And now that the event is finally over, so is your work as an event organizer, right? Absolutely NOT. And even you know this, and that is why you landed here in the first place! Want to know about the best post-event survey questions that will help you boost your ticket sales online? Read on!
Know Your Event Stakeholders Through Post Event Surveys
Who are the event stakeholders we are talking about? It’s often mistaken that only attendee satisfaction is what matters for the success of an event. But in reality, it is just one of the many criteria.
Your employees, volunteers, event sponsors as well as your guests and VIPs have an integral role to play in the success of your event & their vote counts too.
Event Survey- A Key Performance Indicator
Event surveys help you to understand the positive as well as negative impacts on your event stakeholders.
What are Event Surveys?
Event Surveys are a form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), usually in the form of questionnaires, used to assess your event’s stakeholders’ perception of your event.
Pre-event surveys help understand what your event participants hope to receive from your event. Post-event surveys help determine if you met the level of expectation and the level of attendee satisfaction.
Why are Event Surveys important?
Did your event impact your audience in a certain way you had not thought about or realized post the event? Would you want to create the same impact on your events in the future? Or did it impact them in a way you will make sure does not happen in the future?
These questions are possible to answer only through event survey questions. The organizer’s perspective alone is not enough, and also it has a high chance of being biased.
At the same time, getting honest feedback from other people can serve as an effective event planning tool to answer questions like those mentioned above.
What Are 3 Types Of Event Survey Questions?
1. Yes-No/ Binary Questions:
These are straightforward and simple to ask questions where the person has to either answer in the affirmative or negative. If the answer is a “No”, an open-ended question post that will explain it further.
2. Open-Ended Questions:
These questions enable respondents to elaborate on certain topics they feel dissatisfied with and you need clarity on.
While these might be difficult to assess, they give more knowledge about the thought process of the respondents.
3. Rating/ Net Promoter Score (NPS) Questions:
Participants have to answer the question in the form of a rating. These multiple-choice questions allow the attendees to rate the event according to their satisfaction.
Combining answers from all the participants gives the Net Promoter Score. Higher the NPS, the better the event.
6 Points to Create Better Event Survey Questions
1. Shorter the Surveys, the more the people filling it out
Long event surveys are tedious to fill out and chances are participants would skip answering such event surveys. This would lead to the loss of some valuable feedback from event participants.
2. Keep easy-to-answer Yes-No/ Binary Questions and/or Rating Questions at the beginning itself
Starting the event survey with easy questions would provide momentum to the event participants. Responses to the questionnaire will also improve.
3. Keep the number of Open-Ended Questions less
Participants might find it difficult to elaborate on each and every aspect of the event. This can also result in event attendees backing out from filling out constructive event feedback forms due to lack of time.
4. Giving attendees a choice
Even if you do put a few Open-Ended Questions, make sure not all of them are compulsory to fill.
Also, participants answering non-compulsory survey questions is an indicator of how satisfied, or, dissatisfied they were with your event. And in both cases, it is you who will improve and evolve as an event organizer.
5. Provide links
At the end of your event survey, provide links to your social media promotion handles, websites, and other places. Also, advertise your events and provide links to your surveys on your social media platforms.
6. Create Aesthetic Forms
The event surveys which you send online, or in some cases offline, have to be aesthetic enough and easy to fill out. You do not want your respondents to have any problems while filling out the event survey. If they are frustrated with the difficulty of navigating, they might drop.
Online Tools For Creating Survey Forms
There are many online tools that can help you create survey forms and customize them according to your needs.
Here are some examples:
While these websites enable you to create your own forms, there are other resources that provide an automatic feedback system after the event ends.
Pro tip: AllEvents is one such website that sends out these open-ended questionnaires to the stakeholders. They also put up those reviews on your organization page as social proof. Cause you know, why not flex some golden reviews?
Post-Event Survey Questions to Include in Your Event Survey
While a few questions can be generic, certain questions have to be specific to the role of the particular event stakeholder during the event.
Let us look at such questions.
11 Post Event Survey Questions for All Stakeholders
1. Did the event meet your expectations? (Yes/No)
2. How satisfactory was your overall event experience? (Rating)
This question can be asked in the form of a binary question or in the form of a rating question.
Getting to know if the event met your event participants’ expectations is valuable feedback.
3. Would you recommend this event/ our future events to your friends/ colleagues/ acquaintances? (Yes/No)
Whether or not your participants will refer your future events to other people is an excellent indicator of constructive feedback. Referring to a friend or colleague indicates that your event was able to provide value to your event stakeholders.
4. Would you participate in our future events? (Yes/No)
5. How willing are you to participate in our future events? (Rating)
Your stakeholders’ likeliness to attend events next time is an indicator of your stakeholder retention capacity. participants would love to come back to your future events.
6. Did you have all the pre-requisite information needed to attend the event beforehand? (Yes/No)
It is important for your stakeholders to have all the information they would need pre-event and during the event to make sure that they are able to get the maximum benefit out of it (in the case of event attendees and sponsors) or to give their best to make the event a success (in the case of volunteers, speakers, and employees).
7. What, according to you, was the highlight of the event? (Open Ended)
Through this question, you can gauge which aspect of your event was the showstopper for your stakeholders. And if possible, you can try to incorporate that in your future events as well.
8. Is there anything you disliked about the event in general? (Open Ended)
While the answer to this question, if any, might hurt, this is a good opportunity to learn from your mistakes and avoid them next time.
9. Do you want to let us know about something we might be missing? (Open Ended)
There are chances your event survey might have certain shortcomings and you might have missed certain post-event survey questions. Posing this question lets your stakeholders point out those missed areas.
Also, asking such a question makes you look humble enough by showing you genuinely care about surveys. They will feel that you want to maximize feedback and are concerned.
10. Did the event venue pose any difficulty for you? (Yes/No)
The place where you are hosting your event has to be comfortable for the participants. Was the location too far away? Was it clean up to the standards of the participants? Were the facilities provided good enough? These are important questions to keep in mind while creating an event survey or while organizing an event.
11. Was the online platform interface user-friendly? (Yes/No)
If you are hosting a virtual event, the user interface of the platform is important. It should enable the attendees, staff, and speakers to have a seamless experience.
Make sure that your speakers have the suitable gear to deliver valuable content to your audience. While making sure your employees are able to smoothly control the event virtually.
Post-Event Survey Questions for Attendees
How did you get to know about the event? (Open Ended)
Answers to this event survey question will help you assess which of your event promotion strategies are bringing the maximum profit and engaging the maximum audience. Also, the marketing strategies that do not bring in enough results can be worked upon in the upcoming events.
Did you face any issues while registering for the event? (Open Ended)
The worst thing that happens is your attendees not being able to register for your event because of a platform glitch. Asking this question will help you make sure that the tools you are using are optimized. The registration process should not be lengthy and confusing.
Pro tip: You can get seamless experience with best event registration software and form templates.
Was the event duration/ time for discussion with the panelists enough? (Yes/No)
The attention span of a human being, no matter how interested in the topic being discussed, is limited. Make sure that your event is not too long so that the attendees lose track of it. And neither too short that not everyone has time to take part in the discussions at the end.
How satisfied were you with the sessions and topics covered during the event? (Rating)
In order to give your attendees a valuable experience, it is important to know how satisfied they were with the sessions. If you channeled event engagement ideas to entertain your audience, then this bar sure would be green!
Pro tip: You can also look for pre and post event engagement ideas to improve your brand value.
What topics would you like us to include in our next event? (Open Ended)
Is there any topic they wanted to be covered during the event? What do they look forward to while they plan to attend your next event? This is a great place to know points. So that you can improve their experience in the upcoming events.
Post-Event Survey Questions for Volunteers
Did this event provide you with a valuable volunteering opportunity? (Yes/No)
More often than not, volunteers are looking for opportunities that would help them serve a cause, whatever it be. This is the reason they are doing it for free. It is your responsibility to ensure a win-win situation. Where the volunteers helped you with your event and your event, in turn, provided them with a meaningful opportunity.
Would you be down to volunteer for our company/organization in the future? (Yes/No)
While considering survey questions to ask your volunteers, this one is also a good option. This would allow you to know if your event was compelling enough to make them want to volunteer again.
Post-Event Survey Questions for Speakers
Was the event’s audience response according to your expectations? (Yes/No)
This is an important post-event survey question to ask. The speakers expect an attentive and participating audience. This is their primary expectation. And an essential condition to be fulfilled for their satisfaction.
Would you be interested in speaking at our events in the future? (Yes/No)
The answer to this question would enable you to gauge the speakers’ overall satisfaction with your event.
Would you recommend any acquaintance of yours who would be interested in speaking for us in the future? (Yes/No)
You can get in touch with some excellent speakers in the field via recommendations from your current speaker. Do not let go of this networking opportunity.
Post-Event Survey Questions for Sponsors
Were you satisfied with the ROI received through sponsoring this event? (Yes/No)
The only reason sponsors invest in your events is because they expect returns and profits in their business. Knowing if they were satisfied with the ROI they received through this event is important to be asked in post-event surveys.
You can also follow up this question with an optional open-ended question asking the numerical value of their ROI. Which you can later use as proof to pitch for sponsorship from more sponsors in the future.
Are you willing to sponsor us again the next time? (Yes/No)
Answers to whether the sponsors are down to invest in your next event is an indicator of how much value they were provided this time.
Also, you can follow up with an open-ended question to explain their reasons if they answer in the negative.
Pro tip: We know that finding event sponsors can be a hassle but you can convert them in a better way with event sponsorship guide.
Post-Event Survey Questions for Employees
How would you rate the coordination of the team throughout the event? (Rating)
How smoothly did the event progress? Were all the tasks performed diligently? Were employees able to coordinate effectively in order to carry on the event smoothly?
This can be followed by an open-ended question to enable employees to point out the failings in team coordination which can be sorted in the future.
Pro tip: To improve team coordination, you can learn more about event planning tools.
Did the event meet the goals of your department and achieve the overall agenda? (Yes/No)
This question will make each department feel valued and heard. Follow up with an open-ended type of question in case the employees would want to elaborate further.
What changes, in team distribution, and duties distribution, if any, would you want to incorporate next year? (Open Ended)
Allow your employees to suggest changes, if any, in the function of your organization or company, in order to be able to put out the best events providing value to all stakeholders.
Final Words
Now that you have a good idea about what are some of the event survey questions you can ask in your post-event surveys, and know about the necessary event planning software to create such survey forms, you can go ahead with creating your own event surveys to get valuable feedback to strengthen your event planning strategy.
All the best!
Abhishek is a content marketer who specializes in ticketing and event trends happening throughout the globe. He feels that event marketers should easily find the information they need.
Hence, he is responsible enough to gather information and deliver the relevant guidelines to planners throughout the event industry.