Events require considerable resources, including time, money, and staff, so it’s crucial to demonstrate why and how your event was successful. Data provides tangible evidence to tell a compelling story about your event’s impact and helps justify resources spent.

When you’re sharing with key stakeholders, you need more than just a gut feeling about what worked, you need measurable, quantifiable data to show:

• Why your event was successful.
• How specific actions or strategies led to that success.
• Where there are opportunities for growth or optimization.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are specific measurements that are used to track progress toward key business goals. KPIs are strategic. For example attendee engagement, or the return on investment (ROI) of the event.
• Metrics are quantifiable measures that track and assess the status of specific business processes. Metrics are typically operational or tactical. For example, the number of event registrants, or the number of feedback surveys completed.

Metrics are important, but KPIs are what tie the data back to business goals and objectives.

One of the first steps to making data useful is segmenting and organizing. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of data that is available but remember, not all data points will be relevant to your goal(s). It’s important to filter out the white noise data - information that is collected but not relevant. For example, if the goal for your event was to increase attendee engagement, registration data is important, but you may not need to report on the date people registered. Instead, you may focus on feedback survey results and session registration details. 

You could share every single data point you have to try to show that your event was a success. However, this approach will likely not create a compelling story. To make data actionable, you need to know what you’re trying to accomplish (remember metrics and KPIs?). When determining what data to reference, think about the what and who and align metrics accordingly.

• Understand what you are trying to accomplish or what the action is behind the data point. Some common event objectives might include: 
  • Participation and engagement: Track registration and attendance. 
  • Attendee satisfaction: Gather post-event feedback.
  • Direct revenue: Look at the total revenue for the event, and compare against previous years if applicable. 
• Understand who you will be sharing data with and what they might expect to see. Different stakeholders are interested in different data points, so it’s important to tailor your metrics to align with their needs. For example, leadership will likely be more interested in a high-level view of the overall impact vs. a detailed breakdown.

Not all data will live in Cvent. You may also need to use data available in Marketing Cloud and Salesforce to create a more holistic view of your event’s success. For example, you may want to include data on email campaign success leading up to the event.