Post-Event Surveys: Email Best Practices + Questions to Ask

Some may think an event is over when the guests leave the venue and the doors are shut, but event managers still do much more work. Part of the work is to gauge attendees’ satisfaction and measure the event’s success. Today, we will share some best practices to help you create effective event surveys to measure this success.

What Are Post-Event Surveys & Why Are They Important?

Post-event surveys are used to gather feedback and insights after the conclusion of an event. These surveys typically consist of questionnaires designed to capture the opinions and experiences of participants, attendees, and stakeholders involved in the event.

The information collected through post-event surveys serves several important purposes:

Evaluation of Event Success

Post-event surveys help organizers assess the overall success of the event. Participants’ feedback provides insights into what aspects of the event went well and what areas need improvement.

Understanding Participant Satisfaction

Surveys gauge participant satisfaction by capturing opinions on various elements such as content, speakers, venue, logistics, and overall experience. They serve as a means to engage with attendees and show that their opinions and experiences are valued.

Marketing Insights

Post-event surveys can provide valuable insights for marketing purposes. Understanding what aspects resonated with participants allows organizers to highlight these elements in future promotional efforts.

Improving Future Events

Feedback obtained from post-event surveys guides organizers in making necessary adjustments and improvements for future events. It allows them to tailor upcoming events based on the preferences and expectations of the audience.

Best Practices for Post-Event Survey Emails

Email Timing

When discussing follow-up survey emails, the earlier is always the better. You should never wait more than 24 hours after an event to send a follow-up email. That’s because people will remember their experience better and share their feelings more accurately right after the experience happened. For this reason, it’s important that you have your follow-up emails ready to be sent and preferably scheduled to be sent automatically. Having an email marketing tool will be key to providing you with scheduling capabilities so your emails are sent automatically at the time of your choice.

Audience Segmentation

By segmenting your audience, you are able to ask questions that relate to each group in addition to being able to isolate the results for each of the audiences surveyed. For example, instead of getting a total average satisfaction rating among the entire audience, you can analyze how each segment felt about the event. Some audiences you may consider general attendees, VIP attendees, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, volunteers, etc. 

Email Message

When sending a feedback survey, don’t forget to add a personal message to the email with the survey link to thank them and share a personal note of your perspective of the event. This will keep things human and genuine so you can build a long-lasting relationship with each person. The message may vary according to each audience you are messaging.

Survey Design

Regarding feedback surveys, the design would translate into both email design and the survey webpage. Your current email marketing tool should take care of the email part, but keeping that consistency across the survey page is also important. Tools like Attendease can help you keep that design consistent while allowing you to manage all these moving parts straight from one unique platform.

Best Practices for Post-Event Survey Questions

Most post-event surveys will focus on what worked (so you can repeat) and what didn’t (so you can improve next time). In order to gather the information and analyze it, you should consider what types of questions to ask.

Types of Post-Event Survey Questions

Objective questions are easier to measure. For example, rating the overall event experience from 1 to 10 or answering yes/ no questions. These types of questions will be easier to translate into a chart so you can better visualize and understand the data.

On the other hand, open-ended questions may be helpful at times. If someone rated the event as “poor,” you will want them to share what made them feel that way. So, it is necessary to balance objective and open-ended questions to get enough data to analyze and decide for your next event.

The best practice is always first to capture your Net Promoter Score (NPS) question. That’s because the person responding to your survey can share their overall sentiment after the event without being influenced by other questions you may ask throughout the survey. Other survey questions may induce a rating that is worse than what you would normally get simply because you reminded them of less-than-stellar experiences that were not top of mind to start with. 

Examples of Post-Event Survey Questions

NPS question examples:

• How would you rate the event from 1 to 5 (or 1 to 10)?
• How likely would you recommend this event to a friend/ colleague?

Other questions to consider: here are some examples where you can use a dropdown or a checkbox style of question and add a field for “other” if the attendee wants to add more information. This way, you can capture both qualitative and quantitative data:

• How did you learn about the event?
• Why did you decide to attend this event? 
• What were your favorite sessions/ speakers/ exhibitors?
• How would you rate the venue, food, attractions, etc.
• Did this event meet your expectations?
• If you have no barriers, would you like to attend this event again next year?

Lastly, you should always have at least one open-ended question to gather additional feedback:

• Was there anything you disliked about the event?
• Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience?

Other Examples of Post-Event Survey Questions

1. How did the event contribute to your professional development or industry knowledge?
2. Were the topics covered in the event relevant to your interests and expectations?
3. How would you rate the overall logistics and organization of the event?
4. Did you find the networking opportunities at the event valuable?
5. How effective was the use of technology and multimedia in enhancing your event experience?
6. Were there any technical issues or improvements you would suggest for future events?
7. Did you feel a sense of community and engagement throughout the event?
8. What impact did the event have on your professional or personal development?
9. How valuable did you find the post-event resources provided, such as presentations, recordings, or additional materials?
10. Were there any measures taken to accommodate diverse needs that you appreciated?
11. How would you rate the accessibility and inclusivity of the event for all participants?
12. Did you utilize any post-event resources for extending your learning or networking?
13. What aspects of the event stood out to you as particularly positive or noteworthy?
14. Were there any aspects of the event that you think could be improved for future editions?
15. What suggestions do you have for enhancing the overall participant experience in future events?

Ideal Post-Event Survey Length

One thing to remember is that the longer the survey, the lower the conversion rates will be. Aim to have no more than ten questions for better conversion rates. Multiple choice, radio buttons, and other objective questions demand less effort and can win higher conversion rates than asking too many open-ended questions. So try only to ask what you absolutely need. You can also offer incentives to motivate people to provide feedback, such as a discount code for the next event, a cash/ gift card incentive, or a draw-entry to win a prize.

Social Media Listening for Post-Event Feedback

Another way to gauge event performance, especially for larger events, is to listen to what people share on social media. Social listening tools will be able to create reports to filter messages using your event hashtag, talking about you and your event, and, more importantly, analyzing the overall sentiment during and after the event. That means analyzing the words used in relation to the event and defining them as positive or negative experiences. You can also analyze a word cloud to learn the most used words around your event.

Gauging Event Success with Post-Event Surveys & Attendease

You got the answers to your survey; now what? Tools like Attendease can help you visualize your survey data so that you can analyze results and make better decisions for your next event. In addition to creating unique surveys for all your audience segments, you can also compare survey results from different events to determine which events perform better and why. We live in a data-driven world, so we must listen before taking action to thrive. Follow-up and surveys are where it starts. Do you need a tool to help you with email marketing, survey capabilities, and data analysis? Check out what Attendease can do for you.