63% of event creators today base their decision to participate in future events on past performance.
But if you’re only measuring total revenue or ticket sales, you don’t have clear visibility into your marketing and event performance. If your analysis stops there, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your audience and boost your event’s return on investment (ROI).
Get ahead of your competition and learn how to improve your event with this definitive list of KPIs (key performance indicator) for event management.
KPIs to monitor before your event
You will likely have an attendance goal in mind, but do you know how to reach it? With these KPIs, you’ll be able to navigate your event’s on-sale and make smarter decisions about your promotion strategy.
Sales by ticket type
Unless your event is free, you want to track how each category of ticket type performs in the lead up to your event (such as your early bird, VIP, and general admission). Combining this KPI with sales over time can help you identify how your early bird affected regular-price ticket sales.
Where to find it: Your event ticketing and registration platform
Sales by marketing source
Another ticket-related KPI is sales by source, which allows you to focus on the marketing channels that yield the most ticket buyers for your event. This KPI is worth your while because it can help you determine which channels are delivering the best ROI for your marketing spend.
Where to find it: Your event ticketing and registration platform
Attendee geography
This useful KPI is worth tracking if you want to know where attendees are coming from, which you can use to better target your advertising efforts for your next event. You can also use this data to pinpoint other cities where you’ll most likely be successful, should you wish to scale.
Where to find it: Your event ticketing and registration platform
Related: How to Reach Your Ideal Attendees With Facebook Targeting
Website conversion rate
Tracking how many times your event listing or a page on your website has been viewed gives you a sense of how many people are aware of your event.
Then, correlate pageviews to the number of tickets or registrations sold in the same time period. The result is your conversion rate (the percentage of page visitors who click through to sign up).
Why care about conversion rate? It tells you how effective your event listing or website is, and whether would-be attendees are dropping off because of a frustrating ticket purchase or registration process.
Where to find it: Your web analytics (such as Google Analytics)
Related: 6 Simple Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rates
Email marketing engagement rates
When done right, email can be a powerful and effective tool for getting the word out about your event. But you need to be vigilant about monitoring your campaigns’ performance if you want to see results. This includes tracking KPIs like open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates.
Where to find it: Your email marketing tool (like MailChimp)
Related: Maximise the Success of Your Email Marketing for Events
KPIs to check when wrapping up your event
Once you’ve recovered from your event, it’s time to get to work harvesting all the data that it generated. Pay attention to the following KPIs, especially when proving ROI to sponsors.
Attendance
Compare the number of registrants you had to the number of attendees who showed up. While some people might have simply had a last minute change of plan, if there’s a big difference it may be that your event was marketed well, but wasn’t exciting enough to get people to actually go.
If your event is free to attend, setting a price for premium upgrades can reduce your no-show rate. Learn more about this approach in this post.
Where to find it: Your event ticketing and registration platform
Total revenue
While many of the KPIs on this list drill down into different details of an event, total revenue is the simplest way to measure your event’s success and is a must-have when monitoring your event’s ROI year to year. To calculate it, simply subtract your expenses from your net revenue.
Where to find it: Your event ticketing and registration platform
New vs. returning attendees
This KPI is crucial to making sure you have a healthy flow of both new and returning attendees. People can lose interest in events over time, and some attrition is a natural part of any successful business. But, if almost all your attendees are new, this suggests there is a problem.
Where to find it: Your event ticketing and registration platform
Top attendees by money spent
Some attendees are going to buy more tickets and spend more money than others. And because 84% of consumers will repurchase products promoted at events after their first purchase, it’s important to keep these top spenders returning year after year to your event.
Where to find it: Your event ticketing and registration platform and point-of-sale solution
Feedback surveys
No matter how tired you are post-event, never skip sending out a feedback survey at the end. It’s a valuable opportunity to get feedback directly from attendees about how they enjoyed your event. KPIs from surveys can include satisfaction, intent to return, and net promoter score.
Where to find it: Your online survey tool (such as SurveyMonkey)
Related: How to Use Feedback for Your Event Growth Plans
Content engagement
Whether your event is a conference or a festival, you’ll have plenty of content on your agenda for attendees to read or watch. Be sure to look at the content that got the most views and the most engagement. This will tell you what’s resonating with your fans, and something you’ll sponsors will want, too.
Where to find it: Your web analytics (such as Google Analytics)
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing for Events
Social media engagement
Using an event hashtag can help you gather a wealth of data on social media about what attendees have said about your event.
Beyond hashtags, social media can also be used to measure attendee engagement with sponsors, which is especially important if you’ve offered it as an activation. You have the ability to provide hard numbers on things like:
- How many users interact with sponsor messaging on your social feeds
- Which specific messages perform best
- How many new followers came directly after mentioning a sponsor in a post
- How many people commented on a post about a sponsor, and the tone of those comments
- How many times you mentioned a sponsor in social posts
Where to find it: Your social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn)
Speaker/performer engagement
If you use an event app, you can measure how many people engaged with a particular speaker or performer by measuring the number of profile views they receive within the app. You can also use live polling after a session or performance to measure attendee satisfaction.
Where to find it: Your mobile event app (like sli.do)
Sponsorship page engagement
Engagement with sponsorship pages on your event website or in your app, such as page views, or on social media with likes, can help you track how relevant sponsors were to attendees. Use this data to prove ROI to sponsors — and to provide a better experience for your fans.
Where to find it: Your mobile event app or web analytics
Related: The Sponsorship Outreach Tipsheet You Need Right Now
Get visibility into your event’s success
Take control of your event by using event technology that gathers these KPIs for you. If you use Eventbrite, you can track sales in real time from any device. And with 24/7 access to more than 15 different reports and chart views, you can grow your audience and boost your event’s ROI.
Set up your next event now and start selling tickets in minutes.
