Let’s be real, no one likes taking surveys, especially ones that take longer than thirty seconds. However, surveys are still the most important means of getting feedback for any type of event, whether it’s in-person, virtual, or hybrid. With virtual events still being in their infancy, it’s extremely vital to get as much feedback as you can to make future virtual events that much better. Here we will discuss the advantages of virtual event surveys and why they’re so important.
Like with all surveys, their purpose is to give the most reliable feedback after an event or meeting so the hosts can find out how to improve future events. This gives attendees the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of various aspects of your events such as individual speakers, seminar topics, training sessions, product demonstrations, exhibitors and sponsors, accommodations, as well as rate their overall experience with the event. However, even with all of these aspects it’s still important to keep surveys as easy, short, and direct as possible in hopes of getting the most effective feedback. Since all of the aforementioned aspects apply for both in-person and virtual events, it’s even more important to send surveys immediately after the event, which is much easier for virtual events than in-person since the latter often sends out surveys weeks after the event ended, whereas virtual events can send surveys almost immediately.
Despite their much-needed feedback, 77% of event professionals aren’t using surveys at all, ultimately denying them vital feedback to improve their events for future audiences. This feedback can generally include, but is not limited to generating more leads, winning more marketing budget based on the feedback, understanding your audience better to include their challenges and desires, collecting social proof and other vital data points for future marketing efforts.
As mentioned, one major advantage of virtual event surveys is the ability to send them out immediately instead of days or even weeks after an in-person event. This can be accomplished either via email or as a final step on the last day of the event before an audience member leaves the event for good, and even offer the audience member an incentive in completing the survey, either through a “Thank You” email or other small token of appreciation. This immediate feedback will provide the host an equally immediate opportunity to begin improving the various aspects of their event for future audiences. Since it’s important to keep surveys as short as possible, some general feedback questions might include: “What were your primary objectives for the event (knowledge, networking, etc.)? Did the event meet your objectives? What could the event organizers have done differently?” Some speaker feedback questions might include: "Was the session topic delivered as promised? Was the speaker engaging? What were your objectives for this session?”
Regardless of the event, feedback is the important way to make future events better and using surveys to get this feedback is the most effective way to improve any and all aspects of your event. Virtual events offer the advantage of getting surveys out to audience members faster, which equates to getting necessary feedback that much faster, too. Keeping surveys short and simple will help increase participation, as well.