Organizing an online event means you are putting in your effort, time, money, and, most importantly, your expectations into it. But, once hosted, how would you know if your efforts really paid off? Or, how would you be sure if you have met your expectations or not?
Simply by calculating the Return of Investments (ROI). Now, when we talk about calculating the ROI, the first requirement is to define the Key Performance Indicators you would prefer to measure the success of your online event.
In this blog, we will help you understand what KPIs are and how you can measure the success and ROI of your online events with the help of those KPIs.
What is an Online Event KPI?
One can define an Online Event KPI as simply a metric they can use to measure how effective or successful the online event went. When it comes to creating and deciding the KPIs, it depends on the organizers, their objectives, and the outcomes they wish to achieve by hosting online events.
Defining KPIs should technically be the first step in planning and hosting online events.
Hence, when you are just starting to plan your online event, consult with your investors, stakeholders, and other people in your team about the objectives you wish to achieve with your online event. Make sure everyone is on the same page when you decide the goals and objectives of your online event, and then decide the KPIs.
Though some KPIs might differ from event to event, a few remain common among all the organizers. These KPIs are the number of registrants, people who showed up for the event, etc.
What are Some KPIs One Can Consider to Measure the Success of Online Events?
1. Registrations and Attendance:
The first thing that online event organizers keep in mind is having the maximum number of people register for the event. Though having a certain number of registrants for the event is the first thing one would consider to measure the success of the online event, one should always keep a check on the number of attendees who made it to the event. As an organizer, you won’t want to find yourself stuck in a situation where there is a significant difference between the people who registered and those who attended.
If you notice the difference, make sure to look deep into the matter and try to find the root cause of why people are dropping out.
Not only this, but if you host online events regularly, it is advisable to keep a check on the number of people registering and attending your event. You can set benchmarks for yourself with every passing event.
2. Number of Returning Attendees:
The next KPI you should consider is the number of attendees who are returning to your brand. Those are your loyal customers, and they like the content and service you provide to them. Obviously, at the end of the day it is about retaining customers, and having a high number of attendees returning back to your brand is a good sign. Keep it up; you are on the right track!
3. Attendees’ Participation Time:
Moving forward, the next KPI you should consider to define the success of your online events is how actively and for how long attendees are staying at your event. However, when it comes to keeping track of attendees’ participation time, there’s no particular industry-defined benchmark that would define good or considerable attendee participation time. Therefore, as an online event planner or organizer, you can take your previous online events’ audience participation time as a benchmark. If the graph moves upwards with each online event, bang on! Your strategies are working.
4. Audience Engagement Rate:
If you have been in the online event business for quite some time, you must have known that having attendees at your online event platform is not enough. You also need to ensure that they don’t regret signing up for your event and enjoying every bit of it.
One way to ensure the same is by including audience engagement activities and features such as live chat, polls, Q&A sessions, and more. Several online event streaming platforms like Mixhub provide users with the most advanced audience engagement and interactivity tools.
Now, when it comes to KPI, measuring the number of attendees accessing these tools can help you measure the success of your online events.
For example, you can keep track of the attendees’ participation and response to understand their views.
Not only this, but you can also keep a check on the number of questions attendees are asking. Obviously, a higher number of questions means attendees are liking the event.
Pro Tip:
Keeping a check on attendees’ activities gets easier with a detailed analytics dashboard like that of Mixhub. With such dashboards, you will get the exact figures and numbers, eliminating even the slightest possibility of things going wrong. Therefore, use Mixhub for your next online event and make things easier for yourself.
5. Ratings of the Speaker:
Not many organizers consider this, but Speakers Ratings are actually a critical KPI that would help you know if your audience likes your event or not. Why wouldn’t you consider it? Speakers constitute a significant part of your online events and equally play a role in their effectiveness.
Hence, always ask your audience if they liked the speaker or not by asking them to rate them. Higher ratings and positive feedback would mean that they liked the speaker you chose.
Apart from this, ask the speakers how they liked the event and the online event software. Ask for their feedback to know how can improve your further events.
6. Social Media Engagement:
Social Media Engagement is a significant KPI organizer should keep in mind while measuring the success of your online event. We are sure you would want to know how many people across the globe are talking about your online event. Hence, keep a check on how many users across different social media platforms are talking about your event.
Also, while checking the quantity, don’t forget the quality of social media engagement. It is always important to ensure you are getting good quality chatter on social media platforms. What is the point of getting several mentions if they don’t represent your brand well?
7. Post Event Survey Participation:
Getting post-event feedback from the audience is a task in itself. However, customer satisfaction is one of the most critical KPIs one should take into account to know if they succeeded or not. Therefore, send post-event feedback forms to your attendees to know if they liked your event or not. Their positive and negative feedback will be clear indicators of their response. However, not receiving any feedback is often perceived as positive feedback, but it means there wasn’t anything that made your audience go ‘wow’ during the event.
8. Qualified Leads:
One of the prime reasons event organizers host online events is to expand the reach of their brand and generate qualified leads. Hence, if your objective is to generate more leads for your brand, then you should definitely consider this as your prime KPI. However, as we mentioned earlier, quality always surpasses quantity. Therefore, focus more on getting qualified leads than simply getting leads.
9. Total Traffic:
The next KPI that we will talk about is the traffic on the internet around your event and brand. A successful online event will surely give an uptick in online searches and traffic around your brand and on social media channels. It means that people are interested in your brand and are curious to know more about your online event, brand, and products.
10. Net Promoter Score:
Net Promoter Score is one of the most critical and vital KPIs organizers should always focus on. For this, the organizers should include a few questions in the post-event survey to know more about audience feedback related to your event.
Ask your attendees to rate your event and other elements of the event out of 10 to know how they liked it. It will help you know their opinion and give a rating to your online event.
11. Conversion Rate
If you want to generate leads, build brand awareness, and increase sales through your online events in the future, it’s important to pay attention to conversion rates.
So how do you measure your virtual event conversion rate? It’s the percentage of attendees who convert from attendees to sales-qualified leads during your online event. We also recommend comparing this metric across different virtual events.
The Event’s other Virtual Event success metrics may vary depending on the type of Virtual Event you host. Examples of such additional metrics include sponsorship revenue, opportunities generated, chat messages, event recurrences, sales pipeline acceleration, and more.
Over To You:
When it comes to planning and hosting an online event, there are several KPIs one can take into consideration to measure the impact and success of online events. However, it depends on the objectives one wants to accomplish with the online event. But, one thing that organizers should always consider is choosing KPIs that would give them direct and measurable results. It would make it easier for them to analyze their strategies and measure the ROI as well as the success of their online events.
If you are looking for an easy-to-use online event platform, choose Mixhub. This platform is equipped with all the features one needs to host online events and comes with a one-month free trial offer.
