As the famous maxim goes, data is the new oil.
Within your data is a myriad of insights you can utilize to prioritize your leads, better engage attendees, and create more value from your events. The key is to learn how to activate it.
In this blog post, excerpted from our eBook “Keeping Up With the Connectors: The strategies, tactics, and tools from the minds behind Cvent CONNECT,” we’ll walk you through the process we used to create our data collection strategy and how we went about putting that data to work.
Understanding the Data Landscape
When it comes to collecting event data, contact information is just the start. It’s essential to understand the different types of data you can collect and why they’re helpful. We suggest categorizing your data collection into three stages: pre-event, during the event, and post-event.
Before the Event
Pre-event, the key data elements you could capture would be segmentation and registration-related data, which includes registration questions, registration status, pre-events surveys, and session enrollment. This stage also provides campaign data like opens, clicks, and conversions.
Segmenting your audience based on interests and demographics will allow you to deliver relevant content and experiences. Campaign data can help you measure interest and learn which campaign strategies and messages are most effective.
During the Event
During the event, there are two groups of data. The first group has to do with attendance and could be capturing elements like event check-in, event hub logins, and app logins. It also includes session data like attendance, duration, feedback, session ratings, and speaker ratings.
Attendance and session data provide critical information about what’s resonating with your audience. It’s valuable to understand which sessions participants choose, how long they stay, and what ratings they’re giving their session experiences.
The second group during the event is related to engagement data elements which could include polling responses, questions submitted, social posts, booth visits, lead capture, and appointments. Engagement data lets you know which activities your attendees are interested in and what topics they engage with most.
After the Event
Finally, post-event data includes survey responses, engagement scores, event cost, revenue, and ultimately, the ROI. This data lets you know if your event was successful, what worked well, and what areas could be improved.
Want a deeper dive into data collection best practices? Check out the guide here.
Weigh the Value of Virtual and In-Person Data Differently
When you add the virtual component of a hybrid event, you reach a broader audience with more attendees. However, you must weigh the value of data points differently based on whether someone attends virtually or in person.
For Cvent CONNECT, we go through a very methodical process to identify how to score engagement throughout the event. We assign different scores for attending a session in person versus attending a session virtually.
People may have distractions when attending something virtually, so you have to assume you’re not getting the same depth of engagement with the virtual attendee that you would in person.
This isn’t to say virtual attendees aren’t valuable. Our virtual attendees are still hungry for content and product knowledge—they want to go deep. It’s just that measuring data becomes more complex, and there are new things we’re learning around the reporting of this data.
For example, we’ve discovered it’s best to break event goals into two parts: in-person and virtual. You need to be able to evaluate separately on the marketing side to determine:
- How did we measure up against our goals in the virtual component?
- Where did we hit our objectives in person?
Be mindful of these intricacies because insights can get skewed when comparing virtual behavior against an in-person goal.
Hybrid Means More Data and Insights
An enormous benefit of hybrid events comes from the data and insights they reveal. For example, you can do a headcount at an in-person event and estimate how many viewers participated in a session. But with the added virtual element of hybrid events, you know the exact participation numbers, how they’re engaged, and when they dropped out of a session.
You also gain information on your attendees’ interests through matchmaking data and session participation, which can help you improve future content. Not only that but sponsors also gain essential information on booth traffic and attendee engagement that helps them prove a positive return on investment. Virtual data also connects with all the data you capture with onsite technologies you’re using to track engagement.
Top 3 Tips for Data Activation
The most successful organizations see event data activation as a team sport. We recommend you enlist the help of your teammates, technology, and your community to get the best value.
Tip 1: Call on Your Marketing Operations Team
Together with the event marketing and sales teams, our marketing operations team helped simplify event processes and provided a single source of the truth for making sense of event data and proving ROI. They assisted with several out-of-the-box integrations before, during, and after the event; and they helped orchestrate the use of various marketing technologies like chatbots and analytical tools.
Tip 2: Use Engagement Scoring
We’ve already discussed the importance of understanding how your attendees interact with your event from the moment they register through post-event follow-up. Using a single platform with engagement scoring capabilities will allow you to create a detailed profile of each attendee as well as the community you’re hosting. That way, you get a clear representation of the entire attendee journey.
Tip 3: Create a Reporting Framework
Because the amount of data collected at hybrid events can be daunting, you’ll need a technology partner with robust reporting capabilities. That way, you can create a reporting framework that helps you:
- Segment and analyze success metrics across both virtual and in-person experiences
- Make real-time changes that impact your event’s success
- Analyze opportunities to make your event better
- Reconcile event costs and prove overall business impact
- Compare event performance year over year
More to learn...
For a full deep dive, including how to maximize the value of your event data, read all 6 chapters of: “Keeping Up With the Connectors: The strategies, tactics, and tools from the minds behind Cvent CONNECT.”
