Attending and exhibiting at an event is a big investment in time and often money. Before a visitor or exhibitor signs up, they will likely view your event website for key information. For visitors especially, they want to know if it's worth their while taking time out of their day to attend, whether in-person or virtually.
Here are five key statistics to drive visitor and exhibitor conversion.
Maybe an obvious one, but does your audience really understand net promoter scores? Many businesses use it as a daily measurement of customer satisfaction, but the people wanting to see if your event is worthwhile may not know why it's such a good metric. So what does a net promoter score actually mean and how can you use it in your marketing efforts?
A net promoter score is a number from -100 to 100 that tells you how likely someone is to recommend your event. It's calculated by taking the percentage of people who are promoters and subtracting the percentage of people who are detractors. A positive net promoter score means you're doing something good and people are happy to talk about it. Use it to show your audience what you did last year, be proud, talk about what went so well and use this stat to encourage others to register for your next event. Go even further by quoting your percentage improvement on last year’s NPS metric.
If your score is low, instead of hiding it away, why not tell people what you're doing to improve their experience next time around?
This shows your exhibitors and sponsors that there is interest from your visitors in meeting them. Of course, exhibitor requested meetings will be high (or they certainly should be) but if you show that your visitors are engaged and interested in brands at your event, this will encourage more sponsors and exhibitors to sign up and get involved, generating more revenue. More importantly, it will show your existing exhibitors that business is already happening at your next event.
Whether your events are virtual or in-person, attendance at your content sessions showcases to prospective sponsors that you can help them raise awareness of their brand. While session attendance stats tell visitors that the sessions are interesting, engaging and worth attending.
Use this stat to create more quality content with a rigorous pre-event vetting process. Understand what key points your speaker wants to offer as take-aways to your audience. Promote those take-aways and ensure your content team has a walk-through with your presenter to ensure they’re hitting the mark and not veering off into some sort of pitch-fest.
Add to your stat sharing with more detail. Show how many questions were asked in a session or how many attendees answered a poll. This shows the level of engagement from each individual session.
This is a more personal metric but ultimately, if an attendee has a good time at your event, they are more likely to come back and recommend it to others, meaning more visitors for next time around. But how do you measure it? This is one for your post-event surveys including the simple question: "How fun was the event?". This single question can tell you a lot about attendees’ engagement.
Don't leave it purely to post-event surveys though. If you've been in an airport over the last five years, you'll notice those little smiley face satisfaction stations asking how you’d “rate your experience today". Cheap to install and deploy at your event, you will get a real-time view on how people feel after attending sessions, walking the aisles or when leaving your event.
Got a low score? Improve it by adding more interactive and memorable moments throughout your hybrid event with entertainment, music, food and live demonstrations. Towards the end of the day, bring in a DJ and as people are starting to tire from a day of conversations, inject a bit of fun and lift the mood so networking carries on fluidly into the evening.
Proving exhibitors and sponsors with number leads generated is often a tricky task as for one company it could be they need only 5 leads to show they've had a good event but for another, it could be 1,000. However, the more granular you get with your lead scoring, the more your potential exhibitors and sponsors will appreciate the open and honest conversations you could have with them.
How do you break it down?
Offer them a way to score their leads in your event platform. For example, each lead they generate can be scored by the sales rep in your event app. A member of the exhibitor sales team gets a connection request from a visitor and can then rate them out of five in the app, showing the rest of the sales team how hot of a prospect they really are (they all have access to the leads generated via your event app). As an organiser, this data is invaluable. You can now go back to the exhibitor and rebook them for the next show, based on their total lead score. Did their average lead score go over four out of five? Then it’s time to have a chat with them about rebooking…
Next steps
“These all sound wonderful, but I've got a day job. How much time will it take to gather these stats?”, I hear you ask…
The truth is, it doesn't have to be complicated, and you can get as granular as you like. If you're short on time, keep it basic or… let your event software do it for you.
Explori is a great tool to collect your NPS score in an instant. A simple dashboard to follow, you can recall stats at the click of a button.
Grip's intelligent reporting software lets you see headline stats as they happen. No need to download long convoluted Excel spreadsheets that you need to mine, the platform does it for you. So, at any time before, during or after your event, you have access to real-time reporting when you need it most. Lead tracking, meeting requests stats, poll responses, and more... It’s all accessible in the Grip platform.
Transparency is key
The importance of being honest with statistics cannot be understated. It is one thing to cherry pick the data that supports your argument, but it is a whole other to be completely transparent with your numbers.
When presenting statistical information, always ensure to cite your sources (e.g. how many participants were surveyed and when they were surveyed). This gives your audience confidence in the information you are sharing, helping you build trust, generating greater business outcomes with data.
