Getting the most out of your post event feedback – 8 steps to higher response rates

Getting feedback becomes more important the tighter the competition gets with in an industry. Your customers are the reason you are still in business are they not?

The savvy businesses will be finding out all the key information from their customers about where they are succeeding and where they are not, helping to foster a leaner product/service offering to maximise their return.

There are, however, some considerations on ways to do this, here we focus on online surveys which offer the greatest return and immediate actionable feedback for a business. Some basic ground rules have to be in place in order to get it right and make it count for you.

1. Target the right people – Surveying your customers to find out who they are is the key here, what demographic, annual spend, location, media usage, social media usage etc.. Stick to finding out the information that you NEED to use to build your marketing strategy going forward.

2. Say my name! – Personalisation always works, and also reduces barriers to people offering opinions. The email invite should incorporate their name and company name or any other personalisation that is relevant, e.g. naming the event they went to, on which day.

3. Offer an incentive to participate – Sometime you will need to do this to bump up the response rates. This can be in the form of a straight forward cash payment, discount code for a further event, or a simple prize draw for an iPhone/iPad. Sometimes the basic report into the survey finding is sufficient and doesn’t cost you anything.

4. Short and Sweet - Make the introduction page of the survey short and succinct but also ensure you cover privacy of the data. The first question should only be viewable once the respondent has decided to click to continue past the introduction statement. Its good practice and very good manners, and also acts as a double opt-in.

5. Chunk it down - Section your questionnaire and add page breaks to minimise scrolling as much as possible. Scrolling through a survey allows less survey logic to be implemented and also raises the possibility of the respondent missing questions only to be fed an error message, leaving them to scroll up and down to find out where they went wrong! You have to make the experience as easy as possible for the respondent.

6. Go easy on the respondents - Only make the most essential questions mandatory, obviously this is discretionary based upon the subject and focus of the survey itself.

7. Branding – Use your logo, and try and configure your survey to adhere to your marketing and branding standards, for after all, this survey IS A MARKETING COMMUNICATION from your company. Leverage their engagement with your brand to good effect. And with this comes the importance of selecting the right survey tool as you may not want your branded survey attached to something that has the word “Monkey” in the URL.... ;-)

8. Say thank you – Simple! Add a final page similar to the introduction reiterating your gratitude for their valuable time, complete with your contact details, an email address for any questions, and any instructions to do with the incentive offered. And have this page redirect to your company website upon completion.

Following these points should keep you well clear of respondent fatigue and the adverse effects on your brand of less well prepared research whilst giving you more insightful data. Are you asking the right questions the right way now?


Crunch

Simple data that can improve your next exhibition

Exhibition organisers have got it tough! Their event is a massive project, they have to deal with bigger venues, bigger numbers, more exhibitors, more logistical issues, more legal concerns, greater awareness of the locale and transport links, a bigger demographic spread attending, from a wider area, and tons more data to analyse. Any way to make next year’s event an easier experience is always on the agenda. One way to do this is to use that data you already have. Here is just some of the info you have at your disposal:

Number of attendees – use a spreadsheet as a replacement for an abacus not rocket science.

Number of non attendees – Useful information to know, badge scanners linked to a database of registration information. Excellent and simple metrics to get a very basic understanding of your market

Badge scanners – great way to gauge entrance numbers, broken down per hour, giving you optimum time to plan next year’s seminars and event opening closing times, should they need a tweak. Hidden bonus, you can figure out who are the smokers, any smoking cessation hypnotherapist will be heavily interested in that information!

Seminar attendances – often the big draw for a section of the attendees, always remember “Content is King”. Alongside the marquee signings of a high profile celebrity or business guru, a great way to add significant value and boost attendances of delegates and exhibitors.

Badge tracking – Now it gets interesting, chips can be used in badges to track the length of time a person stayed in the exhibitor hall, map which stands they went to, how long they were there, when they had lunch, did they attend the networking functions etc. Not used extensively as yet due to cost of investment by the organiser and/or the venue and the ease of extracting the real valuable data from this kind of analysis.

Post event feedback – only the only real qualitative analysis that asks for the thoughts of the market you are targeting. Linking registration information to this gives you a complete view of who the attendees were, when they came, where from, how they got there, and how they rated every aspect of your exhibition. Wouldn’t it be great to know that the people at the back of the seminars couldn’t see the visuals very well, or the networking session was too short, or that the exhibitors weren’t easy to find with the current layout?? This is where you can enhance next year’s offering even before you’ve decided on its venue.

The exhibition organiser has so much data at their disposal, but by using the right mix, and employing the right analysis, could save you a lot of time in the coming year targeting the right exhibitors, or picking the best media channel for PR, now that you know what works best.

You have lots of data, so make sure it’s used wisely and used well.

Crunch

One difference between good and excellent event planning

Every decent event planner must have a whole array of skills. Got to be good at sales, be very marketing minded, brand aware, very organised, store lots of information for quick retrieval from the mental database, calm under pressure, problem solving and the list goes on. Multitasking mayhem, and not to be taken lightly, definitely not a job for a man, some of my female colleagues would say.

So what is this hidden secret? The best event planners use all of these skills AFTER the event. Suppose you could call it “Post-Event Planning” which is a paradox and a half. Just because the event is over, the job hasn’t quite finished.

So how does a good event planner get better? Here’s how...they carry out post event feedback, simple! Not just comment cards or asking for the odd anecdotal quip, but measuring the performance of the event thoroughly. A real valuable insight as to how every facet of the event was perceived by the customer.

Here are the things to consider when doing post event research:

Do it online! – which is easier? Piles of paper or cards, or a easy to configure excel chart? Easier time-wise and skills wise. No brainer. All data is there for you instantly, and already aggregated, and it can be passed quickly to stakeholders and clients with ease. It does away with manual intervention, someone has to collect the comments (who might well have a bonus based on those very scores) and someone has to plough through them. There are plenty of online survey tools available to make this happen for you.

Do it as soon as possible – The largest hotel chain in the UK instigated a group wide guest satisfaction program across over 450 hotel sites in 2006. Three months into year the long program they had started to instigate a number of changes, some small details, some major undertakings. As part of the team that worked on this, the biggest most significant factor in gaining business intelligence from this was the timing of the survey, with the survey arriving in the customers inbox the day after the stay. The surveys answered the day after the hotel stay were more insightful and detailed, with cleaner data than those answered 2-3 days later. Be quick with this, while the event is fresh in their minds, you get the richest data this way.

Learn something new – Most companies allocate their marketing budget once a year. Marketing managers spend this budget in their heads within 3 mins of learning the amount they have (made-up statistic!). That's it, they know where its going. By doing post-event feedback, a happy side effect is that if you get to profile your customer base to a greater degree. You might find that the most satisfied customer to one of your events might be the ageing hippy regaling you with tales from Woodstock, as opposed to the SATC generation. What were the key drivers for you getting the business in the first place? This is where research makes your head spin. Have you already used 3 minutes spending your whole marketing budget targeting the wrong demographic, uh-oh!

Make the changes – So you know who to target, how to target them and where they hang out (virtually). Take the learnings from your customers, listen to them, treat them like your advisers, and accommodate them next time. Always keep one eye on the long term!

So that's the secret to going from a good event planner to an excellent one, just the fact that the planning for the next event starts when the last person leaves your current event. One merges into the other and makes it easier for your business to evolve.

Crunch

p.s. there is another secret, post event research the most underused sales and marketing tool in the toolbox, more on that in a another blog.