From their incredible flexibility to their ability to reach a vast audience, virtual events are extremely beneficial for associations, nonprofits, and event-hosting organizations of all kinds. However, they also present their own unique challenges, like the difficulty of digitally engaging attendees or the tricky technical process of setting up your event activities.

Fortunately, event technology and our understanding of virtual event engagement have vastly improved over the past few years. In particular, post-event surveys have become a powerful tool to continue engaging attendees after virtual events, collect valuable event data, and brainstorm strategies for improvement. 

If you’re searching for simple strategies to greatly improve virtual event success, post-event surveys are a strong place to start. To make the most of your post-event surveys, consider these key tips: 

• Personalize surveys & survey emails.
• Offer sliding scale & open-ended questions.
• Send out surveys in a timely manner.
• Share results with event speakers & guests.
• Invest in the right event management tools.
• Ask key post-event survey questions.

From small nonprofits to large associations, organizations of all sizes and sectors can leverage these survey essentials to increase donor, constituent, or member engagement for your virtual events. 

Personalize surveys & survey emails.

Creating an effective post-event survey strategy begins long before attendees start filling out the survey itself. How you phrase the message containing your survey has a dramatic effect on whether or not surveys are even opened. For now, let’s focus on the most common medium for sending surveys: emails.

According to Re:Charity’s article on increasing participation with email marketing, personalizing your messaging is one of the first and most important aspects to immediately engage recipients and boost the probability of a response. You should refer to your constituents by name and reference the specific event that they attended.

Additionally, you should try to “warm” these communications with expressions of gratitude and a more human voice. For example, you might say:

“Dear [Attendee Name], 

Thank you for taking the time to attend our [name of the event]! We hope that you enjoyed your experience [describe the nature of the event’s activities]. As you may know, we are constantly working to improve our event offerings, and we would greatly appreciate it if you took the time to let us know about your own experience…”

The point is to be concise without coming off as mechanical, appealing for responses while also appealing to your attendees’ emotions. This will help to endear the reader to your organization and make them feel as if their feedback is genuinely important and valued. Furthermore, this can be a useful tool to combat digital fatigue by snagging the attention of recipients and re-engaging members in your online communications.

Individualizing your post-event communications in this way can go a long way to increase survey open and response rates, as well as give you more precise and pertinent information to enhance your virtual events.

Offer sliding scale & open-ended questions

A survey filled with binary “yes” or “no” inquiries can be an immediate turn-off for survey recipients. And even when they are completed, binary surveys can produce less valuable and more haphazard responses as participants quickly click through their answers.

By contrast, more open-ended and diversified event surveys are not only more engaging, but they can be far more effective in collecting a rich set of data for you to work with as you try to improve the virtual event experience.

For example, you may ask readers how they felt about a specific virtual conference session they attended. Give readers the option to rate their experience on a scale of one (least engaging and insightful) to five (most engaging and insightful). You may also offer an optional open-answer section where participants can elaborate on their experience at that session.

Use this to address the strengths and weaknesses of your event, improve your offerings, and drive virtual event attendance going forward.

Send out surveys in a timely manner.

Don’t wait until months or even weeks after an event to ask recipients about their virtual event experiences. By that point, recipients will either be uninterested in answering your questions or struggle to provide valuable and accurate responses. This is especially true for virtual events, as participants lack the physical, tactile experiences and memories that are easier for our minds to retain.

Instead, strike when the iron is hot by sending out your post-event surveys in the days immediately following your virtual event. You will find the responses to these timely post-event surveys to be more accurate, detailed, and useful as you endeavor to host more engaging and successful virtual events. 

Additionally, consider sending your email surveys during a weekday, as recipients may be more willing and able to answer their emails on traditional workdays than on weekends.

Share results with event speakers & guests.

Your virtual event speakers and guests struggle to engage attendees just as much as you do, if not more so. While you have extensive experience dealing with your unique base of constituents and what it takes to engage them, your featured event guests are taking the dive into your events with far less to work with.

To set virtual event speakers up for success, share past survey results and the conclusions you’ve drawn from them—namely what strategies, games, or discussion styles your attendees tend to enjoy. You should also share the post-event survey results related to event booths, sessions, or activities, giving them the opportunity to adjust their strategies going forward.

Invest in the right event management tools.

Fonteva’s guide to virtual events explores the most fundamental best practices for planning and hosting a successful virtual event, such as: keeping up active communication about the event, leveraging a robust online marketing strategy, collecting key event metrics, and—most importantly—investing in effective event software.

From simplifying event communications to collecting and organizing all event data, the right event management tools can enhance every stage of the event lifecycle. In terms of your post-event surveys more specifically, powerful event management software can:

• Automate the scheduling and sending of your surveys.
• Send surveys through a multitude of channels, such as email and SMS.
• Automatically personalize mass communications.
• Optimize your survey design for mobile users.

While these features may seem like small matters of convenience to make your communications slightly more appealing, they can have a huge impact on the perceived professionalism of your association. And, even more importantly, they can ensure that recipients don’t simply scroll past your messages in their inboxes. 

Ask key post-event survey questions.

If your event organizing team is still at a loss for how to craft the perfect post-event survey, these critical event questions provide a solid foundation for what to include. To the average event attendee, ask:

1. What was your overall satisfaction with the event?
2. What about the event did you enjoy or appreciate the most?
3. What about the event did you enjoy or appreciate the least?
4. What activities or topics would you like to see at our next event?
5. How did you hear about our event? 

Of course, there’s much more that should be added and considered for your own specific post-event surveys. For example, apart from just addressing your event attendees, you should also create special sponsor surveys and event volunteer surveys to address the unique experiences of these important participants.

However, these basic inquiries address some of the most fundamental points to give you a sense of attendee satisfaction and what steps you can take to improve your next virtual event.

As virtual events become more sophisticated and virtual attendee expectations continue to rise, it’s more important than ever to take advantage of opportunities to learn more about your attendees’ experiences and your event performance. 

With these insights, you will be able to build powerful post-event surveys that can feed you this information and, even more importantly, guide you as you continue to strive for more successful and more engaging virtual events.

About the Authors

Erin Lemons

Erin Lemons joins Togetherwork Association Solutions with over 15 years serving as a marketing director, event producer, and project manager creating robust marketing campaigns and initiatives that focus on the growing and ever-changing technology needs of the association industry. She leads the marketing teams and strategy at Fonteva and Protech. 

Jake Fabbri

With over two decades of experience marketing association technology, Fonteva CMO Jake Fabbri has developed a deep understanding of the unique needs of associations and the challenges technology can solve. Jake’s marketing expertise has been honed by demonstrated excellence in the areas of lead generation, content marketing, marketing automation, and events.