Maximizing Event ROI with Analytics

Contents

• Why are event metrics important?
• What channels can I use to collect metrics?
• Surveys
  • Pre-event surveys
  • Event day surveys
  • Post-event surveys
    • Attendee surveys
    • Staff surveys
    • Stakeholder surveys
  • Survey best practices
• Behavior metrics
  • Registration metrics
  • Check-in metrics
  • Event app metrics
  • Map and navigation metrics
  • Search analytics
  • POI analytics
  • General usage
• Putting it all together
• Maximize your event ROI with Pointr

From the moment an attendee visits your registration page, they start generating useful feedback and metrics that can help you refine and improve your events. Using years of accumulated knowledge and experience in the events industry, we compiled this guide as a helpful resource for event organizers looking to get the most out of their events—with data!

First, we guide you through surveying attendees, staff, sponsors, exhibitors, and other event stakeholders before, during, and after your event. Next, we examine the data opportunities each aspect of your event’s digital experience affords. To wrap it up, we offer general tips for compiling and assessing data so you can make meaningful improvements. In each section, we include useful context, sample questions and metrics, and helpful pro tips.

Ready to dig in? Then grab a drink, and get comfy, because we packed a lot of great information and tips into this post. 🍵

Why are event metrics important?

Simply put, improving events, conferences, and trade shows and proving ROI (Return on Investment) requires data! What areas, booths, and sessions did attendees visit most or least? What event app features got the most engagement? What common feedback did attendees share? What about event stakeholders like sponsors and speakers? The more insight you have into every corner of your event, the more meaningful improvements you can make during and after, and the more you can create and prove ROI.

What channels can I use to collect metrics?

Attendees are your event. Without them, there isn’t anything meaningful to measure, so tapping into attendee thoughts and behaviors is where event metrics start. Feedback from sponsors, volunteers, staff, contactors, and other stakeholders are also invaluable for improving your events.

There are two main ways to gather event data: surveys and behavior metrics. When properly implemented, these mediums create a clear picture of your event from every angle. This clarity empowers you to make meaningful, data-driven decisions that improve the attendee experience and maximize ROI for the current event and future ones.

Tip: Not all digital platforms offer robust metrics, so carefully evaluate the platforms you choose for registration, check-in, the event app, surveys, and mapping.

Keep reading for a breakdown of the various channels at your disposal, example questions and metrics, and best practices.

Surveys

No, we aren’t starting at the end of the event. Post-event surveys are a common and crucial part of event feedback and improvement, but they aren’t the only way surveys fit into the picture. Even a brief survey sent out at the end of each day can do wonders for improving your event while it’s still happening. Even pre-event surveys have their place!

Tip: As you build your surveys, remember to keep them as brief as possible. Only ask as many questions as you need to achieve your goals.

Pre-event surveys

There are plenty of valuable insights to be gleaned from attendees before they even open your event app or enter the venue. Asking the right questions and making proactive adjustments can lead to better feedback and outcomes during and after the event.

Here are some common questions you can ask attendees:

• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the registration process?
• How did you hear about the event?
• Have you attended this event before?
• What sessions are you most looking forward to attending?
• Which speakers are you most excited to learn from?
• Which exhibitor booths are you most interested in?
• What are you hoping to gain from attending?
• Do you have any dietary restrictions?

In general, you’ll get the most value from pre-event surveys with closed-ended questions that offer attendees a way to share additional thoughts on negative answers. You can easily tabulate positive and negative responses and only sift through specific feedback that helps address problems and concerns.

Tip: Add questions related to dietary restrictions and accessibility accommodations to the registration form. This feedback is crucial to proper planning. Some attendees may not register for the event if they don’t think they’ll be provided with meals or amenities they need. Use multiple choice questions as often as possible for these types of questions.

Event day surveys

When an event is in full swing, there are a thousand and one priorities vying for attention. Amid the madness, attendee complaints and feedback can tend to get lost if they aren’t formally collected and tracked. Having at least one person dedicated to collecting and examining attendee sentiment from help desk interactions and event day surveys is crucial to ensuring that complaints and concerns are addressed quickly.

Short surveys at the end of each day can help you identify patterns and make small adjustments to your event. This shows attendees you’re invested in listening and acting, and it provides a better experience for attendees and staff alike. 

Tip: For the best results, send your end-of-day surveys around dinnertime so you’re more likely to catch attendees when they’re not traveling or navigating the venue.

Event day surveys should generally be very brief “pulse checks” that give attendees room to express their thoughts. For example, an event-day survey might consist of these two questions:

1. How was the event today? (1-5 stars)

2. How can we make it better for tomorrow? (Long text)

These simple surveys are generally fairly quick to analyze, and they give you both quantitative (e.g. how many people gave 5 stars) and qualitative data (e.g. sentiment about experiences and amenities).

At the end of each day, event staff should examine survey responses, looking for patterns or major concerns. You can then take action to address problems that may grow larger if left unaddressed.

Post-event surveys

Always send post-event surveys, and not just to attendees! Event staff, venue staff, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, contractors—all of these people can be valuable sources of information that help you make your events better and improve ROI. Below, we’ll discuss the value surveying each of these groups brings to your events and offer some sample questions.

Tip: As your event comes to a close, feature your post-event attendee survey at the top of your event app’s feature list.

Attendee surveys

When crafting attendee surveys, ask questions that will shed light on attendee behavior metrics from your event app, check-in, and mapping solutions. For example, if attendees spent a lot of time in the event app’s agenda feature, it could mean the feature was highly useful, or it could mean attendees had to spend lots of time finding sessions and information they were looking for. Specific feedback from attendees can remove that guesswork.

Here are some examples of effective post-event survey questions:

• What sessions did you enjoy the most?
• How would you rate the event app? (1-5 stars)
• What event app features did you find most useful?
• What event app features did you not find useful?
• Did you accomplish your goals at the event?
• Do you plan to attend our future events?
• How satisfied were you with communications about the event? (Confirmation emails, announcements, reminders, etc.)
• You wave a magic wand and one thing about the event changes. What is it?

Staff surveys

Asking your own event staff and volunteers for feedback is absolutely vital for improving your events. The “boots on the ground” who interact directly with attendees and respond to problems have their finger to your event’s pulse. When surveying staff, consider the following questions:

• What was your role in the event?
• What would help you do your job more easily?
• What common feedback did you get from attendees?
• Did you hear about or respond to any emergencies?
• Did you notice anything that could be improved?
• Did you notice anything that went particularly well?

Tip: Send staff surveys as soon after the event as possible while memories are still fresh.

Stakeholder surveys

Responding to what your event’s sponsors and exhibitors have to say about your event is just as important as showing them the metrics that prove they made a good choice supporting your event. 

Here are some key questions you can ask sponsors and exhibitors:

• How was your overall experience?
• Did your experience meet your expectations?
• How was the setup and tear down process?
• How was attendee engagement?
• What would have made your experience better?
• What went particularly well for you?

Tip: Send sponsor and exhibitor surveys with the ROI metrics they’ve been waiting for.

Survey best practices

For the best results and maximum response rates, keep the following general tips in mind:

• Swipe-away reflexes and ad blindness are real. Work survey prompts and requests into official event messaging whenever possible and avoid random pop-ups.
• Include “Tell us how we’re doing” prompts on event signage with QR codes that lead to event-day surveys or feedback forms.
• If your event app doesn’t have survey functionality built in, consider platforms like Typeform, Survey Monkey, or Google Forms. All of these offer excellent customization and rich metrics.
• Test your surveys before they go live! Have some coworkers fill out the surveys and then inspect the data.
• Improve completion rates by offering incentives like free or discounted swag or unique pricing for next year’s event.
• Before you start sending your surveys, get familiar with your provider’s results dashboards and report formats. Anyone who will be looking at and responding to event-day feedback should know how to quickly find and interpret the data.

That’s a wrap on part one! Still comfy and hydrated? Now let’s talk about getting usage data from your event’s digital experiences.

Behavior metrics

What attendees said about your event is one thing. Knowing what attendees did at your event is another. In 2025, having an event app is a standard many attendees have come to expect as an event guide, information hub, and help resource. From a data perspective, you can’t afford NOT to have one. With tons of excellent out-of-the-box event app providers like Webex Events, Cvent, and Guidebook to choose from, implementing an event app has never been easier. Many event app companies also provide full-service solutions for registration, event check-in, and badge printing, too.

Whatever solutions you choose, make sure they have robust, easy-to-understand metrics you can use to make sense of feedback and improve your events.

Registration metrics

As the very first touch-point with attendees, providing a simple, intuitive registration experience is absolutely crucial. Making the experience the best it can be involves careful planning and then learning from actual usage. 

Here are the top metrics to consider:

• What was the average registration time?
• How many registration drops (incomplete registrations) were there? When did drops happen?
• How many discount codes were used?
• How many group registrations were there?
• Which ticket options were most popular?
• How many referral registrations were there?
• How many people bought add-ons like merch, meal tickets, etc?
• What questions did attendees have after registration?

When you evaluate registration metrics, you’re sure to find opportunities to increase overall registrations, reduce drop rates, and provide attendees with more value and resources.

Check-in metrics

Your check-in desk is the first interaction most attendees have at the event venue, and that interaction can set the tone for the rest of the event. If lines are long, check in is slow, and staff are unprepared or overwhelmed, attendees may finish check-in frustrated. Check-in metrics don’t necessarily have lots of measurable impact on event ROI, but using lessons learned from data to fine tune your check-in process can greatly improve attendee satisfaction.

As you examine your check-in metrics, consider the following:

• How many attendees checked in?
• What percentage of registered attendees checked in?
• What time frames saw the most check-in traffic?
• How many check-ins per hour were there during the busiest times?
• How many attendees had to update their badge information?
• How many times did attendees lose their badges and need reprints?

Each of these metrics can inform how many check-in stations to have, how many check-in and help desk staff you need throughout each day, and how long to keep check-in open. A delightful, easy check-in experience is an absolute must-have.

Event app metrics

An event app is an attendee’s digital companion. When implemented well, attendees will use it extensively before, during, and after your event to find information, network with each other, and find their way around the venue. Each feature in your event app is another window into attendee behavior. It may be tempting to cram as many features and as much data as you can into the event app, but this may make the app more difficult to use and navigate, reducing its overall usefulness.

When considering event app usage metrics, think about these questions:

• What percentage of checked-in attendees used the event app?
• How many times did attendees open the event app on average?
• Which days saw the most event app usage?
• Which features did attendees use the most or least?
• What did attendees search for most?
• What features or resources are attendees searching for?
• Which pages or items within features did attendees visit most or least?
• How engaged were attendees in social features?
• How much did attendees use networking features?

Aside from proving the event app’s value, answering these questions with clear usage data can help you make meaningful decisions around app promotion tactics, sponsorship packages, and which features to add, keep, remove, scale back, or invest more in.

Map and navigation metrics

A good event mapping and navigation solution can offer so much more than a single, post-event metric of how many times people opened the map. With Pointr’s event mapping and navigation solutions, analytics are rich and actionable. When people do something on the map, like searching, tapping a POI or link, or starting navigation, we capture that data. This means that map analytics can be just as useful to event-day and post-event operations and decisions as any other event data you might collect. With rich POI information, maps also provide lots of opportunities to sell and enrich event sponsorships!

Let’s break down each of the key types of metrics event maps provide.

Search analytics

Keeping tabs on searches during your event can help you refine the mapping and wayfinding experience for attendees. For example, if attendees are expecting to find the Xbox booth by searching the term “Microsoft”, you’ll want to quickly update the Xbox POI with the “Microsoft” keyword. Or, maybe there’s a vendor attendees searched for a lot that isn’t at your event. Make sure you invite them next year and share the search metrics with them!

Here are the key search metrics to consider for maps:

• What are people searching for?
• What are the most common searches?
• What searches were unsuccessful and why?
• Where were people when they searched?
• How many total searches did attendees do?

POI analytics

If your event mapping and wayfinding solution includes rich POI details, be sure to share crucial data with this year’s stakeholders. Make the map usage data part of your pitch for next year’s sponsorships and exhibit spaces, too. 

The key POI metrics to consider are:

• Which POIs did attendees interact with most? Least?
• How did attendees discover POIs? (Search, map click, NFT tag, QR code)
• Which POI categories and tags were most popular?
• How much interaction did links, images, and buttons in each POI get?

General usage

General usage metrics from maps are mostly about marketing your event in the future. If sessions per device is high, it probably means people found value and kept returning to the map. Very high overall usage might mean your venue layout was confusing and people relied on the map heavily to find their way around. Remember to use attendee feedback from surveys to help you understand usage data!

Here are some general map metrics that could give you helpful angles on your event:

• How many total devices accessed maps?
• How many sessions per device were there?
• Which days saw the most map usage and at what times?
• How long did attendees have the map open on average?
• What were the most and least common types of map interactions?
• Where were people when they opened the map?
• Where were people when they closed the map?
• Which areas of the venue got the most traffic?

During the event, Pointr staff keep tabs on all of this data for you, proactively making changes and recommendations so you can focus on everything else.

Putting it all together

After the event is over, breathe first. 

When you’ve recovered from the titanic task of putting on an event, start digging into all the metrics and feedback you’ve gathered. Begin with the ROI metrics your sponsors and exhibitors are hungry for. Once you’ve sent those, transition to the metrics that will help you evaluate your own organization’s success and make plans for next year’s improvements.

After you’ve spent some time extracting and organizing data, it’s a great idea to gather your event team for a retrospective. Here are some key questions to ask:

• What unexpected problems or opportunities arose?
• What broke and how was it fixed?
• How can we plan to overcome the problems next year?
• How was general attendee sentiment?
• How can we improve our data collection practices?
• How can we improve our event-day responses to surveys and usage data?
• How can we organize and facilitate surveys and data examination better?

Take your time, validate feedback and ideas with data, and document your findings and decisions. When it’s time to start ramping up for next year, your data-driven plans will simplify and improve the experience for everyone!

Maximize your event ROI with Pointr

That was a ton of information, so thanks for sticking with us! We hope it helps you make the most out of your events.

Speaking of helping, as the only company that can reliably provide indoor mapping and wayfinding for events, we’d love to help you maximize ROI at your next event. With patented, proven technology and on-site staff to support you and make proactive event-day changes and updates, we’ll give attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors alike a “wow” mapping experience at your event.