Why evaluation begins before the event

The golden rule with feedback: the sooner, the more honest. After three days people remember the highlights and the low points. The rest fades. That's why you want to gather feedback within 24 hours of the event. Preferably while still at the venue.

There are several methods, and the best approach combines at least two.

A short digital survey (8 questions at most) is the basis. Send it the same evening or the next morning. Use a mix of closed questions (a scale of 1 to 10 for satisfaction, an NPS score) and open questions ("What was the most valuable moment?" and "What would you change?"). Keep it short. Every extra question costs you response rate.

Live feedback on the day itself yields the rawest insights. A feedback wall by the exit where people stick a post-it. A digital poll in the final session. Or: a team member standing by the cloakroom who stops three guests with the question "What are you taking away?". Those conversations often deliver more than a hundred surveys.

Social media monitoring after the event shows how people talk about it when they're not asked to. Search for your event name, your hashtag and your company name. What are people sharing? Which moments are they photographing? That tells you what made an impression.

And don't forget your own team. Within 48 hours, schedule an internal evaluation with everyone who was involved. What went well in the delivery, where did we get stuck and what would we do differently next time? Record those points, because in six months' time nobody will remember.

More on communication around your event →

Feedback is qualitative. Data is quantitative. You need both to get a complete picture of your event.

The most important data points are: attendance rate (how many of your registrations actually turned up), NPS score (how likely participants are to recommend your event), session attendance (which parts of the programme drew the most visitors), engagement (number of questions, poll participation, app interactions) and reach (social media impressions, press coverage, website traffic after the event).

The attendance rate is your first test of truth. At corporate events, an attendance of 70 to 80 per cent is normal. Below 60 per cent, something is wrong with your invitation strategy or the perceived value of your event. Above 85 per cent, you're doing something right.

The NPS score gives you a comparable number you can track across events. Ask: "How likely are you to recommend this event to a colleague?" on a scale of 0 to 10. An NPS above 30 is good for corporate events. Above 50 is excellent.

Session attendance tells you what type of content appeals to your audience. If the keynote was packed but the workshops were half empty, you know something about your audience's needs. Measure this per session, not just as an average.

Link this data back to your goals from step 1. If your goal was "knowledge transfer", look at the scores on the substantive questions in your survey. If your goal was "facilitating networking", look at the number of new contacts participants report. The data tells the story. But only if you know which story you're looking for.

"Was it worth the investment?" You're guaranteed to get that question from your leadership or your client. And "it was a success" is no answer. You need numbers.

You calculate the ROI of an event in three steps. First: what were the total costs? Count everything. Venue, catering, technology, speakers, staff, communication, your team's travel time. Not just the invoices, the hours too.

Two: what was the return? At a commercial event, that's leads, deals or direct revenue. At an internal event, it's softer metrics: employee satisfaction, understanding of the strategy, team connection. You can quantify those through your survey results.

Three: set the return against the investment. A client event of 40,000 euros that generates five new client conversations, two of which convert into a 50,000-euro project, has a measurable ROI of 150 per cent. A kick-off of 25,000 euros that raises employee satisfaction on "engagement with the strategy" from 5.2 to 7.8 is harder to express in euros, but it's measurable all the same.

Not everything can be expressed in money. And it doesn't have to be. But you can always show what you've invested and what it returned in terms of your original objective. It's not an exact science, but it's a world apart from "it was fun".

Tip: make a one-pager with the key figures and share it with your client within a week of the event. That builds trust and support for the next event.

More on budgeting for events →

The event isn't over when the lights go off. The days afterwards decide whether the impact sticks or evaporates.

Send a thank-you email within 24 hours. Not a generic "thanks for coming". Make it personal. Refer to a specific moment from the programme. Share a photo that captures the atmosphere. Add a link to the speaker's presentation or a summary of the key insights. Give people something to look back on.

Share the recap film or photo report within a week. The longer you wait, the less impact. After two weeks the memory has already faded and a recap film feels like old news. Within three days it's a confirmation of the experience.

If your event had a follow-up action, name it explicitly. "During the event we agreed that each team submits an action plan by 1 April. Here's the outline." Without that follow-up, fine words stay just fine words.

For client events: send a personal message to the five most important guests. No bulk email. Genuinely personal. Refer to the conversation you had with them. Schedule a follow-up meeting if that's appropriate. That is where client events prove their worth: not on the night itself, but in the weeks afterwards.

And internally: share the results with your team. What went well, what could be better, and what do we do differently next time? Record it in an evaluation document that you open again for the next event. That way you build up a knowledge base instead of starting from scratch every time.

Most events agencies stop at the break-down. The marquee is down, the invoice is sent, on to the next project. But the evaluation and follow-up are exactly where a good agency sets itself apart.

After every event we deliver an evaluation report. It contains the hard figures (attendance, NPS, session attendance), the qualitative feedback (what people really said) and our own observations from the production side (what went well in the delivery, where the bottlenecks were).

That report isn't a formality. It's the basis for the next event. If we see that breakout sessions were less well attended than expected, we propose adjusting the format. If the NPS is high but the open feedback shows the catering disappointed, we know where to steer differently next time.

We also help with the follow-up communication. The thank-you email, the recap film, sharing the presentations. That sounds like small stuff, but it's exactly the things that matter and that are the first to fall by the wayside in the rush of day-to-day work.

Evaluation isn't a lock on your event. It's the first step of the next event. And the better you evaluate, the stronger the next event becomes.

Get in touch on 085 401 40 14 or hello@live-impact.nl. We'll help you with organising and with learning from what you organise.

Evaluating an event begins with the right questions and ends with concrete points for improvement. We help you with the set-up, the data collection and the translation into action.

Call us on 085 401 40 14 or email hello@live-impact.nl.

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