Top 12 Event Survey Questions You Must Ask Your Attendees

Once your event is over, you might have some questions in your mind like "How well did it go?", "What did attendees like?", "What didn’t interest them?", "What about event sponsors, will they be likely to support the next event?", and many more questions. Getting inside the heads of your attendees and other stakeholders is a hard nut to crack. The best way to know your attendees’ unbiased feedback is to ask them directly. That's where the need for event surveys comes into the picture.

Good event survey software and tools offer multitudes of pre-event survey and post-event survey questions that help you gather actionable feedback from your event attendees and stakeholders and optimize your event strategy. To leverage event surveys and collect meaningful feedback and information through them, it is essential to ask the right event feedback survey questions to your attendees.

In this article, we will explore some of the most effective questions that you can use in your event feedback surveys to collect valuable and actionable feedback from your attendees to improve future events. We will also explore the ways to share these surveys and some best practices for conducting effective event surveys. Let's start with defining event surveys and exploring their benefits!

TL;DR

• Event surveys are questionnaires sent to event attendees before, during, or after and event to collect valuable feedback and insights about the event.

• Event surveys are beneficial in various ways - they are a source of direct feedback, they help to build trust among the audience, identify strengths and weaknesses of the events, provide guidance for future events, and help to make better decisions regarding events.

• You should focus on asking the right questions to make your surveys successful and harness their full power. Consider asking different pre-event survey questions, during-event survey questions, and post-event survey questions.

• You can share surveys via various ways or channels - Android surveys, kiosk surveys, mobile surveys, email surveys, and SMS surveys.

• It is important to follow some best practices while conducting event surveys - keep surveys short & concise, prefer collecting real-time feedback, collect feedback about all aspects, and include some open-ended questions to let your attendees share their thoughts in their own words.

• A good event survey software can help you conduct effective surveys. Zonka Feedback is one such software that lets you create effective surveys, share them through multiple channels, capture leads, and take action on feedback to make your next event better. It also provides a free trial for 14 days.

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What are Event Surveys?

Event Surveys are questionnaires that are sent to attendees (guests, volunteers, stakeholders) of a live planned event before, during, or post its occurrence to collect their feedback and insights about the event. These surveys are conducted to know the attendees' expectations from an event and how well that event was able to match those expectations.

An event survey not only enables you to gauge attendee satisfaction levels but also helps you to make your event more audience-centric. Let's understand this by exploring some benefits of event feedback surveys.

Benefits of Event Surveys

1. Surveys are a Direct Source of Feedback - Surveys offer a direct channel for participants to share their experiences and opinions, providing you with immediate feedback and direct insights to evaluate and enhance event elements promptly.

2. It Helps to Build Trust Among the Target Audience - Engaging in post-event surveys demonstrates your commitment to transparency and improvement. This fosters a trusting relationship with attendees who appreciate the opportunity to voice their opinions and witness responsive action.

3. It Helps you do an Effective SWOT Analysis of the Event - Event feedback surveys contribute to a comprehensive SWOT analysis of your events by unveiling strengths to capitalize on, weaknesses to address, opportunities to explore, and threats to mitigate. This enables you to have detailed information about how successful your event was and how it could be better.

4. It Provides Guidance for Future Events - By capturing participant expectations and satisfaction levels, event surveys offer invaluable guidance for planning future events. This allows you to make strategies for future events to provide better experiences and stay attuned to evolving audience preferences.

5. It Helps to Make Better Decisions Regarding Events - Survey data empowers you to make informed decisions by analyzing participant feedback, identifying trends, and implementing strategic changes that optimize overall event success and participant satisfaction.

The success of surveys depends largely on the questions you include in that survey. Let's check out the Top 12 questions to ask in event feedback surveys for the best results.

Besides choosing the best ways to collect feedback from your event attendees, the questions of your event feedback surveys also play a crucial role. An event feedback survey contains both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Data collected through these questions help to identify the critical aspects of your audience to sell event tickets on a scale.

So, if you are looking to acquire a better response rate and useful survey data, then asking the right questions at the right time matters a lot. We have divided these questions into three categories viz., pre-event survey questions, during-event survey questions and post-event survey questions to make it easier for you to choose the right questions as per your survey needs.

Pre-Event Survey Questions

Pre-event survey questions help you to know what your attendees expect from your live planned events. A Pre-event survey is a great way to generate some additional buzz and excitement. Here are some pre-event survey questions to ask before the event begins.

1. Why did you choose to attend this event?

This is the qualitative question you can think to ask your early-bird registrants who take a longer lead time between signup and attendance. This question helps you tailor your event experience according to the attendees’ purpose of attending the event and their expectations.

2. What do you expect to get out of this event?

If you want to know your attendees and their preferences in deep, then this question is the perfect choice for you! Asking this question can help you to identify the goals & objectives of attendees behind attending the event and understand what they expect from the event. Thus, this question plays a crucial role in making your survey response driven and helps you to maximize the attendees' engagement.

3. From where did you get to know about this event?

This is another important pre-event survey question that helps you to check the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. If you ask the question from your attendees "How did you first learn about the event?" they not only provide you with a response but also give an idea about the scope of improvement in marketing strategies to make the event more popular.

For instance - If you ask the above question in the multiple-choice format and provide four options, say Facebook, Instagram, BookMyShow, and Recommendation. Based on the survey responses you find that Facebook and BookMyShow are the two platforms where your attendees come to know about your event. This can help you to streamline your marketing efforts and event promotions in the future.

4. Do you find the location of this event easy to get to?

This question works best in the scenario when you have opted for another event space. This type of binary question can be asked during the booking or post-registration process. Although you have shared the location details with your attendees, this question helps you to figure out whether your attendees need a dedicated transportation facility or not.

During-Event Survey Questions

During-Event Surveys are conducted during the event. This survey helps you to know the ongoing qualitative and quantitative insights about the attendees' experience. Usually, the event organizers/managers avoids taking feedback during the event but it is one of the best ways to improve the engagement with the attendees during the event. Here are some mid-event survey questions to ask during the event.

5. How would you rate the venue?

It is apt that the first impression is the last impression and the Venue is the first impression based on which attendees build the overall perception of the event. Therefore, this quantitative question helps you to gain a holistic view of attendee satisfaction. You can ask this question within your event app immediately after check-in.

6. Are you satisfied with check-in?

Attendees rate the event on the basis of its management as well. They are more influenced by the accessibility and flow at the event venue. Sometimes, check-in can often be a hassle. Thus, it is important for the event manager or organizer to check whether they are satisfied with the check-in process or not. Based on the response, you can keep a check on the routes and traffic during the event, and augment the event experience.

7. How satisfied you are with the following aspects of the event:

• Venue

• Speakers

• Quality of sessions

Posing this question is completely dependent on the type of event. In events like conferences and seminars, venue, speaker, and quality of sessions are important event characteristics that shape the experience for attendees. On gathering feedback about the above aspects, you may able to find some great insights for the next time you plan an event.

8. What are your thoughts on the event thus far?

This qualitative question helps you to gain knowledge about how volunteers or staff members engage with attendees and vendors during the event. If you have a 3-day event, you can ask this question at the end of the first day.

To get a timely response to this question, either you personally engage with your audience or the best option is to use the Event Feedback App.

Also Learn: The Art of Lead Capturing at Events and Trade Shows 

Post-Event Survey Questions

A post-event survey is like a report card that reflects the performance of your overall event. This survey provides you with a better holistic view of your attendees' perceptions towards the event. With this survey, you will get a fair idea of whether your attendees will go to attend your next event or not. Thus, post-event survey questions help you to optimize your events and organize better events in the future. Here are the post-event survey questions you should you can ask in your surveys.

9. How likely are you to recommend this event to a friend or colleague?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey question is a common yet powerful way to get a detailed insight into your attendees willingness to recommend your event to your friend or colleague. Your Net Promoter Score is the satisfaction and loyalty indicator that assesses the value of your event. Based on the survey responses, you can categorize your attendees into three categories:

1. Promoters - Those attendees who rate their willingness to the recommendation to 9-10. They speak well about your event.

2. Passives - Those attendees who rate their willingness to the recommendation 7 or 8. They are usually satisfied with the event experiences but are not sure of attending the event again.

3. Detractors - Those attendees who rate their willingness to the recommendation to 6 or below 6. They are denied to attend the event and potentially advise the same to others.

Learn 7 Smart Tips to Convert your NPS Detractors into Promoters.

 10. What did you like & dislike the most about the event?

This qualitative open-ended question provides you with the scope to do SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses of your event. If you want to make your event more audience-driven, then it is important for you to identify both good and sore spots in the event and take corrective action to sort the issues. You should not leave negative feedback unaddressed at all because negative feedback has more impact on the mind than positive ones.

11. Would you like to share any special experiences or suggestions regarding the event?

This is often the last but not least question that allows you to improve the interaction with your attendees. Moreover, when you ask this question to your attendees, this makes them feel special and realize that their suggestions are really important for your event's growth. Therefore, this augments the attendees' engagement with both the event and the brand.

12. Based on your experience this year, how likely are you to attend this event the next year?

This is another rating question that you can ask your attendees to know their likelihood of attending the meeting next time.  You can also ask the attendees a simple Yes/No question like  "Will you come next year?". This will help you easily source new and fresh attendees for your next year’s event. This, in turn, helps you to optimize your event.

Ways to Share Event Surveys

By using effective event survey tools or apps, you can easily send your surveys through multiple online and offline channels. Let's explore these channels!

1. Android Surveys

Android surveys are a great way to collect offline feedback from your event attendees at your event location during the event. You can simple take your Android device to your attendees and hand it over to them for sometime requesting them for sharing their event feedback.

2. Mobile Surveys

With the help of an offline survey app, you can easily collect feedback through your mobile devices like iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and smartphones. You can just handover the mobile device to the attendees you want to survey for some time, so that they can take the survey and submit their responses.

3. Kiosk Surveys

You can also set up unattended kiosk devices at your event location in a comfortable area where the attendees can view it, and share their feedback whenever they feel like sharing. Attendees can easily take the survey on these unattended kiosks without any assistance.

4. Email Surveys

Email surveys are also a good way to share event feedback surveys. A survey email contains a survey invitation message followed by a survey link, button, or embedded survey question. You can trigger email surveys at various touchpoints like registration, check-in, during the event, check-out, or a day after the event to know about the experiences of your attendees at different touchpoints. 

5. SMS Surveys

SMS is also an effective way to share online event feedback surveys. For sharing these surveys, a text message is sent to the attendees followed by a survey link, which the attendees can open and easily take the survey and submit responses. Like emails, you can also trigger SMS surveys at various touchpoints.

Let's explore some best practices to follow while creating event feedback surveys.

Some Best Practices to Conduct Effective Event Surveys

• Keep the survey short and concise - Optimal survey length ensures participant engagement and increases response rates. This helps you focus on essential questions to gather meaningful insights without overwhelming attendees.

• Prefer collecting offline feedback - Prefer using offline feedback channels like Android tablets, smartphones, and kiosks to collect in-moment feedback from the attendees while they are at the event venue. This will help you get more accurate insights and real-time feedback from the attendees.

• Ask attendees to rate each aspect - Collect feedback about all the aspects of the event like venue, sessions, audio system, etc. Understanding the costs and quality of various event services is also crucial. Getting a sense of average event photography pricing can help in budgeting and ensuring high-quality documentation of your event. If your event involves different sessions or performances, ask the attendees to rate each of them so that you get to know about what attendees like and what they don't like

• Provide an opportunity to share experiences in their own words - Always include some open-ended questions or at least one open-ended question to let your attendees share their opinions, experiences, and suggestions in their own words. This will help you gather rich feedback data that will guide you to organize better events in the future.

Conclusion

Event surveys are a great way to know your attendees' experiences and organize better events. The success of your surveys largely depends on the questions you ask. So it is important to include the right questions in your surveys as per your survey requirements. An event feedback software or app like Zonka Feedback can help you choose the right questions for your surveys.

It provides you with ready-to-use event survey templates to create effective surveys and lets you share them through multiple survey channels as per your own convenience. It also offers a free trial. Try Zonka Feedback for free for 14 days and see how it helps you gather valuable feedback and leverage it to improve future events.