How to Unlock the Power of Attendee Data Across the Event Lifecycle

The relationship between attendee data and events is powerful in today’s digital landscape where virtual, in-person and hybrid events can thrive. Event data enables planners to gain deep insights into attendee behaviours and patterns. With these insights, you can create targeted messaging, strategically enhance the event experience, prioritise leads, improve future events and measure ROI.

However, despite events providing some of the most valuable intel at multiple stages (pre, during and post) only 29% of senior planners and marketers capture data at more than one part of the event journey − according to The New Event Marketing Opportunity Special Report, an independent study conducted by Atomik Research (and commissioned by Cvent), which surveyed more than 2,000 respondents from the UK, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. By not doubling down on their efforts to capture data at all stages of the event lifecycle, planners are missing a huge opportunity to capitalise on the benefits of these deep insights. But before you start collecting more attendee insights, it’s important to understand the different types of data you can capture and WHY each is useful. So, here’s a brief summary to get you started and to help you unlock the power of data across the event lifecycle:

Pre-event

The key data elements you want to capture here are demographic, firmographic, behavioural and, if possible, psychographic information that enable you to segment your audience. You can capture this data through registration questions, marketing campaigns, surveys and session interest/enrolment.

WHY: Segmenting your audience based on interests and demographics will allow you to deliver relevant, personalised content and experiences. Campaign data helps you measure interest and learn which campaign strategies and messages are most effective.

During the event

There are two groups of data to capture: the first has to do with attendance including elements like event check-in and app logins as well as session data like attendance, duration and feedback. The second group of data is related to engagement elements such as polling responses, questions submitted, chat engagement, social posts, booth visits, lead capture and appointments.

WHY: Attendance and session data provide critical information about what’s resonating with your audience. Engagement data lets you know which activities your attendees are interested in and what topics they engage with most. When event attendee data is combined with their touchpoints from your other marketing channels you get a more complete attendee profile; enabling hyper-personalisation at scale.

Post-event

This stage can include survey responses, engagement scores, event cost, revenue and ultimately, event ROI.

WHY: By analysing this data you can understand what worked well and what areas could be improved and leverage these insights to create more impactful events.

As event programmes expand to accommodate more audiences and formats, technology plays a central role in enabling organisations to efficiently track the attendee journey and deliver high levels of engagement. Because the volume of data collected at events can be daunting, you should work with a technology partner that can provide digital engagement tools and a fully integrated solution to support planning, marketing communications, event and attendee data capture whilst delivering robust reporting.

AUTHOR: FELICIA ASIEDU, SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER AT CVENT EUROPE