Why evaluation begins before the event

The golden rule of feedback: the sooner, the better. After three days, people remember the highs and the lows. The rest fades from memory. That’s why you should gather feedback within 24 hours of the event—preferably right there on the spot.

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

Start with a short digital survey (no more than 8 questions). Send it out that same evening or the next morning. Use a mix of closed-ended questions (a 1-to-10 satisfaction scale, NPS score) and open-ended questions (“What was the most valuable moment?” and “What would you like to see changed?”). Keep it brief. Every extra question will lower your response rate.

Live feedback on the day itself provides the most candid insights. A feedback wall at the exit where people can stick a Post-it note. A digital poll during the final session. Or: a team member standing by the coat check who approaches three guests and asks, “What are you taking away from this?” Those conversations often yield more than a hundred surveys.

Post-event social media monitoring shows how people talk about it when they aren’t asked. Search for your event name, your hashtag, and your company name. What are people sharing? What moments are they capturing? That will tell you what made an impression.

And don’t forget your own team. Schedule an internal review within 48 hours with everyone who was involved. What went well during the execution, where did we run into problems, and what would we do differently next time? Make a note of those points, because in six months, no one will remember them.

Learn more about promoting your event →

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

The key metrics are: attendance rate (what percentage of your registrants actually attended), NPS score (how likely participants are to recommend your event), session attendance (which program components attracted the most visitors), engagement (number of questions, poll participation, app interactions), and reach (social media impressions, press releases, website traffic after the event).

The attendance rate is your first litmus test. For business events, an attendance rate of 70 to 80 percent is normal. If it’s below 60 percent, there’s something wrong with your invitation strategy or how people perceive the value of your event. If it’s above 85 percent, you’re doing something right.

The NPS score provides you with a comparable metric that 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 business events. Above 50 is excellent.

Session attendance tells you what kind of content resonates with your audience. If the keynote was packed but the workshops were half-empty, you’ll learn something about your target audience’s needs. Track this on a per-session basis, not just as an average.

Link this data to the goals you set in Step 1. If your goal was “knowledge transfer,” look at the scores on the content-related 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 what story you’re looking for.

"Was it worth the investment?" You're bound to hear that question from your management or client. And "it was a success" isn't an answer. You need numbers.

You can calculate an event’s ROI in three steps. First: what were the total costs? Include everything: venue, catering, technology, speakers, staff, marketing, and your team’s travel time. Don’t just count the invoices—count the hours, too.

Second: what were the results? For a commercial event, these are leads, deals, or direct revenue. For an internal event, these are softer metrics: employee satisfaction, understanding of the strategy, and team cohesion. You can quantify these using your survey results.

Three: Compare the return on investment. A client event costing 40,000 euros that generates five new client meetings, two of which result in a 50,000-euro contract, has a measurable ROI of 150 percent. A €25,000 kick-off event that raises employee satisfaction on the “involvement in strategy” metric from 5.2 to 7.8 is harder to express in euros but is certainly measurable.

Not everything can be measured in monetary terms. And it doesn’t have to be. But you can always show what you’ve invested and what it has yielded in terms of your original goal. It’s not an exact science, but it’s a world of difference from simply saying, “It was fun.”

Tip: Create a one-pager with the key figures and share it with your client within a week of the event. This will build trust and support for the next event.

Learn more about budgeting for events →

The event isn’t over when the lights go out. The days that follow will determine whether its impact lingers or fades away.

Send a thank-you email within 24 hours. Don’t just send a generic “thank you for coming.” Make it personal. Mention a specific moment from the program. Share a photo that captures the atmosphere. Include a link to the speaker’s presentation or a summary of the key takeaways. Give people something to look back on.

Share the recap video or photo gallery within a week. The longer you wait, the less impact it will have. After two weeks, the memory has already faded, and a recap video will feel like old news. If shared within three days, it serves as a reminder of the experience.

If your event included a follow-up action, be sure to mention it explicitly. "During the event, we agreed that each team would submit an action plan by April 1. Here is the outline." Without that follow-up, fine words remain just fine words.

For networking events: send a personal message to your five most important guests. No mass emails. Make it truly personal. Refer to the conversation you had with them. Schedule a follow-up meeting if appropriate. That’s where networking events prove their value: not on the night itself, but in the weeks that follow.

And internally: share the results with your team. What went well, what could be improved, and what will we do differently next time? Document these points in an evaluation report that you can refer to at the next event. This way, you’ll build up a knowledge base instead of starting from scratch every time.

Most event agencies stop at the wrap-up. The tent is taken down, the invoice is sent out, and it’s on to the next project. But evaluation and follow-up are exactly what set a good agency apart.

After every event, we provide an evaluation report. It includes hard data (attendance, NPS, session participation), qualitative feedback (what people actually said), and our own observations from the production side (what went well during the event, where the bottlenecks were).

That report isn’t just a formality. It serves as the foundation for the next event. If we see that attendance at breakout sessions was lower than expected, we’ll suggest adjusting the format. If the NPS is high but the open-ended feedback indicates that the catering was disappointing, we’ll know where to make adjustments next time.

We also help with follow-up communications—the thank-you email, the recap video, and sharing presentations. That might sound like small stuff, but these are exactly the things that matter and that tend to get overlooked first in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day work.

Evaluation isn’t the end of your event. It’s the first step toward the next one. And the better you evaluate, the stronger the next event will be.

Please contact us at 085 401 40 14 or hello@live-impact.nl. We’ll help you organize your event and learn from the experience.

Evaluating an event starts with asking the right questions and ends with concrete areas for improvement. We’ll help you with the planning, data collection, and turning insights into action.

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

Seriously Fun.