No matter what type of event you’re hosting, post-event surveys are your secret weapon for gathering valuable feedback from event attendees. Post-event surveys are questionnaires or feedback forms that event organizers distribute to attendees after an event. Here’s everything you need to know about using post-event surveys to elevate event experiences and improve attendee satisfaction.
Post-event surveys are crafted to capture attendee experiences, preferences, and opportunities for improvement to enhance your event strategy. What’s more, gathering feedback on a regular basis enables you to make more data-driven decisions for future events.
Whether you’re already sending follow-up surveys after events or gathering feedback through social media, post-event surveys are key to maximizing the overall satisfaction of your events. Here’s what you can get out of them:
It’s not enough to send post-event surveys and hope for meaningful feedback. To optimize your next event, you’ll need to ask effective post-event survey questions to maximize your response rate. Here are some of the best follow-up questions with rating scale with multiple options for attendees to choose from to ask attendees in a post-event survey.
Facilities aren’t an afterthought for attendees, so they shouldn't be an afterthought in your post-event surveys. This is a deceptively crucial question, because it not only gives you an opportunity to improve restroom conditions for your next event — it shows attendees that you pay attention to detail. What’s more, asking this question can lead to more feedback on the logistical aspects of an event, helping organizers choose venues that meet attendees' expectations.
This question helps identify the favorites on the chosen menu and options you can skip next time around. Whether you’re hosting in-person events like corporate conferences, hybrid events like workshops, or virtual webinars, knowing what aspects attendees enjoyed most can help optimize engagement in future events. Consider using open-ended questions in your survey tools to encourage attendees to respond in their own words.
This question does a few things: gives you positive feedback to give back to the staff, brings any potential concerns to your attention, and proves your team cares. Barring catastrophe, you likely won’t get large complaints here - this question is worded specifically to point out seemingly small, easy fixes that could leave a big impression, like long wait times to check-in that could be avoided with an event check-in tool or a lack of parking options that inspire you to add on-site valet.
Especially useful for conferences, this question evaluates the alignment of event content with attendees' preferences, ensuring future events cater to the interests of your target audience. It’s also an effective way to determine whether the presenters, speakers, and event sponsors were relevant to your target audience.
This type of question assesses how convenient you made it for guests to attend. If people had a difficult time finding the venue, you might consider hiring a shuttle service next year or switching locations altogether.
Especially if you’re in corporate events, measuring the perceived value for attendees can help gauge the effectiveness of your activities, networking opportunities, and entertainment, which are key reasons attendees register for corporate events.
Another question that’s handy for corporate or networking events, this type of question can assess the effectiveness of the event’s speakers, helping event planners invite engaging presenters for future events to ensure high-quality content.
This question brings attention to physical comfort, which often goes unnoticed after events. You’d be surprised by the number of event experiences that are sweltering or freezing cold. Especially if everyone is in one room, body heat adds up quickly. Attendees not only see that you pay attention to their comfort, but you care about every aspect of their experience. This also allows organizers to identify and address these issues promptly, leading to improved comfort for attendees in the future.
This measures attendee satisfaction and the likelihood of them endorsing the event. By creating an open-ended question rather than a multiple-choice question, you can understand their reasoning and gain valuable insights, on top of gauging their interest in future events.
Again, this provides an open-ended space for attendees to share thoughts, ideas, and suggestions that other questions might not cover. This type of feedback often leads to innovative and surprising ideas that can help improve your event planning.
Whether you’re hosting a virtual event or a hybrid event, this question can help you understand the effectiveness of your event marketing channels. This way, when you start planning an event next month or next year, you’ll be able to allocate your resources to the most successful strategies—from social media marketing to traditional ad strategies.
Are you ready to take your events to the next level? With Planning Pod’s all-inclusive event management platform, you can create one-time follow up surveys and survey templates using our Forms Builder tool.
Start by opening the Forms Builder tool, which you can use to create forms or surveys and collect unlimited responses. From there, add a form to your event and start listing the questions you want included. Once you click on the add new question item, you’ll be able to choose from different question types, including:
Next, make the survey match your business by including your branding at the top of the form. You can also designate whether or not you want to capture contact information so respondents can return to complete forms later on. If you love the survey you created, save it under survey templates so you can use it in future events.
Once complete, you can create a link to the survey form and send it to event attendees through your preferred communication platform. As attendees respond, their answers automatically funnel into your Planning Pod account where you can begin to track responses.
Once you’ve started collecting survey responses, you can analyze trends, identify strengths, and pinpoint areas for improvement. Did attendees rave about the catering? Did they have concerns about parking? Use these takeaways to make upcoming events even better.
Once you’ve mastered the art of post-event surveys, it’s time to use pre-event surveys to optimize event planning. Think of pre-event surveys as a tool to understand your attendees before the event takes place. They’re a great way to tailor your event to attendee preferences and expectations—from catering preferences to venue choices. Here’s how:
Event surveys are invaluable tools for event organizers. Not only do they provide qualitative data that can shape future events, but they also ensure each event is tailored to meet attendee expectations. By consistently sending well-designed surveys and effectively utilizing attendee feedback, it’s possible to create impactful and memorable experiences for attendees.Ready to optimize your event planning process?