Meet your newest conference attendee, Bob. He just registered for your annual conference, EventCon.

This year will be the first time Bob attends EventCon. Obviously you want to glean as much information as you can about Bob: his interests, his feedback on your conference, his deepest desires, etc.

But, statistically speaking, we know Bob may only respond to a handful of questions in the audience surveys he receives. So what are the most important questions to ask the Bobs of the world to get the most useful feedback for improving conference attendee experience? 

Here are our top 2 choices.

Question 1: What are your top reasons for attending this conference?

When do you ask? Registration

When Bob registers, ask him to rank his top three (or four or five) reasons for attending EventCon. You can include pre-loaded reasons, but also give Bob blank fields where he can enter reasons not included on your registration form. 

Why is this question so important? It’s simple. When you understand why people are attending your event, you can decide where to allocate budget and effort to meet their needs. So, if Bob and hundreds of other attendees say their most important objective is networking, you may consider setting aside more budget for technology that facilitates face-to-face meetups, or to coordinate more space for those activities.

Question 2: Did you meet your objectives for attending this conference?

When do you ask? Post event (within 24 hours of the end of your event)

This simple question gives you insight into Bob’s satisfaction with your conference. His goals may have been related to learning, or networking or selling. Either way, you get a gauge of whether Bob (or his manager) will view your conferences as worthy of future time and resources. For more in-depth data, make a follow-up inquiry about which objectives were not met.

Asking these types of questions will give you more insight into who your attendees are and allow you to monitor overall satisfaction with your conference year over year. 

Segmenting responses by conference attendee demographics

If you are also collecting demographic data, such as job titles or roles, you can drill down further into the responses based on your conference’s attendee personas. For example, overall your marks may have not been as high as you’d like, but if you delve deeper, you might find that members of your target segment were very successful in meeting their objectives for your conference. This group may produce the highest number of leads, or another metric you are using to measure your conference’s success, and so their feedback may be more heavily weighted.

Don’t forget about your survey thank you page

Your post-event survey thank you page may be your final chance to communicate with conference attendees. Yes, creating a custom redirect page for your post-event survey is extra work, but you can take advantage of this final touch point by offering a discount for the following year, or to promote another event.

Want more on optimizing your event with data? Download our free guide to optimizing your events with data & evaluations!