14 Questions to Ask in Your Post-Event Survey

Post-event survey questions and feedback serve as indispensable tools for gaining crucial insights, offering a comprehensive understanding of attendee satisfaction levels, and improving future events. Unlocking valuable insights from post-event surveys hinges on the art of asking the right questions, at precisely the right moment, and with finesse. As with pre-event surveys, you should keep your post-event evaluation survey short and to-the-point—a crucial consideration when aiming to capture attendees’ sentiments. Therefore, success lies in crafting your questions to ensure each one serves a clear purpose and is succinct enough to stimulate active engagement from your audience.

Fourteen sample post-event evaluation questions to get your survey started:

1. How satisfied were you with the event?

• Ask participants to rate their satisfaction with key aspects of their event experience, including:
  -Date
  -Location
  -Speakers
  -Breakout sessions
  -Vendors
  -Catering

Feel free to include space for comments, and ask follow-ups questions about the most important aspects of the event, e.g. the keynote speaker.

2. Do you plan to attend this event in the future, and why?

This question is a great indicator of attendee satisfaction, a good alternative if you want a different angle than the usual “did you like the event?” It’s also a good idea to get an understanding of how many visitors will attend next year, because it’s much easier to encourage repeat attendees than it is to find new ones.

3. How can we improve for next year?

Offer an open-ended request for constructive feedback and give your audience a chance to expand on their feelings, comments and criticisms.

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

This could be a simple rating or a longer response. Either way, it’s a common and effective indicator of attendee satisfaction.

5. How satisfied are you with the quality of the networking opportunities?

Chances are, networking is essential for your attendees. This question helps make sure you have your networking bases covered. The growth of AI in attendee and exhibitor matchmaking has changed the game. It’s important to ensure, if you are using AI, that your attendees’ matches were valuable to them and the systems were working properly.

6. What did you like most about the event?

It’s not all negative! Some positive feedback can be just as useful as constructive criticism.

Pro Tip: Don’t skip the event debrief just because your event went well! The most important meetings come after a successful event. Take what worked, and not only implement it for the next event, but improve it.

7. Which topics would you like to see covered at future conferences?

What speakers and content are you planning for the next event? The post-event survey is a good place to gather ideas and start thinking about the future. This is where you can assess your session ratings, learn the speakers and session tracks your attendees loved the most, and start planning your keynotes, topic ideas, and breakouts for the next event.

8. How did the event influence your perception of the company?

Get a sense of how your event fits into the larger brand or strategic picture. If you’re trying to grow an event community around your brand, this perception will help you understand more about how your organization is seen from your an audience perspective. Did this event influence their perception at all, or was it a positive or negative experience? And then ask if there were any specific moments that helped their perception or broke their perception.

9. What were your favorite experiences or moments?

Build a running list of your audience’s favorites to repeat in the next event. Maybe it was the food — you’ll never know until you ask!

10. What features did you use most in the event app?

Don’t forget to gather feedback on your event app. An app is one of the central touchpoints of your event, and you’ll want to get a sense of how people respond to it.

11. If networking was a priority, which app feature was best for building your network?

As mentioned earlier, networking is crucial, so make sure you optimize your app’s networking features.

12. How was your attendee registration experience?

The user experience doesn’t just begin when they appear onsite – it starts as soon as they find your registration website. Be sure to collect as much feedback as you can so you can streamline this process in the future. Did you not ask as many questions as you should for your internal data collection? Did you ask too many questions and the user felt overwhelmed? Was the onsite badging experience not intuitive? As you test out new features and new ideas, it’s good to keep track of successes.

13. Do you have any other suggestions or feedback you would like to share?

You want to keep your list of questions as short as possible while getting the best feedback. However, in doing so, your questions won’t address everything. This question functions as a catch-all, an opportunity to collect any outstanding feedback from your audience.

When it comes down to it, our clients use post-event surveys to make sure they see a return on their investment and can plan for the future. For example, if the keynote speaker averages low ratings but charged a steep fee, you can bet that person won’t be invited to the next conference. If attendees were generally satisfied with the content, but not over the moon about it, planners can look for ways to keep the content relevant but increase engagement next time.

If you want to gather more immediate, specific feedback on individual sessions or speakers, we recommend sending short surveys during the event, directly after the session, in the event app. For example, if you have a general session in the morning followed by a 15-minute break, send out survey questions asking specifically about the general session as soon as it ends so that people can provide feedback during the break. Most people are happy to answer a couple of questions on the spot, and these immediate responses tend to be more accurate.

Your post-event survey questions should go out as soon as the event is over, while the experience is still fresh. Be aware, however, that people will probably not respond instantly. Attendees are more worried about getting home than they are about answering your questions – you’ll most likely see responses the following day.

14. How Can Stova Help?

You put a lot of hard work into planning an event. It’s understandable if you are ready to stop as soon as the last session ends, but gathering feedback is one of the most important things you can do post-event. Let Stova ease the process by setting up your post-event survey in the app. If you want to discuss event evaluation surveys in greater detail, schedule a chat! Stova works with you to create and tailor surveys that collect everything you need.