“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

– Henry Ford

Event management is a process of continuous improvement, and with the expected saturation of events in regional Australia in 2022 it is vital that you are offering the best possible experience that meets the ever changing needs of your ideal attendees.

The most effective starting point of the event planning cycle (and most critical part) is not what most people expect it to be.

At rEVENTS Academy, we start with the end, and end with the beginning….clear as mud, right?! 😜

The first step in planning a successful and sustainable event is reviewing your event to find out what’s working and what’s not.

How are you doing in achieving your event’s purpose?

Your annual post event review will help your committee answer questions like:

• How do we deliver a successful event?
• How do we maintain relevant and ahead of the crowd?
• How do we increase attendance?
• How do we sell more tickets?
• How can we improve the visitor experience?
• How do we stop our committee from burning out?

Attracting visitors to events is increasingly competitive!

It is important that you listen to your audience so you can improve your event and continue to remain relevant and appealing.

How to review your event

Assign a coordinator

Assign a committee member to the role of post-event review, and let them focus on that alone.

Develop attendee and stakeholder surveys

Prior to the event, develop surveys for attendees and stakeholders such as sponsors, stallholders, and volunteers.

Think about the critical questions that will help you improve your event. They can be as simple as

• What did you enjoy about the event?
• What do you think could be improved about the event?

Set up the online survey using free software such as SurveyMonkey (which only allows 10 questions and 100 responses in its free plan) or Google Forms on your website. These are much easier than paper surveys because they collate all the answers for you, saving a lot of time!

Organise a valuable sponsored prize for participating in the survey to inspire people to take it.

Distribute your surveys

Have signage at your event requesting attendees take the survey announcing the prize and with a QR code link to the online survey.

Distribute a link to the attendee survey via your social media, post-event wrap-up e-newsletter, to ticket-purchasers, and on your website.

Distribute your stakeholder surveys to the relevant stakeholders by email.

Consider organizing one small team of volunteers just to encourage survey responses during the festival, and to have conversations with attendees about what’s working well at the event, what could be done better, and perhaps what would enhance the visitor experience.

Leave the survey link open for a week after the event.

Gather other feedback and data

Prior to the event set up Google Alerts for keywords such as your event name. This can function as basic media monitoring if you are not paying for a media report.

Have the post-event review coordinator gather information on the budget washup by talking with the Treasurer, looking at the actuals compared to the forecast figures, and having a discussion about what’s happened, where has the committee overspent, where have they underspent, did you reach income targets, etc.

Review the ticket sales’ reports:
Where did ticket sales come from?
What marketing channels worked best to drive ticket sales?

Review the Google Analytics for your website.

Review social media insights and reviews

Call or visit higher level sponsors to discuss what worked from their perspective around your event (or ask the Sponsorship Manager to do this and provide a report).

Hold a community debrief meeting

Host a public community debrief meeting. While these can be a little daunting, they’re extremely valuable. We need our community to be ambassadors of our event, and the only way we can do that is to bring them on the journey. Invite local businesses, community groups and the public to come along and have input. Go open minded, let them speak, and take notes. It’s a valuable process, I promise!

Hold a committee debrief meeting

Host a structured and comprehensive discussion about the event with your committee and volunteers. Prepare a summary of all feedback and data to support robust discussions about what will help your event develop and grow.

Prepare a post-event report

Distill everything into key recommendations to improve the event – that can just be dot points.

Note what needs to be changed for the next event:

• What will make a difference to the event and the visitor experience?
• What will make a difference to the planning cycle?
• What will save the committee time?
• What will improve your systems and processes, and improve your productivity

Note the long-term opportunities. These are the things over the horizon or pretty radical big picture recommendations but take note of them. What will make a difference to the long-term sustainability of your event?

Implement changes

At the first organising meeting for next year’s event, implement the changes in the post-event review report.

Learn more

Listen to our podcast on Post Event Review

Online Learning Module: Post Event Review

This training module consists of 3 lessons (on-demand webinar and templates) and a case study:

1. The significance of a robust post event review process
2. Which tasks need to be undertaken post event
3. Efficient ways to collect data and feedback
4. How Parkes Elvis Festival maintains success

SEE THE MODULE