A guide to essential virtual event survey questions for pre, mid, and post-event stages to help organizers gather valuable feedback and improve future events. Learn More.
The data gathered by asking virtual event survey questions is invaluable, especially when you consider what it can do for any future events you choose to run.
Every event organiser knows that the job isn’t over once the final session takes place. Your event survey questions are where you can ask direct questions to your attendees, and even your exhibitors and sponsors.
The answers they provide will outline what attendees learned, what they like, and any room for improvement. However, knowing what to ask can be somewhat difficult, so iVent has gone to the trouble of picking out 15 virtual event survey questions that you should ask at virtual events.
One of the great things about event survey questions is that organisers can ask them before, during, and after their events. This is why we’ve opted to break this post up into three unique sections:
One More Thing: The event survey questions we’ve included will apply to hybrid events too. This was purposeful as we wanted to be as comprehensive as possible, giving event organisers everything they could need in the same place.
Now, let’s get into it.
Asking questions before your event takes place will help you A) establish a baseline for what your attendees can expect, and B) help you take the necessary steps to ensure that your event accommodates everyone in attendance.
Before we begin, we should mention that the survey questions covered throughout this post will fall into one of three categories:
Key event information has been known to slip through the net during the registration process, which is why you need to be asking this question in your pre-event survey. That event information is very important, especially when it comes to virtual events.
You see, not everyone will have attended this type of event before.
Asking this simple yes or no event survey question will help outline how effective you are at conveying any relevant information. Underneath this question you should include an open field for participants to tell you what information was hard to find should they respond with ‘yes.’
Asking this question now will help you make adjustments which should help you get more people registering to either attend or participate in your virtual events.
Asking this question before your virtual or hybrid events is a great way of separating new attendees from people returning to the event. Of course, you can only really ask this question if you’ve run prior events.
This question, alongside the classic ‘How Did You Hear About This Event?’ will help you understand what is working in terms of your marketing when it comes to driving new interest.
There are several ways to ask this question in an event survey but we’d recommend you make it multiple choice. Doing so will help you get a better understanding of what attendees are expecting.
Here are but a few examples of what you might include in your list of multiple choice options:
Like with the first virtual event survey question mentioned, you need to be giving participants a way to provide specified answers. Some event organisers will present this question with a comment box underneath it.
We’d recommend sticking with the multiple choice option to avoid spending hours going through variations of terms like ‘networking’ and ‘information.’
Special requirements can mean anything from dietary restrictions to physical limitations that could limit who can attend your events. This is something that event organisers looking to run a hybrid virtual event will need to keep in mind during the planning stage.
How organisers tackle these requirements will depend entirely on the size of the event and what budget they have. It’s a lot easier to make changes at a small event compared to one on a much larger scale, which is one of the reasons why virtual events have become so popular as event size makes little difference to a virtual event.
By asking this pre-event question, you get a better understanding of what your attendees are looking forward to. Knowing what they’re interested in could dictate how you choose to market your virtual event moving forward.
For example, if you know that a large group of your attendees are looking forward to networking one-on-one with speakers, you could then promote this more leading up to the event in hope of garnering more interest!
You might be wondering how you can ask survey questions while your virtual event is happening. And there’s a very simple answer to that:
With virtual events, you can do just about anything.
You could ask attendees to fill in your surveys at the end of certain sessions, or send out push notifications to every attendee at the same time while they’re on the platform. Again, the possibilities are endless when you have a quality virtual events platform by your side!
One way to get attendees to fill in this survey could be to offer them an entry into a prize draw. What you choose to offer them as a prize will depend on you. For example, your sponsors might give you something to give away during the event. This is a great incentive!
By asking this question, you could remind and encourage attendees that they can indeed communicate with exhibitor booths. First time attendees might not understand that this is possible, which makes asking this question even more important.
This is but one of the ways you can increase engagement. If you’re interested, we’ve covered how to increase virtual booth engagement at virtual events in another blog, which you can check out here.
Asking this type of question in an event survey is great for working out which sessions work better than others. They also give you a better idea of what your attendees are thinking as the event is occurring.
When asking this question, be sure to give participants one of three answers to choose from:
If you notice a pattern of participants selecting the ‘yet to attend any session’ option, then it might be worth putting out a post on social media highlighting any upcoming sessions. This could encourage attendees to engage in more sessions at your event.
Most virtual events leverage games to give attendees something to interact with to help increase engagement. Again, like with the first question in our list, asking this question could encourage attendees to play these event games for themselves.
Gamification is an important aspect of virtual events generally. But outside of social media mentions, there aren’t a lot of ways to get direct feedback.
Sure you can monitor how long they’ve been playing – or how many of your attendees have participated in these games – but event surveys are easily the best way to track how people feel about them and what could be done differently (if applicable).
Push notifications can feel a lot like spam when you do it too often. By asking this question during the event, you instantly gain a better understanding of how often to share these notifications with attendees.
This is a very similar question to one we’ve just mentioned, only a lot broader. The previous question was on how attendees are finding the sessions whereas this one is geared more towards their overall experience.
As you’ll come to learn in our next section on post virtual event survey questions, monitoring attendee satisfaction is an important metric. How satisfied they are could determine whether or not they attend any future events of yours.
You should want to include this question for a very important reason:
To compare your findings to those you gather after the event, providing you with a complete understanding of how satisfied your attendees were as the event took place in comparison to what they might say once the event is over.
Are you ready to get started?
Post-event survey questions are arguably the most important out of the three categories we’ve looked at, and with good reason. Event organisers will never really know how successful their efforts were until it’s over.
Sure, data and analytics from previous events are helpful, but you can’t predict every outcome with incredible detail, which brings us to the last 5 questions we’d like to draw your attention to.
This question needs to be open-ended to let participants describe that they liked most about the event in as much detail as they like. With this information event organisers can strengthen future events by doubling-down on what seemed to have the most impact.
Alternatively, you could also ask “Which Speaker or Session Did You Find the Most Interesting?” This is a great question to ask when it comes to determining if you want to invite certain individuals back for the next event!
Again, asking this question determines the overall satisfaction rate of your attendees. The answer your attendees provide can be compared to other events, and even the same question you ask as the event is happening, as mentioned above.
Attendee engagement is one of the most notable KPIs at virtual and hybrid events, alongside things like sponsorship ROI, and social media engagement.
90% of virtual event organisers use surveys to measure attendee satisfaction.
– Markletic
Some post event survey questions can be quite broad when it comes to results. So broad in fact, it can make knowing what to do for your next event somewhat difficult.
For example, 76% of attendees might say that they found your virtual or hybrid event to be satisfactory, but that doesn’t give you a lot to go off of in terms of what you can do specifically to make it a better experience all-round.
Which is why you should include this question in your post event survey.
You should always finish your virtual event survey with an open-ended question where participants can leave any feedback they like relating to your event. Like the previous event survey question, this would consist of a blank text box that they can fill in themselves.
Giving them the freedom to provide personalised feedback tells them you care about their experience, and might even highlight positives or drawbacks that you didn’t anticipate previously!
How likely are you to attend any future events is a very common question to ask in a post virtual event survey, and with good reason. The answers you receive from this question will tell you how many people plan to keep tabs on your events.
Understand that how your attendees respond to some of the questions we’ve just gone through will depend entirely on the quality of your virtual event platform.
For example, how easily navigated your platform is will make for a much more enjoyable experience. You’ll see that for yourself should your participants mention this in their responses.
If you’re looking for a virtual event platform capable of ensuring that your events run to the highest quality possible, talk to iVent. Our bespoke all-in-one platform can do just about everything, regardless of what type of event you’re looking to run.
What’s more, with detailed data and analytics, our platform makes gathering responses to your virtual event survey questions that much easier! Our reporting tools provide you with complete transparency, allowing you to monitor information before, during, and after your events.
To find out more about what we can do for you, get in touch and a friendly member of the team will happily respond to any questions you may have.
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