Successful events don’t just attract the most attendees, they do it efficiently. If you want to understand how efficient your event is at growing attendance, you only need one metric: conversion.
Conversion is one of the most undervalued metrics in the event planning industry — but it shouldn’t be. Tracking conversion rates across your marketing efforts tells you which ones are working and where you’re wasting your budget.
Said another way, measuring conversion helps you make more money.
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To help you get started, here’s a primer on how to measure the efficiency of your event promotion strategy.
Track your website conversions
Your registration page is the last thing standing between prospective attendees and paid registrations. Which is why it’s critical for you to know how effective that page is.
To measure how successful your registration process is, you’ll need to pull the total number of website visitors from your web analytics. Compare this to the total number of people who registered for your event.
This is your conversion rate. You can use it to determine how effective your event website is turning interested buyers into committed event-goers.
Tip: Want to sell more tickets without spending more money on promotion? Simplify your registration process. A mobile-optimized, streamlined checkout process can help you increase the number of visitors who register by up to 50%, without increasing your marketing budget.
Track your email conversions
Keeping track of email metrics like open rates and click-through rates can help you know how effective your emails are — and where you can improve.
Compare your own numbers against industry standards. For example, a recent report found that the average open rates for festivals and music events (29%) was much higher than conferences and similar events (23%).
Your open rate shows you how strong your subject line and name of sender are performing. These two important fields convince recipients to open your email (let alone read it), so it’s critical to monitor their performance.
Tip: If your open rates are below industry average, a ways to improve that number is to test different subject lines and different names of senders. Keep a record of what’s performing well and what’s not, so you can use that data to inform your future email campaigns.
Track your digital and social advertising conversions
If you run paid promotions for your event, conversion can also help measure and track your success. In this context, your conversion rate is more commonly referred to as a click-through rate.
Click-through rate (CTR) defines the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it. For example, let’s say for every 1,000 views (or “impressions”) of your ad, you get 10 clicks. That’s a one percent click-through rate, which is above average.
Understanding you CTR will help you avoid wasting precious marketing dollars on ineffective keywords or ads.
Tip: According to a recent benchmark study, anything higher than one percent is considered a high CTR. CTRs lower than that should be removed or optimized.
Take advantage of your event data
Conversion rate defines how often someone who clicks on your ad takes a specific action, such as registering for your event. For example, if 60 out 1,000 people clicking on your ad became paid registrants, that’s a 4% conversion rate — and a pretty good one, too!
Want to learn more about harnessing your event data to supercharge your event? Download Beyond Registration: Using Data to Supercharge Your Event.
