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Encore’s senior vice president of communications and industry relations Amanda Armstrong recommends continually taking the temperature of attendees throughout the event journey.
According to the CEMA Events Maturity Benchmarking Study, published late last year, “a stronger focus on Return on Experience may help events teams drive stronger ROI and event success narratives.” However, ROE remains a sticky spot for organizations to lean into, possibly due to challenges around measurement.
Is there a right time to capture audience feedback? Ideally, according to Community Factory founder Liz Lathan, it would be at various points throughout the event — starting with registration. Prompt attendees to share the challenge they’re there to solve, then check in with them throughout their experience. Ask if they are “getting the solution that they were hoping for,” Lathan said, “so you can get that satisfaction score out of catching those things.” To better understand emotional engagement, Lathan said her former event agency Haute, which completed a year-long study on Return on Emotion, used a sliding scale to ask attendees if they felt more hopeful or hopeless, active or passive, adventurous or hesitant. They found an average score of at least 8.6 out of 10 to be a good indication that an attendee is likely to return for a future event.
Encore Senior Vice President of Communications and Industry Relations Amanda Armstrong also is a fan of continually taking the temperature of attendees throughout the event journey. (See Encore’s recommended sample questions, below.) Using a live polling app to ask attendees how they’re feeling about the session they’re currently in, she said, creates an opportunity to see how engaged they are and if it’s necessary to pivot, in real time. “It takes a little bit of a dynamic speaker who can take that feedback,” Armstrong said, “and then be like, ‘Alright, instead of watching the video, we’re going to stand up and do a little networking or brainstorming.’”
Kara Wooten, director of global partner engagements at Dell Technologies, told the audience during the Convening Leaders 2025 session, “Shaping the Future of Events: Lessons from Leading Organizations,” that her team has swapped post-event surveys for in-the-moment feedback, explaining how that would work for their own session: “I would want to go stand outside and have you guys give feedback — did we deliver on what we said this session was going to be about? How would you rate all of us? Are we meeting your expectations? What could we do better?” Wooten also emphasized the importance of “knowing your data” and “owning it, whatever that happens to be.” All stakeholders and team members, she added, “should feel that it’s valuable to have data and metrics.”
Measuring ROE: Sample Questions
Scale-based questions — On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied were you with the event’s networking opportunities?
Open-ended questions — What did you find most valuable about the event? What was the most valuable thing you’re going to take back to your team? How did you feel about the event beforehand, and how do you feel about it after?
Goal-specific questions — Did this event meet your expectations for professional growth? Did this session meet your learning objectives?
Source: Encore and PCMA Convening Leaders 2025 session, “Shaping the Future of Events: Lessons from Leading Organizations”
ROE: What to Measure?
Metrics to consider measuring include:
Attendee Experience
- Satisfaction levels of participants
- Feedback on event activities and content
Networking Success
- Number of new connections made
- Quality of networking opportunities
Educational Impact
- Effectiveness of educational sessions
- Knowledge gained by attendees
Participant Engagement
- Interaction levels during the event
- Attendee participation in discussions and activities
Message Retention
- Surveys/post-event evaluations
- Interaction levels during sessions
Brand Perception
- How the event enhances the brand’s image
- Perception of the organization’s values
Community Building
- Growth and engagement of the event community
- Long-term relationships fostered
Source: Encore
Jennifer N. Dienst is senior editor at Convene.
Everything You Need
to Know About ROE
This article and those listed below are part of Convene’s April 2025 issue cover and CMP Series story package.