Whether you’re a first-time event manager or you’ve been putting on events for years, creating an event report is a vital part of the attendee engagement process. But what goes into an event report, and how do you create one that’s both accurate and informative? This blog post will walk you through the essentials of creating a compelling event report. We’ll also share tips for making the most of your post-event analysis and user engagement metrics. Read on to learn more!
How to Create an Event Report
An event report doesn’t have to be a complicated document; in fact, these reports can often be short and straightforward. Event reports are primarily used for internal purposes (i.e., management of the events team), but they may also be shared with stakeholders and sponsors, depending on your organization’s reporting needs.
To create a solid event report, make sure you start by asking yourself these three questions:
What Is the Goal of Your Event?
While it might seem obvious that an event’s main goal should be to “have a successful meeting,” there are several different types of events, each with its objectives.
For example, an event like a training seminar may be intended to build knowledge and skills among new employees or members of your organization. Meanwhile, events like galas or fundraisers are often designed to increase support for the company’s mission and activities. Depending on the type of event you’re planning (and writing about), your goals might change as well. So think carefully about what you want your event to achieve before moving ahead.
How Will This Goal Be Measured?
After you’ve thought about your event’s goal, the next step is to determine how you’ll know whether it met its objectives. For example, if your training seminar increased participant knowledge by 10 percent, you’d probably measure success based on this outcome. However, if your fundraiser raised $50,000 in donations instead of the $75,000 you were hoping for, things might not have gone according to plan.
How Did We Achieve Our Goal?
The third step is to figure out how you and your team could meet (or not meet) your event’s goal. For example, if attendance at the training seminar was low because of an unexpected snowstorm, revising the date or location might be a solution. Also, maybe you’d use social media more successfully next time around to draw in more attendees for the fundraiser.
How to Structure Your Event Report
Once you’ve answered these three questions, your report must keep these critical elements in mind:
A Brief Intro
Even though this section may be short and sweet, starting with a brief but compelling introduction can help readers understand why they’re reading this report as well as what they should take away from it.
The Goal
You don’t need to go into great detail about your event’s goal – chances are, you already have a good idea of what that was going in! But providing a brief overview can help bring readers up to speed if they haven’t been involved in the planning process before.
The Execution
In this part of your report, discuss how you and your team met (or didn’t meet) your goals for the event – whether those goals were related to attendance, sponsorship revenue, marketing impact, or something else entirely. You can also provide specific examples and other insights that support your conclusions.
Concluding Thoughts
Having an opportunity to review and reflect on what went well and what you’d do differently next time is always a good idea. So if there were aspects of your event that you’re particularly proud of or other things that didn’t go as planned but might inform future events, this is the place to mention them!
The Next Steps
At the end of your report, consider briefly letting readers know what’s coming next for your team – whether those are new events to improve on past successes or areas for further exploration and conversation. Alternatively, if it’s been a while since you wrote your last event report, you can provide an overview of recent accomplishments instead.
Zoom Attendee Report
The first step in your event reporting process is to sort through your attendee reports. If you used Zoom for live events, the assessment tool has many benefits that make it an excellent choice for post-event analysis. For example, you can easily export a list of attendees who rated their experience below average or did not provide feedback at all. In addition, this makes it easy to reach out directly to any members of your audience who may have had difficulty using the event technology.
If you haven’t tried creating an event report with Zoom yet, now’s the time! We’ve made it straightforward by pre-filling several areas in our survey template so that you don’t need to spend hours typing in basic information like the date and location of your event-it’s all pre-filled for you. Instead, just make sure to customize the event title and description based on your specific event, then choose which tools you used at the event (website, live broadcast, etc.). Lastly, add any additional comments that will help us identify areas of improvement for future events.
GoToWebinar Attendee Report
If you used GoToWebinar for your event, your attendee report would include a list of participants who have opted in to receive follow-up emails. You’ll notice that the “Event Title” field is pre-filled with the name of your webinar, but you can always change this to reflect your specific event name. This information is also helpful if you’re using an email service provider like MailChimp or Constant Contact-you can use the participant list to send out personalized emails to everyone who attended.
Many webinar providers offer an easy way to export lists of registrants and attendees provided by email address, last name, company name, etc., so make sure to check if yours does too! If not, don’t hesitate to contact us by clicking on the green help icon within your event dashboard. Our team is happy to provide you with additional guidance on creating an effective post-event report for your webinar.
Webex Attendee Report
The Webex Attendee List is an excellent tool for evaluating your audience because you can see how many people viewed your event, joined the meeting late or early, if anyone left during the session, and more, all in one place.
You can export this list any time to use however you wish (perhaps by segmenting the list based on how active each participant was throughout the webinar). You’ll also notice that this report will show if attendees are receiving emails from you through Webex Connect. If someone has opted out of email notifications at their company, they won’t appear on this list. However, they should still be listed here if they didn’t receive an invitation to join your webinar because of a domain restriction.
Google Meet Attendee Report
Your Google Meet attendee report will show the total number of participants, how many watched the live stream, and how many viewed it later. You can also find comments about your webinar here. If you’re using Google Analytics for more detailed information on who’s attending your meetings, then this is linked here too.
If you want to export a list of registrants or attendees, just click on the green “Export” button below the attendee list section. You’ll see an option to download a CSV file containing everyone’s names and email addresses.
Microsoft Teams Attendance Report
If you used Microsoft Teams for your event, the attendee report would include a list of participants who have opted in to receive follow-up emails. You’ll notice that the “Event Title” field is pre-filled with the name of your meeting as entered by you or another administrator who created it, but you can always change this to reflect your specific event name.
The Microsoft Teams attendee list provides a feature to export a CSV file that contains everyone’s name and email address up to 7 days after the event has ended. Please note that there is a limit of 500 attendees displayed per view. Suppose someone couldn’t join due to domain restrictions. In that case, they’ll be listed here along with who invited them and when they joined the meeting from their end-both valuable pieces of information if you’re trying to narrow down which registrants or attendees may need follow-up emails.
