Attendee Engagement: Ideas and Metrics

As a conference organizer, you can usually tell whether a room is listening or taking part, but you cannot plan next year’s program or answer a sponsor with that impression alone. Attendee engagement is how much people take part in your event, from attending the sessions they chose and asking questions to meeting other attendees, visiting exhibitors and answering your evaluations.

Once you measure it, you know which sessions filled, which booths got visitors and who answered the evaluation. You can then decide what to repeat next year and show your sponsors what the event gave them.

Key takeaways

• Engagement happens with sessions, with other attendees and with exhibitors, and it carries on after the event through surveys, follow-up and re-registration.
• You can measure it with session attendance, app activity, evaluation results and, where exhibitors use a lead retrieval app, booth scans.
• An engagement idea is worth repeating when one of those measures shows its effect.
• Booth scans and session attendance are also the numbers sponsors and exhibitors want to see.

What is attendee engagement?

Attendee engagement is what people do at your event beyond being present, and it is the part of attending that you can measure and improve. An attendee who sits through the keynote counts toward your attendance. One who also asks the speaker a question, visits an exhibitor and rates the session afterward is engaged, and you can count or ask about each of those actions.

The four kinds of engagement to plan for

Engagement takes four forms, and each one needs its own ideas and its own measure:

• Attendees engage with sessions and speakers when they attend, stay to the end, ask questions and rate the session.
• They engage with each other through conversations, messages and meetings, in the room and in your event app.
• They engage with exhibitors and sponsors through booth visits, product demonstrations and appointments.
• They engage with the event after it ends when they answer your post-event survey, use the materials and register again.

Engagement before, during and after the event

Engagement starts as soon as people register. Registrants who can browse the program, choose their sessions and talk to each other arrive with a plan and a few people to look for. During the event, a mix of talks, workshops, demonstrations and time on the exhibit floor keeps them taking part. After the event, give attendees a way to discuss what happened and suggest ideas for next year, so they stay invested in your event.

How to measure attendee engagement

You measure attendee engagement by counting what people do at each stage. Most conferences can collect these measures, some from records you already keep and some with a scan or an app:

• Session attendance against session sign-ups, which tells you whether people came to the sessions they chose.
• Time in sessions, for sessions where attendees sign out as well as in.
• App sign-ins and activity, such as bookmarked sessions, posts and messages.
• Booth scans and appointments with exhibitors. Scans count the visitors exhibitors chose to scan, so they undercount casual visits.
• Evaluation responses, both the number of attendees who answered and the scores they gave.
• Re-registration for your next event.

Compare attendance with sign-ups as well as with room size, because a session that filled its room may still have lost many of the people who signed up for it. Without advance sign-ups, compare each session with the same slot last year. Re-registration is the slowest measure, and budgets and travel approval move it as much as your program does. For an earlier read, some events open next year’s registration on site.

Measuring without software

Most of these measures need nothing more than a few volunteers. One with a tally counter can count each room, and a card that exhibitors stamp shows which booths each attendee visited. Paper evaluations also work, as long as you hand them out before people leave the room. Tell attendees at registration what you record and why, especially if you scan badges, because session scans show where each person went during the day.

Measuring online sessions

Online sessions are easier to measure than in-person ones, because streaming platforms usually record who joined and how long each person stayed. If viewers leave at about the same point in several sessions, add a poll or a discussion question just before that point. Most platforms also show a live viewer count, so a moderator who sees people leaving can ask the speaker to take questions.

Ideas to increase attendee engagement

Start with the kind of engagement your last evaluations or numbers showed to be weakest, and choose ideas aimed at it. The measures above will then tell you which ones to keep.

Use the phones attendees already carry

An event app puts the program, speaker details, exhibitor listings and live updates on each attendee’s phone, so people can plan their day without a printed schedule. Their bookmarks, posts and messages also leave a record you can read later.

Gamification, which means points, challenges and prizes for taking part, works best when a challenge takes people somewhere useful. A scavenger hunt that requires a stop at each sponsor’s booth moves attendees around the exhibit hall, and a quiz on session content brings them back into the sessions. Booth scans or stamped cards then count the visits the hunt produced.

If you are comparing event apps for their engagement features, our comparison of Whova alternatives lists what each platform includes for attendee interaction and what costs extra.

Plan content people take part in

Sessions are where attendees spend most of their time, so most of your engagement happens in the program. When you build the program, these choices decide how much people join in:

• A varied speaker lineup that mixes well-known names with newer voices from different backgrounds and career stages.
• Interactive sessions, with audience polls, questions from the floor or small-group discussion built into the time slot.
• Different formats, such as panel discussions, fireside chats and lightning talks, so the day does not run as one lecture after another.

If you run a call for proposals, ask each presenter how they will make their session interactive. The question gets speakers planning for participation while they write the session, and it gives your reviewers one more way to compare proposals. Add a question to the session evaluation about how much attendees joined in, and the scores show which formats worked.

Make networking easy

Networking needs the same planning as the program, because attendees who know nobody rarely approach a stranger unless they have an excuse to. Put a networking lounge away from session noise, with seating, charging points and refreshments, so attendees have a place to meet. A short icebreaker helps too, but choose one that suits your audience, because some people find icebreakers awkward.

You can also ask about role and interests when people register, then introduce people who gave similar answers by email before the event starts. Ask permission before you share anything an attendee tells you. A checkbox on the registration form lets people choose to show their interests or a social media profile to other attendees.

Messages and meetings booked in your event app show whether people connected. They do not capture hallway conversations, so ask about useful contacts in your post-event survey as well.

Add hands-on and immersive formats

Hands-on formats let attendees do something instead of only listening, and people who made or tried something have more to tell colleagues afterward. Which ones suit you depends on your budget and your audience:

• Workshops and demonstrations where attendees practice a skill or try a product.
• Experience zones, such as a tasting area, live music or an art installation, placed where attendees already pass.
• A virtual exhibit hall, where attendees browse exhibitors’ videos and product materials online, as an alternative to the physical hall or alongside it.

Sign-ups and attendance against capacity show how much demand a workshop has. For zones and exhibit halls, ask in your post-event survey which ones attendees would want again.

Keep the conversation going after the event

After the event, your aim is to stay in contact with attendees until registration opens again. Start with a short post-event survey on the overall experience, favorite sessions, what to improve and what attendees want next time. Keep it easy to find, and consider a prize draw for everyone who completes it.

Session recordings, articles or a webinar on the event’s topics keep attendees coming back to you between events. Speakers may provide this content in exchange for a perk or the chance to promote their work. An online group for past attendees keeps them talking to each other all year, so they arrive at the next event already knowing someone.

Follow-up takes staff time, and your team may not have it to spare. Past attendees who enjoyed the event may be willing to volunteer, for example at the registration desk or as session hosts, and they can help you recruit next year’s audience. Whatever you add at this stage, survey response rates and re-registration are the two measures to watch.

Measuring engagement with Conference Tracker

Conference Tracker is our event management software. It records session sign-ups when attendees register online and attendance at each session, and where a session requires a sign-out it also records how long each attendee stayed. Two of our apps add the rest, with Conference Leads recording booth scans and Conference Attendee recording app activity and evaluations.

Session attendance

Staff scan badges at the door, or attendees scan the session’s QR code in the Conference Attendee app, so you can see which sessions drew a crowd. If a session has no sign-out, Conference Tracker records only when people arrive.

The Texas Emergency Management Conference ran on Conference Tracker with 2,623 attendees across 186 sessions. Its 22 rented scanners recorded 7,611 session sign-ins, and attendees downloaded their own attendance certificates afterward.

Booth scans

Conference Leads is our lead retrieval app for exhibitors. Exhibitors use it at their booth to scan attendee badges and save each attendee’s contact details. Exhibitors need a license to scan, which they buy through your exhibitor registration in Conference Tracker or which you can buy for them. You can see every lead those exhibitors capture and report the scan counts to each exhibitor and sponsor. You can also draw prize winners at random from the attendees exhibitors scanned, so a booth challenge needs no entry forms.

App activity and evaluations

The Conference Attendee app is our app for attendees. They download it for iPhone or Android, and you switch it on in your Conference Tracker account. Points for social actions on the app’s social feed, such as posting or liking a comment, add up to an Engagement Score on each attendee’s profile. A social activity report then shows the sessions attendees interacted with most, bookmarks per session and the most active attendees. Conference Tracker also lets attendees message each other privately and book one-to-one meetings, and attendees request appointments with exhibitors from the app.

Because the score counts social activity only, read it alongside attendance rather than in place of it. Our page on Conference Tracker’s attendee engagement tools covers the scoring and the social feed in more detail.

Attendees answer the session evaluation in the app as soon as a session ends. The evaluation report averages the scores for each question, so you can compare sessions and speakers. A detailed report filtered by presenter lets you hand each speaker their own scores and comments. Paper evaluations do not reach the report on their own, so count them separately.

Session attendance, booth scans and evaluation scores are what sponsors and program committees usually want to see. Request a Conference Tracker demo to see those reports before your next event.

Check-in, maps and help for attendees

Every minute an attendee spends in a queue or looking for a room is a minute out of the sessions, so the practical side of your event affects engagement too. Conference Tracker and the Conference Attendee app take most of that effort off attendees:

• Badges go out by email before the event, together with instructions for checking in without staff.
• At the door, attendees check themselves in at a browser-based station with their email address and last name, and anyone who forgot the printed badge can show it on a phone.
• The app carries venue maps and floor plans with rooms and booths marked. It also holds directions, local weather and your announcements.
• Push notifications go to everyone using the app, to one attendee or only to the attendees of one session. Attendees without the app can get the same message by email or text.
• A built-in help desk takes attendees’ support tickets and alerts your staff by push notification and email.
• Attendees download their own certificate of attendance and CEU (continuing education unit) report, and they can follow their attendance and credits in the app as the event runs.

When attendees check in, Conference Tracker can also text them an invitation to download the app, because many already have a phone in hand at that moment. Conference Tracker’s live dashboard shows help desk tickets as they arrive, so you can see where attendees get stuck and fix it while the event is still running.

Make engagement accessible

Every tool and format you add should work for all of your attendees, so check these points before you add one:

• The event app runs on both iPhone and Android phones, or a browser version covers attendees who cannot install it.
• Anything attendees do in the app, such as checking in or answering an evaluation, can also be done without it, for example at a check-in desk or on a paper form.
• Every session room, workshop and experience zone has a step-free route and seating for attendees who need it.
• Streamed sessions carry captions, and slides or handouts are shared in advance for attendees who follow at their own pace.

Count the alternatives in your measures too, or attendees who cannot use the app will look disengaged in your numbers even though they took part another way. With Conference Tracker, staff can sign anyone in by hand, and its attendee web portal covers part of what the app does, such as the virtual exhibit hall. The social feed and venue maps are in the app only, so post key announcements and printed maps where everyone can see them.

Test one idea at a time

Choose two measures before you choose any ideas. Session attendance and evaluation scores are a good pair, because most events can count attendance at the door and collect scores with a short evaluation.

Then test each new idea against the measure that can show it. A change that works before people choose a session, such as a clearer session description, shows up in sign-ups and attendance. One inside a session, such as an audience Q&A, shows up in that session’s evaluation scores. These steps keep either kind of test fair:

1. Pick pairs of sessions likely to draw a similar audience, such as two sessions in the same track on the same day, in rooms of similar size.
2. Use the idea in one session of each pair and leave the other as it is.
3. Compare that measure between the two sessions of each pair after the event.
4. Run the test again at your next event before you make the idea standard, because a small session gives you few evaluations and one difference can be chance.

If your program is too small to pair sessions, use the idea across the whole event and compare the scores with last year’s.