Collecting event feedback is a crucial step for organisers wishing to understand needs, enhance future events and guarantee satisfaction. You can fine-tune your strategy to deliver exceptional experiences by identifying what currently works and what needs improvement.

Our guide will help you maximise the impact of your events by utilising expert-written event survey questions.

Event surveys are questionnaires that gather attendees’ feedback about an event. Event surveys help stakeholders and event sponsors to measure event success and attendee satisfaction and to plan better events for the future. 

The most common event questionnaires are post-event surveys, but you can deploy surveys at any stage of an event.

To effectively capture event feedback, it’s important to ask the right event feedback survey questions. Use the following 55 event survey question examples, arranged by type, to build a comprehensive survey that collects meaningful responses from your attendees: 

Demographic questions are a part of the registration process, and they help organisers and vendors tailor event content to the audience. They are typically quick multiple choice questions, but you should consider letting event attendees skip them. You could use the following five demographic questions:

Which specific aspects of your event delighted attendees? If it was a virtual event, did the virtual platform engage users? Were in-person attendees adequately catered for? Attendee engagement is a contributing factor to future event attendance. Use the following five post-event survey questions to create an engaging event experience:

Session-specific questions help you pinpoint positive and critical feedback about specific aspects of your event. Ask the following five session-specific questions to understand attendee satisfaction:

Content feedback survey questions can help you identify strengths and weaknesses in terms of the content, including its clarity, relevance, engagement and overall impact. They also allow you to assess whether the content meets the needs and expectations of your target audience. Here are five content feedback questions that you could use:

Were any particular speakers popular? Should they appear at future events? To gather feedback, ask your attendees the following five questions:

Logistics questions guide your decision-making about essential aspects such as venue selection, equipment needs, travel arrangements and scheduling. 

By asking the following five logistics questions, you can anticipate any potential challenges and ensure that all the necessary resources are in place and every detail aligns with the event’s objectives:

Engagement survey questions help organisations assess attendees’ satisfaction and overall engagement with the event. Consider asking the following five engagement questions in your next event survey:

The Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score and the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) are widely recognised metrics that are used to assess the customer experience and satisfaction levels.

Together, these tools provide valuable insights into customer perceptions, preferences and loyalty, allowing event organisers to identify areas for improvement and enhance the overall event strategy. Use the following five satisfaction and NPS questions to gauge the success of your event:

Event organisers use multiple choice questions to gather feedback quickly, especially with mid-event surveys where event attendees may be busy or using their phones. Open-ended questions allow you to collect detailed feedback from actual attendees.

For example, if an attendee leaves negative feedback, you can follow up to understand their perspective. Consider including the following five open-ended questions to understand your qualitative feedback:

Don’t leave the attendance of future events down to guesswork. Survey actual event attendees to understand how many will recommend or attend future events. This action will help you plan the logistics for your next event. Ask the following five post-event survey questions to plan future events:

Post-event feedback helps you improve future events. Deploy your post-event survey within 24 hours of the end of the event end so that attendees’ experiences are still fresh in their minds. 

Here are five post-event survey questions that you can ask in order to measure success:

Event survey questions are essential tools that help you measure attendee satisfaction effectively by gathering detailed event feedback. They are useful for providing valuable insights into:

Let’s suppose that your colleagues deemed the event a resounding success, citing high energy and positive interactions throughout the day, but that several social media posts from attendees presented a contrasting view, raising concerns. 

To determine the true sentiment and success of the event, it’s essential to conduct comprehensive post-event surveys:

Pre-event surveys are an effective tool for gathering audience preferences, allowing organisers to understand what attendees are most interested in. They can use them to:

Who is planning to attend your event? It’s important to identify who will be there, who cannot participate and the reasons for their absence. Consider the following:

Events are inherently resource-intensive undertakings, requiring significant time, money and human capital investments. Demonstrating a positive return on investment (ROI) is crucial, as it justifies the resources allocated to these events and builds a compelling business case for securing additional support in future initiatives.

For instance, if a previous event resulted in 10 sales-qualified leads, you could quantify this achievement by detailing the conversion rates from leads to actual sales, which may further illustrate the event’s impact on your overall business revenue goals. Consider the following:

Addressing survey feedback is one of the most crucial steps in the survey research process. Analysis of the feedback collected from participants can provide valuable insights into their preferences, experiences and expectations. 

This understanding empowers you to design more engaging events that align with your audience’s needs. Responding to feedback:

Related reading: 7 highly effective ways to elevate buyer trust

Pre-event surveys help you understand your audience’s expectations and preferences. They are asked before the event to gather key data about demographics, session preferences and logistical needs, ensuring a more engaging and satisfying experience.

Asking the right pre-event survey questions can help you learn what attendees want from the event, e.g. networking, learning or entertainment.

Pre-event questions:

This attendee feedback is invaluable for customising content, choosing relevant speakers and planning activities that resonate with your audience. 

You can quickly gather this information using a general event feedback survey template to expedite the survey design process.

Mid-event surveys provide real-time feedback for immediate improvements. The use of mid-event surveys makes it possible to fine-tune the event as it happens, leading to higher satisfaction levels and a more successful event.

This data helps you enhance the attendee experience during the event. For example, you can use live surveys to monitor engagement and satisfaction for immediate event adjustment. 

Mid-event survey questions:

Post-event surveys help you assess the success of your event and measure attendee satisfaction. This feedback is crucial for identifying areas that you need to change in order to improve future events. For example, you can find out whether the content met expectations, the venue was suitable or the event staff were helpful.

Feedback from post-event surveys also helps to build trust with your attendees. When you act on their suggestions, you are showing that you value their experience. Implementing changes based on feedback increases the likelihood of repeat attendance and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

Post-event survey questions:

A good survey provides you with actionable insights from your respondents. But you won’t obtain valuable feedback if you put your questions together willy-nilly, and this is particularly true for event surveys. Here are five tips for creating better event surveys:

This is a best practice for surveys in general, but it’s especially important when it comes to event surveys. Attendees are doing you a favour by filling out this survey, so you need to be respectful of their time. Try to limit yourself to five questions and stick to the essentials.

Use an open-ended question or two to ask for general feedback or ideas, but limit the rest of your survey (especially the logistics questions) to multiple choice questions with an “other” option. However, event feedback will spare you from these types of fire drills in the future.

If you need to ask more than five questions, use skip logic whenever possible to ensure that respondents only see questions that are relevant to them. This avoids, for example, the situation where you ask them whether they enjoyed the salad provided at lunch time and then learn that they didn’t attend the lunch.

Although you do need to obtain as much event feedback as possible, if you require an answer to every single question, this means that your respondents will have to complete every single question on the page before you can see any of their responses.

Don’t make any of the questions ‘required’ if you can help it. Any data you gather is good, and even if people skip a few questions, you’ll still get the input from their other responses.

The exception to this is questions that use skip logic to randomly select people from different versions of the survey based on their responses. You’ll need to make these questions required, so try to make sure they appear early in the survey. 

While we’re on the subject of ensuring that certain questions appear early in the survey, here’s another best practice: 

For most events, this will be a broad question about attendee satisfaction, such as:

Put the first, broad question on its own page before getting into the specifics. When respondents click ‘next’, SurveyMonkey captures and logs the answer, so even if they lose interest halfway through and don’t complete the survey, you’ll still get data about your most important question.

Put the questions that are hardest to answer last. It’s better to get incomplete data from a wide range of participants who answer your first couple of questions than fully completed event surveys from fewer people.

You’ll also need to create an intuitive flow for your event surveys, grouping questions by topic so that people can understand and respond more quickly and easily. For instance, you might have a few questions about event content on one page and a few questions about logistics on the next.

Save any questions about demographics for the very last page. Although they are less important than your actual event feedback data, they can be useful for filtering and identifying trends.

Don’t simply link to your survey in your post-event email. Instead, embed your first question in the email itself. Email is generally your primary means of communication with attendees, and embedding your survey directly into your email makes it easier for them to answer quickly without following a link. This will increase your response rates and accuracy.

A SurveyMonkey study found a 22% increase in survey opens when the survey’s first question was placed directly in the email. Not only are people more likely to open a survey that teases the first question, but they’re also 20% more likely to finish the entire survey.

People with strong opinions about your event – whether they loved it or hated it – are more likely to take your survey and vent those passionate feelings. But to get really robust insights, you need more than that.

You need more responses and you need more moderate responses. It’s important to include that middle group of people who found your event just okay. You can convert them to superfans if you listen closely to their feedback.

To inspire the less passionate people to respond, structure your survey in a way that makes answering as easy as possible (short, multiple choice, etc.) and make sure you include Likert scale questions (a scale of answer options typically ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) to give moderates a chance to voice their opinions accurately.

Related reading: Sample survey questions and examples

Analysing survey responses helps you turn raw data into actionable insights to improve event experiences. Consider the following tips and suggestions for analysing event survey feedback at every stage:

To analyse pre-event survey data properly, start by segmenting the respondents. Breaking down large data sets into more manageable groups will help you identify any issues or concerns.

You can also identify key concerns across all respondents by using sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to read through and categorise open-ended responses as positive, neutral or negative. The analysis shows the distribution of these categories, helping you understand how your respondents feel.

Finally, allocate resources appropriately according to the responses. You may discover that dietary restrictions apply to most of your attendees. You have the opportunity (and responsibility) to make accommodations that ensure attendee comfort.

Here’s how to deploy and respond to a pre-event survey:

You may find that professionals from large organisations are only able to attend sessions between the hours of 9am and midday. It’s likely, however, that attendees from smaller organisations, i.e. those with between and 50 employees, will have the flexibility to participate in full-day events. Based on your goals and target audience, you will need to find ways to accommodate those attendees from large organisations. 

You can collect data in the form of real-time mid-event feedback by distributing surveys either via QR codes post-presentation to measure session satisfaction or via text messages during breaks to track engagement.

Use simple metrics, such as Likert scale questions, to measure attitudes or opinions on a scale, typically ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

The great thing about mid-event surveys is that you can make changes immediately.

Let’s take a look at mid-event surveys in action:

While a mid-event survey won’t allow you to change the speaker lineup or venue, it will allow you to adjust the temperature, sound quality and seating arrangements. This proactive approach keeps attendees comfortable and engaged.

The use of mid-event surveys makes it possible to fine-tune the event as it happens, leading to higher satisfaction levels and a more successful event.

After an event, use statistical analysis, charts and graphs to make sense of the data.

For example, after an event, cross-tabulation can be used to compare the feedback of different attendee groups to reveal specific areas for improvement. Remember the most important step in data analysis: take action.

Consider this real-world scenario:

After a large industry conference, 75% of attendees expressed satisfaction with the event overall but only 50% were satisfied with the breakout sessions.

By using follow-up questions, the organisers discovered that the session topics were too broad. They used this insight to tailor future sessions to more specific interests, leading to higher satisfaction in subsequent events.

Once you’ve analysed the data, you should act on the insights gained. If attendees report issues with event logistics, such as poor sound quality, prioritise fixing these for future events.

Share the improvements with attendees to show that you value their feedback. Acting on feedback builds trust and encourages higher engagement and satisfaction at your next event.

Effective event surveys at every stage, including pre-event, mid-event and post-event, are crucial for gathering valuable event feedback and improving your event marketing strategy. 

With a wide range of event survey templates, SurveyMonkey makes creating and analysing surveys easy, providing you with the data you need to enhance every aspect of your event, from registration to post-event evaluations. Sign up for free to start building event surveys with SurveyMonkey today.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.