How to Track the Performance of Online Events: Key Metrics to Use

Online events like webinars, video interviews, podcasts are becoming more and more popular these days. The real-time, visual format makes such events engaging as well as informative for participants and other audiences.

But the one challenge that many marketers face is determining which metrics to track to assess whether the event was a success or not.

Metrics like the number of registrations and attendees are the most popular in this regard. However, these metrics fail to provide a complete picture of whether the event was a success.

Also, which metrics you track depend on the type of event as well.

Wondering which metrics to track for your online event?

Here is a quick guide to help you.

Guide for Measuring Performance of Online Events

You can choose the right metrics by considering these aspects:

I. Paid or Unpaid Event

For paid events, the number of registrations is definitely one of the most important metrics as that is directly linked to your earnings. You should also calculate the return on investment (ROI) for such events as it will be easier to calculate.

For free events, the number of registrations won’t matter as much as the number of attendees and the level of engagement. Also, given that you don’t get any monetary benefits from such events, you don’t need to worry about ROI.

II. Marketing Goals

Another important criterion in metric selection for online events is to identify your reasons for hosting the event.

What it is that you want to achieve? Is it reach, audience engagement, or something else?

Some key metrics to track based on your marketing goal, include: -

Reach - Number of registrations, number of attendees

Engagement - Comments, questions, average viewing time, etc.

Next you need to measure some key metrics to verify if your online even went well.

Key Metrics to Measure Performance of Online Events

Among the key metrics to keep tabs on include:

1. Click-through Rate (CTR)

This will help you not only know the effectiveness of channel and if your audience is well targeted, but also reveals to you the effectiveness of your call-to-action (CTA)and when you can in improve your CTA to drive more traffic to your channel.

2. Number of Registrations

Use this information to optimize your promotional campaigns and landing pages. Without this data, you won’t know the registrant-to-attendee conversion rate.

3. Registrant-to-Attendee Conversion Rate

On average, about 55% of online events registrants convert to attendees. See how your event compares to this average. This will help you figure out if your audience is truly interested in the event of the content/information you have to offer.

More Metrics to Measure the Success of Online Events - Infographic

To find out and learn more about the metrics that you can track to verify your online event was a success, check out this insightful infographic below by FLOW.

Be sure to look into and use all these key metrics carefully, so that you can accurately measure the performance of your online events.