CUSTOMER STORY
Gen Con delivers epic events for 70K+ attendees
Learn how SurveyMonkey helps the world’s largest and longest-running tabletop gaming convention score with its community.
HEADQUARTERS
Indianapolis, IN
COMPANY SIZE
20
INDUSTRY
Events
USE CASES
OVERVIEW
For over 50 years, Gen Con has been the ultimate, annual convention for the tabletop gaming community. For the 20-person company behind the massive event, delivering on the promise of “The Best Four Days in Gaming™” comes down to more than a roll of the dice. SurveyMonkey helps Gen Con stay deeply connected to a diverse 100,000+ fanbase to make each year’s event bigger and better than the last.
70K+ annual attendees
200K+ survey responses
10+ years as a SurveyMonkey customer
THE CHALLENGE
Knowing every member in a party of thousands
Every year, over 70,000 people flock to Gen Con for four days of nonstop tabletop play, cosplay, exhibitor showcases, community meetups, an on-site block party, and even a football stadium transformed into a giant game room. To engage the community and grow the gaming extravaganza, Gen Con needs detailed insights about what people want and expect—from vendors to sponsors, casual fans to longtime attendees. For the last decade, they’ve turned to SurveyMonkey to tap into event feedback at scale.
“We have some of the most passionate fans on the planet, and they want to be heard,” said Jackie Martin, Director of Marketing. “SurveyMonkey helps us listen at scale to our base, and has even pointed us at new audiences we can tap into so we can keep growing—and keep gaming—for the next 50 years.”
“Without SurveyMonkey, it would be impossible to know exactly what everybody is experiencing at an event of this size. The ROI of using SurveyMonkey is very high—we’re able to gain powerful insights that really shape the future of Gen Con.”
David Hoppe
President
Gen Con
THE ANSWER
Listen, learn, and level up
SurveyMonkey powers Gen Con’s post-event surveys, segmented for attendees, exhibitors, event hosts, and VIGs (Very Important Gamers). The surveys show what the community loved, where to improve, and whether they’d recommend the convention to others. That data is benchmarked year over year, so Gen Con can continuously boost programming and satisfaction.
With help from SurveyMonkey professional services, the Gen Con marketing team also ran a large persona study exploring the behaviors, habits, and preferences of five distinct attendee groups. They identified an opportunity for the event to grow by doubling down on underrepresented groups, including attracting more women and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) attendees to the convention.
“We’ve made a number of business decisions based on insights from SurveyMonkey,” said Gen Con President David Hoppe. “We've moved toward driving more inclusivity and building experiences that speak to our audiences.”
“We want each show to top the last, so we love having a cache of data from our attendees to help us make better decisions. SurveyMonkey helps us make the winning move at exactly the right moment—an invaluable tool for creating a memorable experience for everyone.”
Jackie Martin
Director of Marketing
Gen Con
THE RESULTS
Epic event planning and a growing community
Persona and post-event insights inform every part of Gen Con. The events team uses it to shape programming, operations uses the data to improve venue logistics, customer service ensures a seamless attendee journey, and development improves the online badge-buying and trip-planning experience. Feedback from VIGs influences future loyalty tiers and perks, and Gen Con uses demographic and psychographic data to choose which partnerships, sponsors, and exhibitors to invite each year.
Survey feedback is also helping Gen Con grow. After the persona project, the company launched a grant program to help gaming enthusiasts from historically underrepresented communities attend the event—and applications soared 300% after the first year. Gen Con also revitalized its Womens Gaming Network (which more than doubled its participation in two years) and launched a BIPOC lounge at the event to create even more inclusion and community inside the convention. With these inclusion efforts in place, Gen Con also began advertising directly to women, families, and younger gamers to build the next generation of attendees.
“We call Gen Con The Best Four Days in Gaming™” said Martin. “But it’s our community that makes it great. SurveyMonkey helps us keep them at the table.”
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