Event management survey software

Whether you’re planning a tradeshow or an endurance race, we have the tools you need to manage events of every size and type. Use surveys both before and after events to help you prepare, then improve the next event by understanding what worked and what didn’t. Did people feel the event was well organized? Was the staff helpful? How are vendors working together? With the right event feedback and an event checklist, you’ll know everything you need to make each event a success.

SurveyMonkey was built for organizations that rely on multiple people to help coordinate and run projects. Give everyone on your team access to our powerful survey platform, and make it easy to keep a handle on your users and data. We even have tons of event-planning survey templates to help you get started in minutes.

Planning is arguably the most important aspect of a successful event. Get started with an event planning survey to gather RSVPs and information from attendees, such as topics of interest, dietary restrictions, questions, communication preferences, and more.

Related reading: How to create effective conference registration forms

Great events don’t happen at the spur of the moment. Depending on your event, you likely need several months to plan for it. Starting early increases your chances of booking the venue you want, acquiring vendors, and ensuring access to everything you need for a successful event.

Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals and objectives. SMART goals give your event direction and help set your event up for success. These goals will help direct your decisions on everything from the venue to sponsors and the guest list.

Whether you’re planning a corporate retreat, a wedding, or even a small meeting, an agenda is helpful to keep things on time, organized, and running smoothly. It will help you avoid wasting time. 

For example, if you want to run effective meetings, a clear, brief agenda with a list of topics, objectives, and background information is necessary. It will keep discussions on topic and let participants know exactly what is being discussed.

We have busy lives. Scheduling a meeting or an event can be a real struggle. Whether you’re scheduling an in-person meeting or a virtual event, an online schedule poll will make the process much easier. Just create a quick survey to find out what days and times work best. Collect your responses and schedule your event on the day that most attendees are available. 

Keep in touch with vendors, especially as you get close to your event date. You may need to make changes that will alter their plans for your event, so ensure that you update them and check in periodically.

You should also keep in touch with attendees. Periodic reminders via email newsletters or through company intranets will help remind those who have committed of the particulars.

Get your attendees excited about your event. Build anticipation and entice potential attendees to RSVP. Use social media, online advertising, and creative promotional products like magnets, pens, or stickers with event details on them.

Virtual events have increased drastically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it seems that they will continue in popularity for the foreseeable future. Ensure that every participant has access to the technology they need to effectively participate in the event.

In-person events that require technology such as live translation, QR codes, digital photo booths, touchless check-in, and more, should be prepared in advance and tested prior to the event. Technology experiences are designed to be seamless, so avoid any issues by testing again before your event.

Once your event is finished, you don’t have to just hope your attendees enjoyed it. Ask them directly with a post-event survey. 

This survey will:

Don’t just get feedback from attendees. Ask your vendors, staff, and volunteers for their insights as well.
It’s easy to get feedback with our general event feedback survey template. It’s fully customizable, so you can add your logo, change or add questions, and make it your own.

Are you a corporate event planner for conferences? Do you put on weddings? Or plan fundraisers and nonprofit events? Here are a few ways to use surveys to make event management a snap:

Find out who will be attending the event and collect RSVPs. To make sure you have enough staff and volunteers, food, and room for everyone, make sure you get an accurate headcount. Ask for names, contact information, preferences for food, programming, and other accommodations. By using online survey software, you can get responses right into a spreadsheet and keep everything organized..

Learn how your marketing efforts are working. Event marketing is a costly expense. Make sure you’re using your dollars wisely by asking people how they learned about the event, and find out their preferences for receiving future communications.

Learn what people hope to get out of the event. If you have an event that features speakers, or is educational in nature, tailor the programming to meet attendees’ interests. Ask people what they expect to learn, and find out if there are specific topics they’d like to have covered.

Develop content and make adjustments on the fly. Run surveys during your event to see what people think. In a conference setting, sharing statistics around opinions and attitudes can be a great way to make the experience more engaging and perhaps help improve customer relations.

Improve future events by sending out follow-up surveys. After all of the work you put into coordinating the event, see what people thought of it so that you can improve future planning efforts. Send out follow-up surveys and learn if people would recommend the event, if they found the staff to be helpful, and if the event was a good value for the cost.

Keep your staff engaged. An event is only as good as the vendors and staff who run it. A post-event survey for your vendors and staff can help identify ways to improve and potential identify problem areas.

If you want to run successful events of any size, personal or professional, surveys are incredibly useful. You may not think about weddings and conferences as having many similarities, but surveys can play an important role in both types of events.

Regardless of the size of your conference, you’re investing time and money into making it a success, as evidenced by attendance, attendee satisfaction, and attainment of goals. Using surveys before, during, and after your conference will yield important information that will guide your planning for the next conference.

Pre-event surveys serve several purposes and help you get to know your audience. Collect demographics, interests, and preferences during your planning phase to confirm your presenters. Later—but still before the conference—surveys act as RSVPs, providing you with attendance numbers to plan everything from the venue to food to promotional items. 

During the conference, a quick survey will quantify attendee satisfaction and provide feedback for staff, speakers, refreshments, and technology. If there are issues, they can be rectified before the second half of the conference.

An example of this would be receiving feedback that the sound is distorted during a presentation. Your tech team can troubleshoot and correct any issues so that the remaining sessions don’t have struggles with sound.

Post-conference feedback provides you with knowledge to use for your next conference. Find out how well you met your goals, what sessions were successful, and where you can improve. Conferences are a semi-regular occurrence, so gathering feedback and using it to inform your next conference is invaluable.

Feedback for trade shows has always been important. You need to know what customers think about your products, salespeople, and exhibits. Now that many of these events are being held virtually, it’s more important than ever to collect information from attendees.

Ask attendees about their experiences with the virtual tradeshow platform, virtual booth, shopping cart, webinars, presentations, etc. Based on feedback, you can determine how you’ll handle the next virtual or in-person trade show.

Are your meetings adding value to your company and team? They may be in-person, virtual, or a combination of both, but one thing holds true for all of them—they need to be effective for employees to be invested in them.

To ensure a positive meeting impact, ask participants for their input. Find out if they are satisfied with the meetings starting on time, staying on track, achieving objectives, etc. Surveys can also help determine whether meetings are impacting the daily workflow. Find out the right number of meetings that work for your team to increase employee satisfaction, productivity, profitability, and positive use of time.

You may think weddings aren’t quite like the other events we’ve been discussing, and you’re right. They are different. But they can still benefit from using surveys.

Online surveys are a great way to gather RSVP information, dietary restrictions, meal choices, ranking options for venues, music requests, and any other aspects of your wedding you need or want information about.

One of the most useful aspects of surveys in wedding planning is that all of the responses are collected online and can be sorted in multiple ways. Can’t remember if your aunt requested anything in particular? If you’ve asked about special requests on your pre-wedding survey, you can take a look at your data dashboard and avoid guest complaints!

From planning a family reunion to scheduling a major networking event for your industry, make event surveys a major part of your process to ensure a successful event.

We offer a range of surveys aimed at collecting feedback before and after events. All of our survey templates are written by professional survey methodologists and are expert-certified, so you can feel confident that you are asking the right types of questions. The arrangement of the questions is designed to be clear and straightforward for people taking the surveys. Mix and match from our Question Bank – use our complete, pre-written templates. Our survey software also makes is simple to write custom questions and customize templates.

Our event management survey templates include:

If you want to gather useful information from your event surveys, you need to construct good event survey questions. As you plan each question, keep your overall event goals in mind so that the data you collect is relevant and can be used to provide insights into your event. Collected correctly, this data will act as a guide for planning future events.

Pre-event surveys not only remind people that they’ve signed up for an event, but they can also generate enthusiasm, spur word-of-mouth discussion, and provide you with tips for what to expect on the day of the event.

Ask your participants pre-event questions, such as:

Collect both qualitative and quantitative data by using a variety of question types. Closed questions give respondents pre-populated answer choices. Open questions provide a text box for answers to be given in the respondent’s own words.

Closed question example: 

Please rank the following aspects of the upcoming conference based on how important they are to you.

Open question example:

How did you hear about the event?

Keep participants’ interest piqued with a variety of question types on your surveys. Too many of one type of question type can result in survey fatigue, boredom, and abandonment of the survey. We talked about open and closed-ended questions, but there are many more question types you can use to ensure you get the information you want most effectively.

Commonly used question types include multiple choice, rating scale, Likert scale, and ranking questions.

If you prefer to write your own event feedback surveys (or if you want to add questions to our pre-written surveys), make sure to read our tips for writing great survey questions. We also have helpful guides for creating and conducting surveys. We also recommend the following: