After an online event has finished successfully, it is the follow-up that will determine whether it was a success or not, just as with offline events. The event itself is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Because there is no physical limit to the number of participants in an online event, the number of participants who need to be followed up with tends to be large. In order to deal with the increased number of people to follow up with efficiently, we will explain what kind of indicators should be used and how to follow up with them.
__Table of Contents__
– [1. It is important to efficiently approach the increasing number of people who need follow-up](#1-)
– [2. What are the evaluation metrics unique to online events?](#2-)
– [3. The type of data you can obtain depends on the platform](#3-)
– [4. Use metrics unique to online events to provide efficient and effective follow-up](#4-)
## 1. It is important to efficiently approach the increasing number of people who need follow-up
Just like offline events, online events involve sales and inside sales staff making follow-up calls (or emails) to participants or to those who registered but did not attend.
The main difference from offline events is the amount of information available for follow-up. For offline events, the information you can obtain is generally limited to “which sessions they registered for”, “whether they actually attended”, and “survey responses”. For online events, the main feature is that you can measure “how long they watched the sessions”. By measuring the amount of time spent watching and which parts of the session were watched, you can gauge the level of interest and attention of the participants, which can be used to provide more accurate follow-up. Of course, you can also visualize the causal relationship between the session and the “actions taken after watching”, such as revisiting the website, downloading materials, subscribing to email newsletters, and making inquiries.
What is important to remember here is that, because online events have no physical limitations, the number of people you can follow is often greater than for offline events. However, in reality, even if the number of people you can follow increases, it is often difficult to increase the number of staff members you can assign to them. For this reason, it is important to be able to prioritize the leads that are most likely to lead to business and follow them up efficiently. For online events, it is necessary to use metrics that are unique to online events, quickly prioritize the increased list, and follow up with them.
## 2. What are the evaluation metrics unique to online events?
Here, we will introduce the metrics that can be obtained specifically from online events, but it is also necessary to correctly understand the metrics that can be obtained even from offline events and the metrics unique to online events. If this point is unclear, it will be impossible to rank them appropriately, and it will simply lead to an increase in evaluation metrics and confusion, so please be careful.
The following is an example of the data you can obtain from online events. The unique online indicators are marked with “*” at the beginning of the sentence.
– Sessions that attracted the most interest and received the highest ratings
– Sessions that received the lowest ratings and had the fewest views
– Participant data
– Number of participants on the day and number of non-participants
– Companies with the most participants
– Participants’ job titles, positions, and regions
– Session ratings (post-event questionnaire)
– Number of leads from session participants, number of visits to the event website, number of downloads of materials
– *Sessions with the highest number of views
– *Sessions with the most comments and chat
– *Number of videos viewed, completion rate, total viewing time by participant
It is important to consider the priority of this information in advance, and then, after actually obtaining the data, to be able to smoothly move on to ranking the follow-up targets. It is no exaggeration to say that how quickly and accurately this work can be done after the event will determine the success or failure of the event. When it comes to collecting survey responses, it is necessary to make use of the unique features of online surveys. For more information, please see [this article](https://www.brightcove.com/ja/resources/blog/thorough_understanding_of_virtual_events_8).
## 3. The type of data you can obtain depends on the platform
The data you can obtain from an online event depends on the platform you use. It is not realistic to develop a platform from scratch for an event, either in terms of cost or preparation time. Recently, cloud services that specialize in online events have also appeared, and services such as [EventHub](https://eventhub.jp/), [Cvent Virtual Attendee Hub](https://www.cvent.com/en/event-marketing-management/attendee-hub) and [Tailorworks](https://tailorworks.com/) are known. These services come with a package of functions necessary for online events, such as participant management and email distribution functions, virtual booths and matching functions, chat interaction, and online meeting reservation functions. However, the functions available differ depending on the platform, so you need to check what functions you need to consider.
Also, it is important to note that some of these platforms specialize in managing online events, but do not have video distribution systems or do not consider it a strength. In order to link the video viewing data you have acquired to your MA tool, CRM, CDP or your own database, or to achieve high-quality, stable video distribution, we recommend that you also consider introducing a video distribution platform. This linkage will enable you to obtain accurate data not only on participants, but also on their viewing times and which other sessions they have viewed. It will also enable you to prioritize participants clearly and efficiently when following up on the event.
## 4. Using metrics unique to online events, you can conduct efficient and effective follow-up
Online events can provide more data than offline events. In this article, we have introduced ways to make use of the valuable data that is unique to online events. However, while more metrics can lead to greater accuracy, they also increase the risk of complicating the data collection process and causing confusion. Please set metrics according to the purpose of your company’s event and use them to conduct efficient follow-up.
