Should Your Marketing Team Use NPS to Measure Event Engagement?

For years, organizations have been using NPS (Net Promoter Score) to measure customer sentiment and experience. NPS measures the likelihood a customer would recommend an organization, brand, product, or service to others, and then this score can be translated into a reading of the customer’s experience.

For marketing teams, capturing event attendee engagement and/or experience has traditionally been challenging to achieve. There are so many different attendee touchpoints throughout an event that pinpointing which one translates closest to ‘attendee engagement’ isn’t as easy as one would hope. This is why some event marketing teams are turning to the tried-and-true metric of NPS to capture and measure event engagement.

How to measure NPS

Moving forward, we’ll be looking at NPS in relation to marketing events. So, the one question that you will have to ask your event attendees is:

“On a scale of 0 – 10, how likely are you to recommend [this event] to a friend or peer?”

Asking this one straightforward question gives your attendees the chance to reflect on their time spent at your event (Did they enjoy themselves? Did they learn anything?), any costs associated with the event (Was it worth it?), and their overall experience (Would someone I know enjoy this?).

Once you have a pile of answers in hand, you can separate your responses into three main categories:

9 – 10 = promoters. These are people who enjoyed your event and would gladly recommend it to a peer.

7 – 8 = passives. These attendees probably enjoyed their time at your event but really wouldn’t recommend it to someone else.

0 – 6 = detractors. These people did not enjoy their time and would not recommend your event.

To calculate your actual NPS, the formula = % promoters minus % detractors. Looking at the difference in the percentage of promotors and percentage of detractors from across your entire attendee population will give you your NPS

‍Should you use NPS to measure event engagement?

Now that you know how to calculate NPS, it’s time to figure out if you should use this number to determine event attendee engagement and experience. NPS is a best-practice, recognized metric that is understood across departments, ideologies, and industries. NPS is a clear go-to if you are looking for a number that can be easily understood by executives, board members, or other departments. In addition, your attendees will often recognize an NPS survey for what it is, giving them even more sway in how they answer this pointed question.

On the other hand, event engagement pulls in from various factors, including but not limited to NPS. Your team should still track other engagement metrics such as conversations, demo requests, Q&A outreach, etc., to build a complete picture of event engagement.

The bottom line? It never hurts to measure NPS. While your NPS may not be a completely clear measurement of attendee engagement, it can tell you how likely attendees are to attend an event in the future or recommend it to a colleague, which can help with planning and strategy for your future events.