As an event organizer, your ultimate goal is to create a memorable event for your attendees. But how do you know if your event was truly successful? As an important tool for measuring event success, a post-event survey allows you to gather valuable thoughts, opinions, and suggestions from your attendees while your event is still fresh on their minds. By asking the right questions in your post-event survey, collecting this meaningful data will allow you to improve your current event as well as make future ones even better. In this article, we've compiled a list of 15+ post-event survey questions that you can use to gather valuable feedback to help improve your next event.

Why post-event surveys are important

Gathering valuable feedback directly from your attendees (aka, zero-party data) is a game-changer for any event planner. It provides you with actionable insights straight from your fans that are crucial for improving future events. You'll know exactly what worked and what didn’t — be it guest speakers, sessions, specific haunted attractions, or some other aspect of your event. This clarity means no more guessing games; you'll have a clear roadmap of what your audience loves about your events, and how you can build bigger and better events.

Moreover, acting upon these post-event surveys will make your current event attendees feel heard and valued. This strengthens their connection to your events, making them more likely to return in the future, and builds a firm foundation of trust. By understanding which channels brought in the most attendees, you can hone your future event planning and marketing strategies to be more effective and efficient.

Best practices for your post-event survey questions

As you build out your post-event survey, here's the lowdown of some important tips to keep in mind to make it the best possible source of attendee feedback!

• Keep it short! It's best to keep your post-event survey short and sweet so it takes only 3-5 minutes maximum to complete. Good rule of thumb: the quicker the survey, the more event attendees will fill it out. This typically would end up being between 5-10 questions.

• Show how you're tailoring future events to their feedback! Tell people how past feedback has impacted your current attendee experience and made it better – it'll motivate them to share their feedback this time too.

• Encourage people to be honest! Negative feedback is just as valuable and constructive as positive comments, as this gives you candid insight on areas for improvement and shows you truly value your attendees' opinions.

• Sweeten the deal! Consider offering a perk as a little thank you for responding to your post-event survey, like discounts on future tickets or a chance to win gift cards, free tickets, or something else really cool in a raffle. You’ll want to be careful with this though, since incentives can also potentially dilute the quality of your survey results, since some may just complete your form for the sake of the reward and not for giving honest feedback.

• Keep things flexible! While you should require answers to your most important questions (especially ones that are easier to answer, like multiple choice), it's best that not every question is a must-answer. Mix up optional and required questions, leaving the more in-depth long answer questions optional for anyone with additional thoughts to share.

• Give a gentle nudge! If someone doesn’t answer your survey, feel free to follow up one or twice over the next two weeks after your event. Let them know how much you value their thoughts to help improve next year's event.

• Be prepared! Create your post-event survey questions well before your event ends, so that once it does, your survey will be ready to go to send to attendees!

Need help getting started on your post-event survey? We've got a free template for you to check out and use below!

Types of questions for post-event surveys 

To gather your data as accurately as possible, there's a variety of event survey questions you can use to collect feedback from your attendees. Some will provide you with more qualitative data while others will be more quantitative in nature. It just depends on the types of attendee feedback you'll need for your upcoming events.

1. Multiple choice questions

When designing multiple choice questions for an event survey, it's common to use closed-ended options such as "yes" and "no", "true" and "false", or a list of simple phrases related to your question topic. These questions are especially popular because of how straightforward they are, allowing for quick responses from your participants. For more nuanced answers not captured in your list of answers, it's a good practice to include an open field or an "Other" option. This addition ensures that while you benefit from the structured format of closed-ended questions, you still get every inch of the valuable feedback you need.

2. Matrix questions

Utilizing matrix questions in a post-event survey is an efficient way to collect feedback on a number of questions at once. By presenting multiple statements or questions within a single table, respondents can easily provide their answers across a numerical scale (e.g., levels of satisfaction). This not only makes it easy for previous attendees to provide feedback on multiple areas in rapid fire, but it makes comparing the data across each event survey question easier for the event organizer to analyze later.

3. Rating scales

These questions help turn opinions into numbers, allowing you to gather quantitative data to best gauge attendee satisfaction. You'll want to provide context to the numbers on your scale's spectrum, such as "very likely" to "very unlikely". The most common of these is the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which asks attendees how likely they are to recommend your event to a friend on a scale from 1-10. On the NPS scale specifically, you can calculate your final NPS score by calculating your percentage of promoters (the 9-10 range) minus the percentage of the detractors (6 and below).

4. Likert scales

By using a likert scale, participants can indicate how much they agree or disagree with a statement to help organizers gauge the overall sentiment. As a more specific type of rating scale, likert scales typically use a scale of 5 or 7 for a more nuanced view of participants' experiences. Whether it's assessing the satisfaction with the event's content, the venue, or the overall experience, likert scale questions help ensure that future events are even more successful.

5. Dropdown questions

Dropdown questions provide a group of fields for event attendees to select from for their answer. This makes it super straightforward for respondents to select from a comprehensive list of options, making it easy to gather insights about your target audience. Instead of using a multiple-choice question with a ton of answers to pick from, dropdown questions offer a more consolidated approach, allowing for an extensive range of answers without overwhelming the participant. This could include asking questions about their demographics (like age range), their favorite speaker, or what their preferred social media platform is.

6. Open ended question

This question type is most effective in uncovering feedback you might otherwise not have discovered. Unlike the other question types above that are quantitative in nature, these open-ended questions (either short or long answer) gather qualitative data. Your attendees can share any positive or negative sentiments in their own words that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to share in your other questions. These questions take longer to answer, so it's best to keep them optional in your survey so people have an outlet to share their thoughts if they want to.

Examples of post-event survey questions

Congrats! Now that you know the types of post-event survey questions you can choose from, let's figure out the questions you'll ask! To help brainstorm, here are some examples of questions for three different audiences: your attendees, event sponsors, and your staff.

Questions for your attendees

1. How did you hear about our events?

Hear firsthand from attendees on what marketing channels are bringing them in, whether it's your social media posts, your emails, word of mouth, etc.

2. Was the event structured well?

This is likely a rating-style or open-ended question, one that's fitting especially for corporate events, conventions, and events with a number of sessions.

3. How would you rate the location?

These quick assessments of various aspects of your event are perfect to incorporate in a matrix-style survey question. You could ask them to rate other aspects on a numerical scale too, such as the parking, public transit options, and more.

4. How likely are you to attend next year's event?

Successful events keep people coming back for more, so this will help gauge if your annual event met that goal! Using these responses can help you with forecasting your event growth as well.

5. How likely are you to attend other events of ours?

This will help you gauge if people are interested in attending future events (you could even give a few examples) beyond just the one they attended.

6. How likely are you to recommend this event to a friend or family member?

Remember that Net Promoter Score? This question helps event organizers determine how many of their attendees will promote your event to others and likely they'll attend future events with their friends!

7. What was your favorite moment at our event?

This open-ended question gives your attendees the space to share specific positive stories about your event. With their consent, this is a perfect opportunity to gather testimonials to feature on your event website and future ticketing pages as well!

8. Was the signup process for our event easy?

Determine how smooth the ticket purchase process was to identify any hold ups that might have prevented others from buying their tickets. This could be particularly insightful if your attendance numbers were less than expected.

9. How could we have improved your experience?

This is powerful for gathering feedback on how to improve future events! Leave this as an open-ended question to allow attendees to voice their opinions candidly to help your next event.

10. Have you attended our events before?

Discover how many of your attendees are regulars! You could even ask for them to give an estimated number of events they've been to before to further gauge their loyalty.

11. What topics do you hope to see more of at future events?

Asking this allows you to hear what sessions or activities were best, straight from attendees. Depending on your event type, you could also ask different forms of this question, like asking about their favorite performers, attractions, and more.

12. Did the event meet your expectations?

Ensure your attendees can share their constructive feedback here with this open-ended question. That way, you can take any deficits that might have arisen and address them in your future event planning.

13. Demographic-specific questions about education, age, location, etc.

Asking your attendees to share a bit about themselves, whether that be their age range, where they're from, or how many people are in their family, can help you gather important information to better understand your target audience and better tailor your experiences to them.

Questions for your event staff and volunteers

1. Would you consider our event successful? Why or why not?

Ask your event staff for their honest thoughts! As key players in your event's success, their insight on what works well and what didn't will be essential for improving future events.

2. How can we improve our event operations in the future?

This is a great opportunity for your event staff to share any suggestions for your future events, like a change in location, selected speakers, or improvements to team communication.

3. Did you feel prepared to assist with the event?

Especially important for your volunteers or new staff members, make sure that your team feels properly trained to help run a successful event.

Questions for your sponsors

1. Did you get all the information you needed before the event?

These types of follow up questions allow you to best streamline your event operations, so it's a pleasant experience not just for attendees, but for your sponsors too.

2. How can we improve your event experience in the future?

This shows your event sponsors how much you care about them and can use this constructive feedback form your post-event survey to encourage and enhance their future sponsorships at your next event.

3. Did you have ample networking opportunities at our event?

Sponsors are looking for chances to build their network and make connections, whether with attendees or fellow vendors at your event. Asking about this ensures they feel heard and got the opportunities they were looking for.

(Bonus!) Pre-event survey questions

A pre-event survey can help you improve future events as well as this one! Here's a few questions you could include in a pre-event survey to help plan your next event before it happens. Within TicketLeap's suite of features, you can also embed some of these questions in your checkout process as event attendees buy their tickets! Here are some pre-event question ideas to help you get the ball rolling.

1. Are there any special accommodations we should be aware of?

Asking this shows that you value inclusivity at your events. This will allow you to prepare in advance for any accessibility concerns for attendees that may need it.

2. Do you have any food allergies?

If you are serving food at your event, this is a critical question to ask, ensuring that any attendees with dietary restrictions are able to enjoy eating at your event worry-free.

3. How did you hear about our event?

Determine which marketing channels (email, social media, TV, etc.) are bringing in your upcoming attendees, so you can hone in on those more popular channels in the remaining weeks leading up to your event.

4. What are you most excited for at our event?

This question will allow you to gauge which sessions, guest speakers, performers, etc. will likely be the most popular once your event day arrives.

5. Have you attended this event in the past?

From the get-go, this helps give you a better idea of who's a returning attendee versus who's coming for the first time, so you can better tailor their event day experience.

6. What's your favorite social media platform?

Use this question to determine which social media platforms to focus on in your event marketing efforts, so you can maximize your event’s reach.

Ways to collect post-event feedback for future events

While tons of platforms exist to host your post-event survey, here are some starting places of survey platforms to use for measuring attendee satisfaction.

Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is a powerful virtual platform with tons of survey question types, over 250+ customizable templates, and even AI tools to help build your post-event surveys with maximum efficiency.

Google Forms

As a part of Google's suite of solutions, Google Forms is a straightforward (and totally free!) way to create a simple yet dynamic form to gather your post-event survey data.

Typeform

Perfect for gathering your event feedback to improve future planning efforts, Typeform makes it easy for you to build beautifully branded post-event surveys with all the question types you need.

Jotform

You can build powerful event surveys with Jotform, complete with automated workflows, dynamic reporting for planning future events, and more to save time for your event organization.

SurveyPlanet

SurveyPlanet allows you to easily create free surveys with unlimited numbers of questions and responses, custom branding, pre-written templates, and more.

How to best share your post-event survey questions

Once you've made your form, you're probably wondering when and where to best post your follow up questions? Ideally, you'll want to get your survey out there within the first day or two after your event, while your successful event is fresh on people's minds! As a strong option, you could send a post-event follow-up email with a call-to-action button directing people to your survey. Luckily, with TicketLeap, you can send this survey email directly from your ticketing platform to help streamline your event marketing efforts.

You can also post a QR code of your survey's link onsite for attendees to see in person as they leave your event. To encourage more responses, feel free to sweeten the deal with an incentive like adding their name to a raffle or earning a ticket discount on your next event. Sharing the survey on your website or social media could also be a good idea, though keep in mind that you may risk receiving feedback from people who weren't actual attendees.

Important note: whenever asking for feedback, ensure you get their consent before sharing it! This is especially important for any glowing feedback you got in your long-answer questions that you'd like to feature as a testimonial on your event website. To do this, you could add a simple "yes" or "no" question asking for their consent at the bottom of your survey.

A few last words

Ultimately, creating a comprehensive list of survey questions for event feedback is essential for any event organizer wanting to improve their future events. By carefully selecting a mix of question types and using our best practices to guide you, you can gather powerful metrics to better understand what worked well and what could use improvement for future events. Remember, the goal is not just to measure your event's success but build stronger connections with your attendees, making them feel valued and heard. Plus, with a powerful ticketing solution like TicketLeap by your side, you'll have the email marketing tools to get this post-event survey out to your attendees in no time!