DALLAS — For data novices, a recent webinar, “Data Insights from Virtual Platforms — Virtual Expo! Expo! Case Study,” presented by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), broke down the complex science of data analytics into understandable and relevant “aha” moments.
The event brought together Arjun Chakravarti, MBA, Ph.D., Managing Director and Principal, and David Richardson, Ph.D., CAP, Principal and Analytics Solutions Lead, both of COGKNITION Analytics, who worked closely with Scott Craighead, CEM, Vice President of Exhibitions and Events, International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE), to analyze attendance data from the 2020 virtual/digital edition of Expo! The goal was to provide perspective on how various data insights could be used to design a hybrid event model for the show moving forward.
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“The key difference between live and virtual events is that people are just a click away from leaving your digital event, whether it’s for work, childcare or household needs,” Richardson said. “You need to track not only who comes, but when they arrive and when they leave, in order to have a meaningful measurement of engagement. We’ve found ways to leverage that information to gain insights that aren’t possible with live events.”
But it’s much more complicated than that. Raw data can give you an exaggerated view of what the attendee did. He or she may have left the event in the middle, but he or she would still have been credited with watching the event if the computer window had remained open. This is where data “hygiene” is important: analyzing average attendance times to make sure they’re not longer than the entire session, for example, and removing outliers to get a clearer picture.
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Even evaluations can be tricky, as many virtual meeting platforms aren’t customizable. So if you’re used to collecting ratings on a 4.0 or 5.0 scale, you may not be able to do that with an online event and risk losing that annual benchmark.
It gets even more complicated.
Presenters discussed the many ways assessments can go wrong. They can be hard to spot if attendees opt out of certain notifications and aren’t reminded to complete them. Presentation tools can be difficult for presenters to master because they’ve never used the platform. Attendees may be forced to leave the educational event for a scheduled appointment. The scenarios are numerous, and all affect the data.
What about sessions with low ratings? It could be a problem with the session itself, the content doesn’t match the session description, or maybe it’s a repeat of a session from previous years, so people who have attended in the past might leave if there doesn’t seem to be anything new.
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The IAEE expected higher participation around pre-recorded sessions, but that hasn’t been the case. “Attendees are juggling personal and professional demands, and they’re prioritizing live events over on-demand content,” Chakravarti said. “They rarely come back. You have to move away from on-demand content to move away from live content.”
COGKNITION Analytics’ most in-depth analysis of Expo! Expo! data incorporated demographic data. “Ultimately, not all attendees are created equal,” Chakravarti said. Expo! Expo! demographic data showed that people in event operations versus event marketers, women versus men, and people in different age groups consume events differently.
Ultimately, the goals, aspirations and challenges of the participants are the “art” behind the data. “In this industry, ‘up and coming’ participants want to meet people and get exposure. Their most important goals are networking and how to contribute to their organization and the industry. They will want to collaborate in person to achieve this,” Chakravarti said.
And that’s the question: how do you take all of this data and bring it together from a planning and design perspective?
“It’s been an interesting journey,” Craighead said, “finding takeaways for future events. “We now have a lot more data to look at, which is the benefit of virtual events.”
Contact Arjun Chakravarti and David Richardson at info@cogknition.com and Scott Craighead at scraighead@iaee.com or (972) 687-9227