Measuring the success of IR events

Last week we wrote about IR events and our tips for hosting a successful event. But how can we measure the effectiveness and success of an event and why is this important?

Why is analyzing IR event data important?

• To improve the process.
• To improve the outcome of future events.
• To quantify the success of the event for senior management.
• To set a bar for future events.
• To help post-event follow up e.g. which questions did you not get a chance to answer and need to follow up on after the event?  
• To aid investor and analyst targeting.

In order to measure the success of an event it is important to set targets and expectations to compare against. If you have data from a previous event then we suggest using this to give you a starting point. For example, if you know how many people registered for your last earnings call then this will give you an idea of how many people you should be aiming for to register for your event.

How to measure?

Monitor registration for the event and react by making adjustments where necessary. For example, if registration is low and you have not already done so, you may want to send out follow up emails, add the event to your IR website homepage and events calendar, contact key investors and analysts personally to invite them or even write a press release.

Keep track of the engagement of attendees, record who is asking questions, which institution they are from and what questions are being asked.

Conduct post-event surveys. This can be both through formal, personal telephone interviews with a relatively small sample, as well as through e-forms such as Survey Monkey which could be sent to all attendees and could even include those who registered but did not attend the event.

Look at message absorption: Are you reading your key messages in sell side reports? Do the buy side questions reflect the messaging you gave?

What to measure?

In addition to the obvious measure of whether ownership levels increased, there is a multitude of data points that you can measure after an event, especially with the added information available from virtual events. For example:

How many registered for the event but did not attend?

How many who missed the event went on to watch the replay?

How many attended and watched the replay? (These would be key people to target).

What was the average viewing time vs. the length of the event?

Do people drop off early? How many? Is there a trend?

Did you drive people to a certain landing page? Did you see increased traffic to that page?

Did you see increased traffic e.g. to your ESG or R&D page?

How many and which resources were downloaded shortly after the event?

How many questions did you receive? (Which did you answer/not answer?)

Does it appear that your story resonated with the attendees?

Did the event result in changes in attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, etc.? Will attendees act on these changes? (You can build your understanding of this through the post-event surveys mentioned above).

When analyzing your data, make sure you see the whole picture. For example, an asset manager who attended your event may not have increased their position in your company, but you may have had more of their analysts at the event than the previous year. Keep all of this in mind when approaching follow up meetings. Focus on the long-term impact of your event, not just the short-term.

If you require any assistance with quantifying the success of your event, please get in touch and Miranda IR would be happy to help.