Ask meeting attendees the right questions to create the events they want to attend

Updated: Oct. 7, 2024  |  Categories: Membership, Meetings/Events, Low Engagement  

Many of your association chapter members are accustomed to having aspects of their daily lives designed just for them. This includes things like the layout of their cell phones and computer screens, emails personalized to their needs and even some parts of their medical care. Getting used to content and activities that speak directly to their interests, demographics and behaviors means they’re more likely to expect personalized services in all aspects of their lives, including from your chapter. 

You may already personalize some of your chapter activities, like the emails you send about membership renewals, chapter sponsorships and volunteer committees. But, if your chapter is like many, your events are probably not something you’ve thought about personalizing.

What if your VP of Events and your event committee could collect relevant, specific information that would allow them to more easily customize some parts of your chapter events? And what if these changes could help ensure attendees feel like you’re really listening to them and providing more of what they want, and ultimately draw more people to your events?

Include the Right Questions & Opportunities for Answers

We’ve talked before about how adding questions to the event registration process to gather relevant information can help you plan stronger chapter events. And we’ve discussed how sending post-event surveys can provide you with insight into what attendees thought worked well and where they felt you could have done better.

Even though many chapters do this, in a lot of cases, the questions they use don’t give the person a chance to answer completely and honestly. Many of the questions can only be answered with a yes or no. Yes/no and multiple-choice questions are useful, but they are very black and white, and how many people really react to something in black and white? Often the feedback they want to give lies somewhere in between, and is more along the lines of “yes, but…” or “no, but…”

Of course it’s important to ask things like, “Do you need the vegan option?” “Did you like the breakfast?” and “Rate the venue on a scale of 1 to 5.” You need this information. But often, people want to give you more expansive feedback. They want to give you the details that you can ultimately use (and need to know) to make future events more engaging. That could include things like what appealed to them about the speaker they heard or what was it about the venue that prompted them to give the rating?

Here are some examples of questions that require an expanded response and can get at that more-specific information:

Do more than just gather responses

If you collect information from attendees but it just sits around, and you don’t use it to advance your offerings, was it truly helpful? Mostly likely not, especially if members see the same event formats and content, and even food, repeatedly, even after they’ve taken the time to provide their input.

Review the details from your event registration and follow up. Use this “emotional data” to bring in more of the experiences that members are looking for to the programming you’re already doing. Understand what’s important to those who registered and who attended, and you can amplify your level of personalization, whether that means providing quiet spaces for people who need to get away from the crowd to decompress, holding unique networking opportunities or trying out the new hip restaurant for lunch.

When attendees can tell that you’ve heard their feedback and are holding events with them in mind, you’ll get more of the impact you’re going for and have a better chance of meeting the goals you initially set for an event.

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