Decide what the survey is for before writing a question
A post-event feedback survey should serve a decision. Will you run the event again? Should the next one be longer, in a different venue, with fewer talks and more time to meet people? Did a sponsor get what they paid for? Write those decisions down first. Every question that does not feed one of them is a question the guest pays for in time and you never read.
This also tells you who should see the answers. The programme team wants to know which sessions worked; the venue team wants to hear about the queue at the door and the food; leadership wants one number and two sentences. A survey written with its readers in mind is shorter and much easier to report on.
When to send the event feedback survey
Send it the morning after, or the same evening for a daytime event. Memory of an event fades quickly, and the details you most need — the room that was too cold, the speaker who ran over, the sign nobody could find — are the first to go. A survey that lands after the weekend measures a general impression, not the event.
Send it once, with one reminder a few days later to those who have not answered, and then stop. A third message turns goodwill into irritation. For multi-day events, consider a single one-tap rating at the end of each day and the full survey after the last day.
- Evening event: the next morning.
- Daytime conference: the same evening or the next morning.
- Multi-day event: a quick rating each day, the full survey after the last day.
- One reminder to non-responders, never to those who already answered.
How many questions a post-event survey should have
As few as the decisions require. For most events that means one rating question, one or two specific questions and one open question — four or five in total, answerable in under two minutes on a phone. If you need more, put the essential questions first so that a guest who stops halfway has still given you what matters.
Every extra question costs answers. There is no universal response rate to aim for; what moves it is how soon the survey arrives, how short it looks when opened, whether it works on a phone without a login, and whether the guest believes anybody will read it. Saying in one line what you will do with the answers helps more than any incentive.
Example post-event survey questions for attendees
Start with one overall question that you can compare across events. A 0–10 recommendation question is common because it is easy to track over time; a simple five-point satisfaction scale works just as well if you use it consistently. Then ask about the parts of the event you can actually change, and end with one open question.
- “How likely are you to recommend this event to a colleague?” (0–10)
- “Overall, how satisfied were you with the event?” (1–5)
- “Which session or moment was most useful to you?”
- “Was there anything that got in the way of your evening — arrival, timing, the venue, the food?”
- “Did you meet the people you hoped to meet?” (Yes / Partly / No)
- “How was the length of the programme?” (Too short / About right / Too long)
- “Would you come to the next edition?” (Yes / Maybe / No)
- “What is one thing we should change next time?”
Questions to avoid in an event feedback survey
Avoid questions that lead the answer (“How much did you enjoy our excellent keynote?”), questions that ask two things at once (“Was the venue comfortable and easy to reach?”) and questions you could answer yourself from your own data, such as whether the guest attended or which sessions they chose. Asking a guest for information you already hold tells them their earlier answers were not kept.
Do not ask for personal details you do not need, and do not make every field mandatory. A required open question produces dots and single letters, which are worse than nothing because they look like data.
A different survey for no-shows
The guests who said yes and did not come are a small, valuable group, and the attendee survey is the wrong thing to send them. They cannot rate a talk they did not hear. What you want to learn from them is why: a clash, a late change, an unclear invitation, a cost, or something about the event itself.
Keep it to one or two questions, worded without blame. A guest who feels accused will not answer; a guest who is asked kindly often tells you something the attendees never would.
- “We missed you. What stopped you from coming?” (Something came up / The date or time did not suit / I was not sure the event was for me / Other)
- “Is there anything that would make it easier to come next time?”
Live ratings during the event versus the survey after
Some questions are better asked in the room. A rating straight after a session, on the guest’s own phone, captures a reaction that will be gone by the next morning, and it gives speakers feedback on their own slot. The survey afterwards is then free to ask about the whole experience: arrival, pace, venue, value.
Use both, but do not ask the same thing twice. If guests rated every session live, the follow-up survey should not list the sessions again.
Reading and sharing the answers
Read the open answers yourself before summarising them; they carry the reasons behind the scores. Group them into a handful of themes, quote two or three in the guest’s own words, and set the rating beside last time’s. Split the results by group where it matters — speakers, sponsors, first-time guests and regulars often see the same evening very differently.
Then close the loop. If guests told you the queue at the door was too long and you fixed it, say so in the next invitation. Guests who see that their feedback changed something are the ones who answer the next survey.
Sending the survey with the follow-up
The survey works best inside the thank-you, not as a separate message: one note to those who came, with a rating they can give in one tap, and a different note to those who missed it. In Winglark, AfterFlow sends exactly that, the same way as your invitations, and LivePulse collects ratings during the event on every guest’s phone.