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There are so many numbers you can track when you're hosting a virtual summit.
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Registrations, attendance, session views, email opens, clicks, speaker promotion, VIP sales, post-summit sales, revenue, conversion rate, etc.
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And if you aren't careful, you can end up with a spreadsheet full of numbers and absolutely no idea whether your summit actually worked or not.
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Because here's the thing: not every impressive number is an important number.
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And not every number that looks disappointing actually means that your summit didn't perform well.
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After seven plus years and 15 plus summits between the two of us, we've learned that the goal isn't to measure everything.
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It is to measure what actually connects to the goal of your summit.
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So today we're going to be breaking down the summit metrics that we actually pay attention to, what some of those numbers can and can't tell you, and how to take the emotion out of evaluating your event by looking at all the data.
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Because sometimes the numbers tell a very different story than your feelings, Sue.
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Let's talk about it.
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Hey, I'm Jenny.
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And I'm Lindsay, and you're listening to the Virtual Summit Secrets Podcast.
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This is a place for you if you want to learn hashtag all the things about hosting a virtual summit.
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We've hosted and produced countless summits, and we cannot wait to share with you all of our biggest secrets.
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So sit back, grab your favorite drink, and get ready to put on a killer summit experience.
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Hey there, and welcome back to the Virtual Summit Secrets Podcast, the go-to show for entrepreneurs who want to host profitable high-impact virtual summits without the overwhelm.
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So we're Jenny and Lindsay, we're Virtual Summit and Visibility Shadowists, and today we are talking about something that can feel a little intimidating for most Summit hosts, and that is the numbers.
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So now we're not going to turn this into a giant analytics lesson because we don't think you need to track like 47 different metrics to know whether your summit worked or not.
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But we do think you need to pay attention to your numbers because one of the biggest mistakes we see and one that is really easy to make is either obsessing over every single number or avoiding the numbers altogether.
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And both can lead you to a wrong conclusion about how your summit went.
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You might look at your registration numbers and think, wow, this is amazing, but then discover that your VIP offer didn't actually convert.
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Or you might look at your registration number and think, oh man, like that just wasn't nearly as big as I wanted.
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But then when you look at your numbers, you realize your conversion rates were really strong, your back-end offer sold really well, and you brought in exactly the right people.
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So today we are going to talk about what we actually look at when we're evaluating one of our summits.
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So first we want to start with a number that everyone wants to know, and that is how many people registered.
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And yes, obviously we do look at registration numbers because why wouldn't you?
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But registration numbers alone do not tell the full story because a thousand registrations can mean very different things depending on how you got those registrations.
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What we really want to know is what was the conversion rate.
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So if your registration page is converting well, that tells you something useful.
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It can indicate that your messaging is resonating, your summit positioning is working, your topic is appealing, and your speaker lineup is aligned enough to make people want to hit that register button.
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So rather than just saying we got a thousand registrations, we want to know how many people saw the opportunity and how many of them actually ended up saying yes.
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That is much more useful information.
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And this is also why registration numbers alone don't necessarily tell you what's going to happen with your post-summit offer.
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We've absolutely had summits where registration numbers looked insanely good, but the VIP pass didn't convert as well as we wanted.
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That's actually one of the reasons we've experimented with what we put inside our VIP pass over the years.
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And we've also had decent registration numbers where the post-summit offer didn't convert as well as it could have either.
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And then on the flip side, our summit about summits that tends to be more niche.
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So the registration numbers usually aren't anything like crazy, but our VIP pass and our post-summit offer can convert really well off of the back of that one.
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And that is such a good reminder that bigger registration numbers don't automatically equal a better business result.
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The right people matter, your offer matters, the conversion matters, and most importantly, your goal of the summit matters as well.
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So the next thing we want to look at is what happens after people register.
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Because a registration is a commitment, but it doesn't necessarily add up to that person actually participating.
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And this is where we look at things like watch rates and the percentage of sessions people are actually watching.
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Now, because we don't host all of our events live, we're not obsessing over a traditional quote unquote show-up rate.
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We purposely don't make every Summit a live event because we know that it can be difficult for people to show up at a specific time, ourselves included.
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And for our audience, we've actually found that giving people the flexibility to watch the sessions on their own terms can result in more session views rather than requiring them to be somewhere live at a particular time to tune in.
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That doesn't mean we think live attendance is bad by any means.
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There is absolute power in people being live.
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But what we're trying to say is that it isn't the only way to participate in a summit.
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So we pay attention to the actual consumption of the content.
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We usually see watch time spike during the first couple of days and then slowly decline as the event goes on.
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And that's pretty normal.
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Honestly, we see that with email open rates.
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Even if we were hosting live events, we see it slowly dwindle during the event.
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So that's something to keep an eye on.
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That's normal.
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But the data is useful because it can show us what topics are resonating and how people are moving through the event.
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So, for example, if you have a five-day summit and day one has significantly more views than day five, that doesn't necessarily mean that day five was bad.
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People may simply have less time by that point, or they may have got overwhelmed, or they may have watched the sessions that they were most interested first and just done landed on that day.
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So this is why it's really important to look back at the numbers with context.
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We absolutely do keep track of individual session views because session views can tell you something, but they don't tell you everything.
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But they can be really helpful.
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You can start to see which topics are getting more attention and which sessions people are choosing to watch.
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But there is a big caveat here, and that is that you shouldn't automatically assume the most viewed session was the quote unquote best session.
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You really have to look at the bigger picture here.
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Like look at what day was that session on?
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Was it on day one?
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That could be a factor.
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Was that topic particularly relevant to your audience?
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Was the speaker someone who had a very engaged ride or die audience that was going to show up for them no matter what?
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All of those things can really affect your numbers.
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So session views are just a data point.
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They're not a definitive, I should say, ranking of your speakers.
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And we think this is an important distinction because hosts can get themselves into trouble when they start treating every single number like a grade, right?
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Like that session had 500 views and this one had 300.
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So clearly that first speaker was better.
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And that's not really the case.
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That's not always what the data tells you.
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Like it might if you're just looking at the numbers, but like, because all it's telling you is that one session was viewed more.
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And that is useful information.
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But as Jenny was mentioning, some of those other contexts, like the day, the topic and the topic of the summit, or if it was like a ride or die speaker, like you have to use all of that to actually interpret the numbers.
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Another thing we also pay attention to is speaker promotion.
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So we'll look at things like clicks on their affiliate link, emails or social posts sent, and registrations attributed to individual speakers.
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Now, do we put a ton of weight on speaker-generated registrations?
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No, not necessarily, but it is useful information.
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We want to know who promoted and we want to know who didn't.
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And we also want to know which speakers seem to have particularly engaged audiences around a specific topic.
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That information can be helpful when we're evaluating speaker relationships for future events.
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And this is another example of why we're looking at the numbers as information rather than using them to decide that someone is a good or a bad speaker.
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A speaker who didn't generate a ton of registrations may still have been an incredible fit for your audience and delivered an amazing session.
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I mean, I can even think about it in terms of like myself.
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Like I don't have a humongous audience, but I've been in several summits multiple times and I didn't bring in the most registrations that they could have ever had.
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So it's just all relative to what the summit host needs, not necessarily like just people bringing in those big numbers.
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And also a speaker who generated a lot of registrations may have brought people who weren't that necessarily aligned with your like your full offer.
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So maybe they weren't the best people that they brought in, even though they brought in a ton.
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But these numbers give you clues.
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They don't make every decision for you.
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So next up, we want to talk about the VIP pass because this is where things can get really interesting.
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So a VIP conversion can tell you much more than a registration number, but it still depends heavily on what you're actually selling.
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If your VIP pass is primarily like extended access to replays, then a purchase might simply tell you that they want longer access to this content, that they're not going to be able to get it done in that time and they find it interesting and they want to go through it.
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But that is useful, but it doesn't really tell you a whole lot about the deeper demand for your offer or your offer that's coming up.
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So if your VIP pass is basically a bundle of resources, again, someone might be purchasing because they want like one or two specific resources inside it, especially if it's at an insane deal for a product that's included.
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But, and this is what we've been playing around with if you've intentionally designed your VIP pass to support the actual goal of the summit with specific resources, implementation support, or bonuses that just make sense for the topic, then we think that conversion can tell you so much more, especially if it's kind of leading them more towards your post-summit offer, because it can indicate that people are not only interested in the topic of the event, but that they are willing to invest in getting support around that topic.
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And that's an entirely different signal than just somebody purchasing replays.
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Another thing, another thing we look at is like the total number of VIP sales, the revenue, and the conversion rate of that.
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And one of the biggest numbers we pay attention to here is the conversion rate from the free summit attendee into a purchaser because that's what helps us understand whether the offer is converting better, worse, or about on par with what we'd expect.
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Now, if your VIP conversion is low, can you immediately know why?
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Probably not.
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And that's important.
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It could be the pricing, it could be the offer itself, it could be your messaging, it could be the audience, it could be the timing, it could be that the resources aren't aligned enough with what people actually want.
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There are a lot of variables here.
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So again, don't look at one number and immediately decide what caused it.
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We want you to use a number to tell you where you want, might want to investigate for future.
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And then we get to one of the numbers that we think is probably the most important when you're hosting a summit.
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And that is what happened with your post-summit offer.
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Because for most of us, your summit is like the top of the funnel.
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It's getting leads for your post-summit offer.
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It's that launch event.
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And, you know, I'd say most summit hosts are hoping to make the most money from their event at the post-summit offer.
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So we're going to be looking at numbers like the total number of buyers, but more importantly, the conversion rate, the overall revenue, and when we can, how quickly people purchase.
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And this is where your summit needs to connect to your business ecosystem as a whole.
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If you had an amazing summit and everybody loved it, but then you introduce an offer that feels completely disconnected from what they just experienced, you can't be surprised if sales don't follow, right?
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Your summit should be moving people somewhere.
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So when you're evaluating your post-summit sales, don't just ask how many sales did we make, how much money did we make.
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We want you to ask yourself, did the people who came to the summit take the next step we wanted them to take?
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Because that's much more useful.
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So we do think this is an area where we could personally get better about tracking the data over a long period of time, but something we want to work on.
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But sometimes you can tell that someone was already in your audience before the summit, which helps give you some context, like if they've been in your audience for a while versus someone brand new and then they like purchased your post-summit offer.
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So it's worth continuing to pay attention to those sales beyond the immediate summit window, especially if you have like a higher ticket offer that has like a longer sales cycle.
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Now, here's where we're gonna step outside of the spreadsheet for a bit.
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Because some of the most valuable things that come from a summit don't necessarily show up in your analytics.
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So one of those things is relationships.
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So we've had a few opportunities come from summits in so many different ways.
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So future collaborations, affiliate relationships, referrals, podcast opportunities, future customers, people coming back to participate in another summit, speaker relationships that turn into something else later.
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Those things all matter.
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And you may not be able to put a perfect dollar amount next to them immediately, but that doesn't mean that those aren't valuable.
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This is especially important if your summit goal is authority or visibility.
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That can be much harder to quantify than something like sales.
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You might look at new connections that you've made, future collaborations that are now on the calendar, feedback from attendees, and feedback from your speakers.
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Those are all signals that your summit is doing something valuable.
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So we don't want hosts to get so obsessed with the dashboard that they forget to look at what happened between the people.
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Because at its core, a summit is a collaboration.
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It's not just a funnel.
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Okay, so now we're gonna have a little fun with some numbers that can look impressive, but don't necessarily tell you very much.
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So let's start with registration numbers without context.
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So we have already talked about this one, but 5,000 people registered.
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Okay, that sounds impressive.
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But what was the conversion rate?
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How many people were actually interested in the topic?
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How many actually engaged?
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How many bought the VIP offer or your post-summit offer?
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Were they actually the right people?
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The 5,000 people registered doesn't tell you enough in and of itself.
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You need the other details because if you just added 5,000 people who aren't actually a good fit, then I don't think that summit was a success, in my personal opinion, because it's not going to support your overall business.
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Then we have the number of speakers and sessions.
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You're saying, look how many speakers we had, look how many sessions.
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And again, that can sound impressive.
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But more speakers doesn't automatically mean there's going to be more value provided.
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We've talked about this quite a bit throughout, you know, all the episodes we've done recently.
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Sometimes more speakers simply means more content, more decisions, more overwhelm, and more speaker management.
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The number of speakers isn't truly a measure of your quality of your summit.
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In the like same area would be the number of bonuses, right?
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This is another big one.
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It's kind of like look at everything you get.
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But we've said this before: more content is not the same thing as more value.
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20 bonuses that nobody uses aren't necessarily more valuable than one really useful implementation resource.
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So if you're tracking the number of bonuses in your summit, that's fine for like project management, for tracking the value of a bundle, you know, stuff like that, but it's not a success metric.
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And honestly, that's a good distinction to make with metrics in general.
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Some numbers are just useful for managing the project, while other numbers are useful for evaluating the results.
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And those are not always the same thing.
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And this is probably one of the biggest things we want you to take away from this episode.
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The right metrics depend on the goal of your summit.
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If your primary goal is list growth, then yes, your registration numbers are gonna matter.
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But we also want you to pay attention to what happens to that list afterwards.
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Are people staying subscribed?
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Are they engaging?
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Did you attract people who are actually interested in what you do?
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Because adding a bunch of people who immediately unsubscribe doesn't really give you the same result as adding people who stick around and become a true lasting part of your audience.
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Now, if your goal is selling a back-end offer, then you're going to pay more attention to purchases and your conversion rate from the free summit into that post-summit offer.
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If your goal is authority and visibility, that I think is a bit harder to quantify.
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You might look at new relationships, future collaborations, opportunities that come out of the event, and the feedback you're getting from attendees and speakers.
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And this one you might kind of track opportunities as they're coming over time.
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If your goal is testing a new topic or offer, then registration conversion does become especially interesting.
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Are people seeing this topic and saying, yes, that is for me?
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Because that's telling you something about the demand for that particular idea.
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And this is why we don't think there is one magic summit number that every single host needs to obsess over.
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Your goal tells you what matters.
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Now, there is one thing we want to emphasize, and it's that we don't wait until the summit is over, and then we suddenly think, oh, like we should probably figure out what just happened with the event we just hosted.
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We actually build this into our planning.
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So before each summit, we do build a PL, so profit and loss, that tracks the sales by offer.
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So, right, if we have a tiered VIP pass, which we don't really do that anymore, but we also tend to have a bump or an OTO.
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And it does also track it by day.
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And it includes whether something is an affiliate sale or not.
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This allows us to see when sales happen, what the revenue was, what the profit was, and how everything is performing in general.
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We also have a general stats tracker where we are tracking things like unique users, opt-ins, and conversion rates daily.
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I will say Google Analytics typically takes like 48 hours to fully settle.
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So we're like not necessarily immediate.
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We're like two days delay, but we do start tracking that.
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And we're doing that for the registration page, the upgrade page, and the special offer page.
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Though we will say the registration page is a big one, and then the special offer page.
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The upgrade page is just nice to kind of look at, but way less people actually go to that, especially when you're in the registration phase.
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But we basically have these stats mapped out ahead of time, is what we're getting at here.
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We also have a debrief document with placeholders for all the things that we want to evaluate after the summit.
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And we do that before the summit because when you're exhausted at the end of your event, it is really easy to forget what you wanted to look at.
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Also, I think really hard to look back at a summit at the end and then try to determine if it was a success or not if you don't know what you were trying to work towards, right?
00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:06.720
You can look at it with like tainted glasses at that point.
00:19:06.880 --> 00:19:18.640
So we want you to instead of relying on your post-summit brain to remember everything, decide ahead of time what are we going to measure, what are we going to compare, what do we want to know, what is going to make it a success?
00:19:18.720 --> 00:19:22.240
And that makes your debrief and your stats so much more useful.
00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:28.960
Now, if you're a first-time summit host and you're listening to all of this and you're thinking, okay, but you're just giving me like a lot of numbers to track.
00:19:29.119 --> 00:19:31.359
And I thought you said I didn't need to track everything.
00:19:31.599 --> 00:19:33.359
Well, we understand, we hear you.
00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:34.960
So let's make this really simple.
00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:39.039
If you only had to track three things, we would start with these.
00:19:39.279 --> 00:19:41.519
So the first one is registration numbers.
00:19:41.599 --> 00:19:44.640
You need to know how many people said yes to attending the event.
00:19:44.880 --> 00:19:46.480
The second thing is conversion rates.
00:19:46.559 --> 00:19:49.519
So, how well did people move from one step to the next?
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:57.759
So things like not just your registration page conversion, but also your conversion from free attendee to VIP.
00:19:58.079 --> 00:20:04.240
And also once you promote that post-summit offer, you also want to track that conversion rate as well.
00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:12.640
And then the third thing you want to track is your overall sales and profit because ultimately, if your summit is part of your business, you need to know what it actually did financially.
00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:17.359
And then, of course, depending on your goal, you can add in other metrics that matter along the way.
00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:20.240
But those three really just give you a solid starting point.
00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:24.880
And this brings us to what we think the biggest mistake hosts make with summit metrics.
00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:27.680
And that's actually just not looking at them at all.
00:20:27.839 --> 00:20:32.400
So sometimes people avoid the numbers because they're afraid of what they're going to find.
00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:35.359
Maybe registration wasn't as high as they wanted.
00:20:35.519 --> 00:20:42.880
Although you typically see that, because I don't know about us, even before we had our tracking sheets, we were always going into our email marketing system to see registration.
00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:44.400
So you might already know that one.
00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:47.200
But maybe your VIP didn't convert as well.
00:20:47.519 --> 00:20:50.480
Maybe you think your summit was a disaster.
00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:57.839
But when you actually look at the conversion rates, which we think are most important, you might discover that the summit actually performed totally fine.
00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:06.720
Or maybe you felt like the summit was amazing because you had a huge registration number, but then you look at the sales and realize there was a disconnect somewhere.
00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:10.319
The numbers can take some of the emotion out of the evaluation.
00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:14.559
And I think that's incredibly valuable because your summit is a huge project.
00:21:14.799 --> 00:21:16.400
You're emotionally invested in it.
00:21:16.559 --> 00:21:18.559
You've spent a lot of time on it.
00:21:18.799 --> 00:21:22.480
You're probably stressed about it in some way or another.
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:24.240
You've also probably celebrated it.
00:21:24.319 --> 00:21:28.799
I know that's one of the best parts when we actually have like day one and we're seeing everybody engaged.
00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:30.559
That's always really fun and exciting.
00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:36.000
But when it's over, it's very easy to make a judgment based on how you feel about it.
00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:38.720
Whereas the data gives you another perspective.
00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:44.960
It doesn't tell you the whole story, but it gives you something concrete to compare, and that's how you're going to improve.
00:21:45.200 --> 00:21:48.400
So if you remember one thing from this episode, we want it to be this.
00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:54.079
Stats can seem scary, but they're incredibly important for understanding how your summit actually went.
00:21:54.240 --> 00:21:55.759
You don't need to measure everything.
00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:58.640
You need to measure the things that connect to your goal.
00:21:58.880 --> 00:22:03.599
And remember, numbers aren't the only thing that determine whether a summit was success or not.
00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:12.480
Relationships matter, attendee feedback matters, speaker feedback matters, experience itself matters, and the opportunities that come afterwards matter.
00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:15.359
But the numbers give you a really important piece of the puzzle.
00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:20.160
And sometimes they will confirm that something worked, and sometimes they'll show you where something didn't.
00:22:20.319 --> 00:22:24.480
And sometimes they'll also completely change your mind about how well your summit performed.
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:27.359
So don't be afraid to look at your numbers.
00:22:27.599 --> 00:22:32.240
Look at them, understand them, and use them to make better decisions for your next summit.
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:44.960
And speaking of the attendee experience, we've spent a lot of this episode talking about what happens after the summit, what people watched, what they bought, how they engaged, and what the data and what the data tells us.
00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:47.279
But there's another side to all of this.
00:22:47.519 --> 00:22:50.640
What did it actually feel like to attend your summit?
00:22:50.880 --> 00:22:57.759
Because your numbers are ultimately being created by real people having a real experience.
00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:00.559
And that's exactly what we're digging into next.
00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:05.680
So in our next episode, we're talking about your summit is only as good as the experience you create.
00:23:05.839 --> 00:23:08.720
And we're looking at your summit from the attendee perspective.
00:23:08.960 --> 00:23:12.000
Things like what happens before they ever attend the event?
00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:15.359
What does the registration and confirmation experience feel like for them?
00:23:15.599 --> 00:23:16.720
Do they know what to do next?
00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:17.839
Is it easy to navigate?
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.039
Are your sessions flowing in a way that keeps people moving forward?
00:23:21.279 --> 00:23:23.359
Are there opportunities for them to engage?
00:23:23.519 --> 00:23:27.599
Are you giving them enough information or way too much information?
00:23:27.759 --> 00:23:33.440
And what are those little details that make someone feel like you actually thought about their experience going through the event?
00:23:33.680 --> 00:23:41.279
Because ultimately, the attendee experience can impact whether someone engages, buys, remembers you, and even comes back for your next summit.
00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:45.920
So next week, we're stepping away from the spreadsheets and putting ourselves into the attendee's shoes.
00:23:46.079 --> 00:23:50.559
We'll ask the question: what does it actually feel like to attend this summit?
00:23:50.799 --> 00:23:51.839
We'll see you then.
00:23:52.079 --> 00:23:55.759
Thanks for spending time with us today on the Virtual Summit Secrets podcast.
00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:04.079
If this episode was helpful, be sure to share it on social media and tag us at Summit Success Squad or personally share with somebody you know could benefit from it.
00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:06.720
New episodes will be released every Wednesday.
00:24:06.960 --> 00:24:08.400
See you next time.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.959
There are so many numbers you can track when you're hosting a virtual summit.
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Registrations, attendance, session views, email opens, clicks, speaker promotion, VIP sales, post-summit sales, revenue, conversion rate, etc.
00:00:13.119 --> 00:00:19.120
And if you aren't careful, you can end up with a spreadsheet full of numbers and absolutely no idea whether your summit actually worked or not.
00:00:19.359 --> 00:00:23.679
Because here's the thing: not every impressive number is an important number.
00:00:23.839 --> 00:00:27.839
And not every number that looks disappointing actually means that your summit didn't perform well.
00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:33.520
After seven plus years and 15 plus summits between the two of us, we've learned that the goal isn't to measure everything.
00:00:33.679 --> 00:00:36.880
It is to measure what actually connects to the goal of your summit.
00:00:37.119 --> 00:00:48.000
So today we're going to be breaking down the summit metrics that we actually pay attention to, what some of those numbers can and can't tell you, and how to take the emotion out of evaluating your event by looking at all the data.
00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:52.079
Because sometimes the numbers tell a very different story than your feelings, Sue.
00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:53.679
Let's talk about it.
00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:55.200
Hey, I'm Jenny.
00:00:55.359 --> 00:00:59.520
And I'm Lindsay, and you're listening to the Virtual Summit Secrets Podcast.
00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:04.879
This is a place for you if you want to learn hashtag all the things about hosting a virtual summit.
00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:10.799
We've hosted and produced countless summits, and we cannot wait to share with you all of our biggest secrets.
00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:16.000
So sit back, grab your favorite drink, and get ready to put on a killer summit experience.
00:01:18.239 --> 00:01:27.120
Hey there, and welcome back to the Virtual Summit Secrets Podcast, the go-to show for entrepreneurs who want to host profitable high-impact virtual summits without the overwhelm.
00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:37.680
So we're Jenny and Lindsay, we're Virtual Summit and Visibility Shadowists, and today we are talking about something that can feel a little intimidating for most Summit hosts, and that is the numbers.
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So now we're not going to turn this into a giant analytics lesson because we don't think you need to track like 47 different metrics to know whether your summit worked or not.
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But we do think you need to pay attention to your numbers because one of the biggest mistakes we see and one that is really easy to make is either obsessing over every single number or avoiding the numbers altogether.
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And both can lead you to a wrong conclusion about how your summit went.
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You might look at your registration numbers and think, wow, this is amazing, but then discover that your VIP offer didn't actually convert.
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Or you might look at your registration number and think, oh man, like that just wasn't nearly as big as I wanted.
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But then when you look at your numbers, you realize your conversion rates were really strong, your back-end offer sold really well, and you brought in exactly the right people.
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So today we are going to talk about what we actually look at when we're evaluating one of our summits.
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So first we want to start with a number that everyone wants to know, and that is how many people registered.
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And yes, obviously we do look at registration numbers because why wouldn't you?
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But registration numbers alone do not tell the full story because a thousand registrations can mean very different things depending on how you got those registrations.
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What we really want to know is what was the conversion rate.
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So if your registration page is converting well, that tells you something useful.
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It can indicate that your messaging is resonating, your summit positioning is working, your topic is appealing, and your speaker lineup is aligned enough to make people want to hit that register button.
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So rather than just saying we got a thousand registrations, we want to know how many people saw the opportunity and how many of them actually ended up saying yes.
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That is much more useful information.
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And this is also why registration numbers alone don't necessarily tell you what's going to happen with your post-summit offer.
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We've absolutely had summits where registration numbers looked insanely good, but the VIP pass didn't convert as well as we wanted.
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That's actually one of the reasons we've experimented with what we put inside our VIP pass over the years.
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And we've also had decent registration numbers where the post-summit offer didn't convert as well as it could have either.
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And then on the flip side, our summit about summits that tends to be more niche.
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So the registration numbers usually aren't anything like crazy, but our VIP pass and our post-summit offer can convert really well off of the back of that one.
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And that is such a good reminder that bigger registration numbers don't automatically equal a better business result.
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The right people matter, your offer matters, the conversion matters, and most importantly, your goal of the summit matters as well.
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So the next thing we want to look at is what happens after people register.
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Because a registration is a commitment, but it doesn't necessarily add up to that person actually participating.
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And this is where we look at things like watch rates and the percentage of sessions people are actually watching.
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Now, because we don't host all of our events live, we're not obsessing over a traditional quote unquote show-up rate.
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We purposely don't make every Summit a live event because we know that it can be difficult for people to show up at a specific time, ourselves included.
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And for our audience, we've actually found that giving people the flexibility to watch the sessions on their own terms can result in more session views rather than requiring them to be somewhere live at a particular time to tune in.
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That doesn't mean we think live attendance is bad by any means.
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There is absolute power in people being live.
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But what we're trying to say is that it isn't the only way to participate in a summit.
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So we pay attention to the actual consumption of the content.
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We usually see watch time spike during the first couple of days and then slowly decline as the event goes on.
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And that's pretty normal.
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Honestly, we see that with email open rates.
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Even if we were hosting live events, we see it slowly dwindle during the event.
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So that's something to keep an eye on.
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That's normal.
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But the data is useful because it can show us what topics are resonating and how people are moving through the event.
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So, for example, if you have a five-day summit and day one has significantly more views than day five, that doesn't necessarily mean that day five was bad.
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People may simply have less time by that point, or they may have got overwhelmed, or they may have watched the sessions that they were most interested first and just done landed on that day.
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So this is why it's really important to look back at the numbers with context.
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We absolutely do keep track of individual session views because session views can tell you something, but they don't tell you everything.
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But they can be really helpful.
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You can start to see which topics are getting more attention and which sessions people are choosing to watch.
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But there is a big caveat here, and that is that you shouldn't automatically assume the most viewed session was the quote unquote best session.
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You really have to look at the bigger picture here.
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Like look at what day was that session on?
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Was it on day one?
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That could be a factor.
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Was that topic particularly relevant to your audience?
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Was the speaker someone who had a very engaged ride or die audience that was going to show up for them no matter what?
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All of those things can really affect your numbers.
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So session views are just a data point.
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They're not a definitive, I should say, ranking of your speakers.
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And we think this is an important distinction because hosts can get themselves into trouble when they start treating every single number like a grade, right?
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Like that session had 500 views and this one had 300.
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So clearly that first speaker was better.
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And that's not really the case.
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That's not always what the data tells you.
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Like it might if you're just looking at the numbers, but like, because all it's telling you is that one session was viewed more.
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And that is useful information.
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But as Jenny was mentioning, some of those other contexts, like the day, the topic and the topic of the summit, or if it was like a ride or die speaker, like you have to use all of that to actually interpret the numbers.
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Another thing we also pay attention to is speaker promotion.
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So we'll look at things like clicks on their affiliate link, emails or social posts sent, and registrations attributed to individual speakers.
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Now, do we put a ton of weight on speaker-generated registrations?
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No, not necessarily, but it is useful information.
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We want to know who promoted and we want to know who didn't.
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And we also want to know which speakers seem to have particularly engaged audiences around a specific topic.
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That information can be helpful when we're evaluating speaker relationships for future events.
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And this is another example of why we're looking at the numbers as information rather than using them to decide that someone is a good or a bad speaker.
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A speaker who didn't generate a ton of registrations may still have been an incredible fit for your audience and delivered an amazing session.
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I mean, I can even think about it in terms of like myself.
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Like I don't have a humongous audience, but I've been in several summits multiple times and I didn't bring in the most registrations that they could have ever had.
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So it's just all relative to what the summit host needs, not necessarily like just people bringing in those big numbers.
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And also a speaker who generated a lot of registrations may have brought people who weren't that necessarily aligned with your like your full offer.
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So maybe they weren't the best people that they brought in, even though they brought in a ton.
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But these numbers give you clues.
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They don't make every decision for you.
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So next up, we want to talk about the VIP pass because this is where things can get really interesting.
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So a VIP conversion can tell you much more than a registration number, but it still depends heavily on what you're actually selling.
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If your VIP pass is primarily like extended access to replays, then a purchase might simply tell you that they want longer access to this content, that they're not going to be able to get it done in that time and they find it interesting and they want to go through it.
00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:39.120
But that is useful, but it doesn't really tell you a whole lot about the deeper demand for your offer or your offer that's coming up.
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So if your VIP pass is basically a bundle of resources, again, someone might be purchasing because they want like one or two specific resources inside it, especially if it's at an insane deal for a product that's included.
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But, and this is what we've been playing around with if you've intentionally designed your VIP pass to support the actual goal of the summit with specific resources, implementation support, or bonuses that just make sense for the topic, then we think that conversion can tell you so much more, especially if it's kind of leading them more towards your post-summit offer, because it can indicate that people are not only interested in the topic of the event, but that they are willing to invest in getting support around that topic.
00:10:19.200 --> 00:10:22.799
And that's an entirely different signal than just somebody purchasing replays.
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Another thing, another thing we look at is like the total number of VIP sales, the revenue, and the conversion rate of that.
00:10:29.759 --> 00:10:41.919
And one of the biggest numbers we pay attention to here is the conversion rate from the free summit attendee into a purchaser because that's what helps us understand whether the offer is converting better, worse, or about on par with what we'd expect.
00:10:42.159 --> 00:10:45.679
Now, if your VIP conversion is low, can you immediately know why?
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Probably not.
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And that's important.
00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:57.039
It could be the pricing, it could be the offer itself, it could be your messaging, it could be the audience, it could be the timing, it could be that the resources aren't aligned enough with what people actually want.
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There are a lot of variables here.
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So again, don't look at one number and immediately decide what caused it.
00:11:03.039 --> 00:11:07.360
We want you to use a number to tell you where you want, might want to investigate for future.
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And then we get to one of the numbers that we think is probably the most important when you're hosting a summit.
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And that is what happened with your post-summit offer.
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Because for most of us, your summit is like the top of the funnel.
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It's getting leads for your post-summit offer.
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It's that launch event.
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And, you know, I'd say most summit hosts are hoping to make the most money from their event at the post-summit offer.
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So we're going to be looking at numbers like the total number of buyers, but more importantly, the conversion rate, the overall revenue, and when we can, how quickly people purchase.
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And this is where your summit needs to connect to your business ecosystem as a whole.
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If you had an amazing summit and everybody loved it, but then you introduce an offer that feels completely disconnected from what they just experienced, you can't be surprised if sales don't follow, right?
00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:04.720
Your summit should be moving people somewhere.
00:12:04.879 --> 00:12:11.360
So when you're evaluating your post-summit sales, don't just ask how many sales did we make, how much money did we make.
00:12:11.600 --> 00:12:17.600
We want you to ask yourself, did the people who came to the summit take the next step we wanted them to take?
00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:19.600
Because that's much more useful.
00:12:19.840 --> 00:12:28.320
So we do think this is an area where we could personally get better about tracking the data over a long period of time, but something we want to work on.
00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:40.799
But sometimes you can tell that someone was already in your audience before the summit, which helps give you some context, like if they've been in your audience for a while versus someone brand new and then they like purchased your post-summit offer.
00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:52.799
So it's worth continuing to pay attention to those sales beyond the immediate summit window, especially if you have like a higher ticket offer that has like a longer sales cycle.
00:12:53.120 --> 00:12:56.240
Now, here's where we're gonna step outside of the spreadsheet for a bit.
00:12:56.720 --> 00:13:02.080
Because some of the most valuable things that come from a summit don't necessarily show up in your analytics.
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So one of those things is relationships.
00:13:04.799 --> 00:13:08.799
So we've had a few opportunities come from summits in so many different ways.
00:13:08.960 --> 00:13:21.519
So future collaborations, affiliate relationships, referrals, podcast opportunities, future customers, people coming back to participate in another summit, speaker relationships that turn into something else later.
00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:23.120
Those things all matter.
00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:28.399
And you may not be able to put a perfect dollar amount next to them immediately, but that doesn't mean that those aren't valuable.
00:13:28.639 --> 00:13:32.639
This is especially important if your summit goal is authority or visibility.
00:13:32.799 --> 00:13:36.000
That can be much harder to quantify than something like sales.
00:13:36.240 --> 00:13:44.159
You might look at new connections that you've made, future collaborations that are now on the calendar, feedback from attendees, and feedback from your speakers.
00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:47.440
Those are all signals that your summit is doing something valuable.
00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:52.799
So we don't want hosts to get so obsessed with the dashboard that they forget to look at what happened between the people.
00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:56.320
Because at its core, a summit is a collaboration.
00:13:56.480 --> 00:13:58.080
It's not just a funnel.
00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:05.120
Okay, so now we're gonna have a little fun with some numbers that can look impressive, but don't necessarily tell you very much.
00:14:05.519 --> 00:14:08.720
So let's start with registration numbers without context.
00:14:08.879 --> 00:14:13.360
So we have already talked about this one, but 5,000 people registered.
00:14:13.519 --> 00:14:14.879
Okay, that sounds impressive.
00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:16.559
But what was the conversion rate?
00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:20.000
How many people were actually interested in the topic?
00:14:20.159 --> 00:14:21.600
How many actually engaged?
00:14:21.759 --> 00:14:25.120
How many bought the VIP offer or your post-summit offer?
00:14:25.279 --> 00:14:27.279
Were they actually the right people?
00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:32.559
The 5,000 people registered doesn't tell you enough in and of itself.
00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:43.200
You need the other details because if you just added 5,000 people who aren't actually a good fit, then I don't think that summit was a success, in my personal opinion, because it's not going to support your overall business.
00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:46.080
Then we have the number of speakers and sessions.
00:14:46.320 --> 00:14:49.120
You're saying, look how many speakers we had, look how many sessions.
00:14:49.279 --> 00:14:51.360
And again, that can sound impressive.
00:14:51.519 --> 00:14:56.000
But more speakers doesn't automatically mean there's going to be more value provided.
00:14:56.159 --> 00:15:00.639
We've talked about this quite a bit throughout, you know, all the episodes we've done recently.
00:15:00.799 --> 00:15:06.159
Sometimes more speakers simply means more content, more decisions, more overwhelm, and more speaker management.
00:15:06.399 --> 00:15:10.240
The number of speakers isn't truly a measure of your quality of your summit.
00:15:10.559 --> 00:15:13.840
In the like same area would be the number of bonuses, right?
00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:15.200
This is another big one.
00:15:15.279 --> 00:15:17.200
It's kind of like look at everything you get.
00:15:17.519 --> 00:15:21.919
But we've said this before: more content is not the same thing as more value.
00:15:22.159 --> 00:15:29.039
20 bonuses that nobody uses aren't necessarily more valuable than one really useful implementation resource.
00:15:29.279 --> 00:15:40.000
So if you're tracking the number of bonuses in your summit, that's fine for like project management, for tracking the value of a bundle, you know, stuff like that, but it's not a success metric.
00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:43.759
And honestly, that's a good distinction to make with metrics in general.
00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:51.120
Some numbers are just useful for managing the project, while other numbers are useful for evaluating the results.
00:15:51.279 --> 00:15:53.279
And those are not always the same thing.
00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:56.799
And this is probably one of the biggest things we want you to take away from this episode.
00:15:56.960 --> 00:15:59.759
The right metrics depend on the goal of your summit.
00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:04.000
If your primary goal is list growth, then yes, your registration numbers are gonna matter.
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But we also want you to pay attention to what happens to that list afterwards.
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Are people staying subscribed?
00:16:09.679 --> 00:16:10.559
Are they engaging?
00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:13.600
Did you attract people who are actually interested in what you do?
00:16:13.840 --> 00:16:22.639
Because adding a bunch of people who immediately unsubscribe doesn't really give you the same result as adding people who stick around and become a true lasting part of your audience.
00:16:22.879 --> 00:16:32.559
Now, if your goal is selling a back-end offer, then you're going to pay more attention to purchases and your conversion rate from the free summit into that post-summit offer.
00:16:32.799 --> 00:16:38.480
If your goal is authority and visibility, that I think is a bit harder to quantify.
00:16:38.799 --> 00:16:47.759
You might look at new relationships, future collaborations, opportunities that come out of the event, and the feedback you're getting from attendees and speakers.
00:16:47.840 --> 00:16:51.840
And this one you might kind of track opportunities as they're coming over time.
00:16:52.080 --> 00:16:58.720
If your goal is testing a new topic or offer, then registration conversion does become especially interesting.
00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:02.240
Are people seeing this topic and saying, yes, that is for me?
00:17:02.399 --> 00:17:06.240
Because that's telling you something about the demand for that particular idea.
00:17:06.400 --> 00:17:12.079
And this is why we don't think there is one magic summit number that every single host needs to obsess over.
00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:14.160
Your goal tells you what matters.
00:17:14.400 --> 00:17:28.079
Now, there is one thing we want to emphasize, and it's that we don't wait until the summit is over, and then we suddenly think, oh, like we should probably figure out what just happened with the event we just hosted.
00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:29.920
We actually build this into our planning.
00:17:30.079 --> 00:17:36.160
So before each summit, we do build a PL, so profit and loss, that tracks the sales by offer.
00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:43.119
So, right, if we have a tiered VIP pass, which we don't really do that anymore, but we also tend to have a bump or an OTO.
00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:45.359
And it does also track it by day.
00:17:45.440 --> 00:17:49.680
And it includes whether something is an affiliate sale or not.
00:17:49.839 --> 00:17:56.319
This allows us to see when sales happen, what the revenue was, what the profit was, and how everything is performing in general.
00:17:56.480 --> 00:18:05.119
We also have a general stats tracker where we are tracking things like unique users, opt-ins, and conversion rates daily.
00:18:05.279 --> 00:18:09.759
I will say Google Analytics typically takes like 48 hours to fully settle.
00:18:09.920 --> 00:18:12.240
So we're like not necessarily immediate.
00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:15.759
We're like two days delay, but we do start tracking that.
00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:21.119
And we're doing that for the registration page, the upgrade page, and the special offer page.
00:18:21.279 --> 00:18:26.400
Though we will say the registration page is a big one, and then the special offer page.
00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:35.680
The upgrade page is just nice to kind of look at, but way less people actually go to that, especially when you're in the registration phase.
00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:39.599
But we basically have these stats mapped out ahead of time, is what we're getting at here.
00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:44.720
We also have a debrief document with placeholders for all the things that we want to evaluate after the summit.
00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:52.720
And we do that before the summit because when you're exhausted at the end of your event, it is really easy to forget what you wanted to look at.
00:18:52.960 --> 00:19:03.200
Also, I think really hard to look back at a summit at the end and then try to determine if it was a success or not if you don't know what you were trying to work towards, right?
00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:06.720
You can look at it with like tainted glasses at that point.
00:19:06.880 --> 00:19:18.640
So we want you to instead of relying on your post-summit brain to remember everything, decide ahead of time what are we going to measure, what are we going to compare, what do we want to know, what is going to make it a success?
00:19:18.720 --> 00:19:22.240
And that makes your debrief and your stats so much more useful.
00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:28.960
Now, if you're a first-time summit host and you're listening to all of this and you're thinking, okay, but you're just giving me like a lot of numbers to track.
00:19:29.119 --> 00:19:31.359
And I thought you said I didn't need to track everything.
00:19:31.599 --> 00:19:33.359
Well, we understand, we hear you.
00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:34.960
So let's make this really simple.
00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:39.039
If you only had to track three things, we would start with these.
00:19:39.279 --> 00:19:41.519
So the first one is registration numbers.
00:19:41.599 --> 00:19:44.640
You need to know how many people said yes to attending the event.
00:19:44.880 --> 00:19:46.480
The second thing is conversion rates.
00:19:46.559 --> 00:19:49.519
So, how well did people move from one step to the next?
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:57.759
So things like not just your registration page conversion, but also your conversion from free attendee to VIP.
00:19:58.079 --> 00:20:04.240
And also once you promote that post-summit offer, you also want to track that conversion rate as well.
00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:12.640
And then the third thing you want to track is your overall sales and profit because ultimately, if your summit is part of your business, you need to know what it actually did financially.
00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:17.359
And then, of course, depending on your goal, you can add in other metrics that matter along the way.
00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:20.240
But those three really just give you a solid starting point.
00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:24.880
And this brings us to what we think the biggest mistake hosts make with summit metrics.
00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:27.680
And that's actually just not looking at them at all.
00:20:27.839 --> 00:20:32.400
So sometimes people avoid the numbers because they're afraid of what they're going to find.
00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:35.359
Maybe registration wasn't as high as they wanted.
00:20:35.519 --> 00:20:42.880
Although you typically see that, because I don't know about us, even before we had our tracking sheets, we were always going into our email marketing system to see registration.
00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:44.400
So you might already know that one.
00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:47.200
But maybe your VIP didn't convert as well.
00:20:47.519 --> 00:20:50.480
Maybe you think your summit was a disaster.
00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:57.839
But when you actually look at the conversion rates, which we think are most important, you might discover that the summit actually performed totally fine.
00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:06.720
Or maybe you felt like the summit was amazing because you had a huge registration number, but then you look at the sales and realize there was a disconnect somewhere.
00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:10.319
The numbers can take some of the emotion out of the evaluation.
00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:14.559
And I think that's incredibly valuable because your summit is a huge project.
00:21:14.799 --> 00:21:16.400
You're emotionally invested in it.
00:21:16.559 --> 00:21:18.559
You've spent a lot of time on it.
00:21:18.799 --> 00:21:22.480
You're probably stressed about it in some way or another.
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:24.240
You've also probably celebrated it.
00:21:24.319 --> 00:21:28.799
I know that's one of the best parts when we actually have like day one and we're seeing everybody engaged.
00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:30.559
That's always really fun and exciting.
00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:36.000
But when it's over, it's very easy to make a judgment based on how you feel about it.
00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:38.720
Whereas the data gives you another perspective.
00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:44.960
It doesn't tell you the whole story, but it gives you something concrete to compare, and that's how you're going to improve.
00:21:45.200 --> 00:21:48.400
So if you remember one thing from this episode, we want it to be this.
00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:54.079
Stats can seem scary, but they're incredibly important for understanding how your summit actually went.
00:21:54.240 --> 00:21:55.759
You don't need to measure everything.
00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:58.640
You need to measure the things that connect to your goal.
00:21:58.880 --> 00:22:03.599
And remember, numbers aren't the only thing that determine whether a summit was success or not.
00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:12.480
Relationships matter, attendee feedback matters, speaker feedback matters, experience itself matters, and the opportunities that come afterwards matter.
00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:15.359
But the numbers give you a really important piece of the puzzle.
00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:20.160
And sometimes they will confirm that something worked, and sometimes they'll show you where something didn't.
00:22:20.319 --> 00:22:24.480
And sometimes they'll also completely change your mind about how well your summit performed.
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:27.359
So don't be afraid to look at your numbers.
00:22:27.599 --> 00:22:32.240
Look at them, understand them, and use them to make better decisions for your next summit.
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:44.960
And speaking of the attendee experience, we've spent a lot of this episode talking about what happens after the summit, what people watched, what they bought, how they engaged, and what the data and what the data tells us.
00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:47.279
But there's another side to all of this.
00:22:47.519 --> 00:22:50.640
What did it actually feel like to attend your summit?
00:22:50.880 --> 00:22:57.759
Because your numbers are ultimately being created by real people having a real experience.
00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:00.559
And that's exactly what we're digging into next.
00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:05.680
So in our next episode, we're talking about your summit is only as good as the experience you create.
00:23:05.839 --> 00:23:08.720
And we're looking at your summit from the attendee perspective.
00:23:08.960 --> 00:23:12.000
Things like what happens before they ever attend the event?
00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:15.359
What does the registration and confirmation experience feel like for them?
00:23:15.599 --> 00:23:16.720
Do they know what to do next?
00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:17.839
Is it easy to navigate?
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.039
Are your sessions flowing in a way that keeps people moving forward?
00:23:21.279 --> 00:23:23.359
Are there opportunities for them to engage?
00:23:23.519 --> 00:23:27.599
Are you giving them enough information or way too much information?
00:23:27.759 --> 00:23:33.440
And what are those little details that make someone feel like you actually thought about their experience going through the event?
00:23:33.680 --> 00:23:41.279
Because ultimately, the attendee experience can impact whether someone engages, buys, remembers you, and even comes back for your next summit.
00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:45.920
So next week, we're stepping away from the spreadsheets and putting ourselves into the attendee's shoes.
00:23:46.079 --> 00:23:50.559
We'll ask the question: what does it actually feel like to attend this summit?
00:23:50.799 --> 00:23:51.839
We'll see you then.
00:23:52.079 --> 00:23:55.759
Thanks for spending time with us today on the Virtual Summit Secrets podcast.
00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:04.079
If this episode was helpful, be sure to share it on social media and tag us at Summit Success Squad or personally share with somebody you know could benefit from it.
00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:06.720
New episodes will be released every Wednesday.
00:24:06.960 --> 00:24:08.400
See you next time.
