Data literacy is fundamental for Digitising Events. Demystifying this concept is crucial, breaking down perceived barriers and viewing it as an essential, achievable skill. It also positively impacts your pocket because companies pay 26% more for data-literate candidates.

Data literacy does not mean you need to become a 'Data Scientist', nor does it mean you need to become a database or data transformation expert.

Understanding why it should matter to you professionally is essential, something that often needs more attention than it deserves. So here are the reasons to take it seriously, with the most important first.

Data Literacy in Digitising Events is a Career Necessity

The biggest reason. You! Your personal development and keeping relevant.

All industries are becoming much more data-driven, and you do not have to do an intense amount of Googling to find bold stats and statements for all the leading research and analyst firms like "The Most In-Demand Skill by 2030", "an average of USD 11,000 more per annum," "92% of business executives think it's essential for their employees to be data literate," and "by 2023, data literacy will become crucial in driving business value."

Embracing data literacy makes sense for you and your career, whether you want to stay in events or want out.

Data literacy is using data and statistics to argue your positions with evidence-based arguments. Read, write, and communicate data in context by understanding the nature of different data sources, spotting trends, and making informed decisions or suggesting outcomes.

It may sound scary, but it need not be. There is a habit in the Data Science community to use fancy words for simple things; don't let that put you off. As Chip Heath puts it in the introduction to his and Karla Starr's excellent book Making Numbers Count: "But here's a secret: nobody really understands numbers. Nobody."

If this alone is not enough, what follows are some organisational benefits of committing to Data Literacy and investing time and effort in becoming a data-driven events business by Digitising Events. Let's explore how data literacy builds trust with audiences and customers.

Building Trust with Audiences and Customers

In my podcast with Dan Loosemore, he talks extensively about building trust with data. This trust driven by data literacy is the key to achieving 100% retention on their digital portfolio. It is the cornerstone of the digital transformation in events.

You can forge a very different partnership by sharing data openly with attendees and customers. Individuals' personal experiences drive the expectation of this openness, so they expect it in their professional lives.

As a mini case study, subjective arguments are tough to win. People almost invariably take immediate and defensive, often opposing positions. For example, when addressing a content issue for a sponsored webinar.

Your experience may tell you that the content provided will not fly with the intended audience, but how do you broach that with a sponsor?

Enter an argument based on data: "The average registrations we expect at this point for your webinar is 20 people. You have 5. We should look at some of the messaging and content - because all promotion to this point is the same for all Webinars."

A data-centric customer relationship is much more likely to become a relationship based on trust and a partnership, usually a long-term one.

The above example heavily relies on the following reasons for embracing data literacy.

Predicting Trends and Patterns for Digitised Events

As event professionals, we can analyse historical data to identify patterns and trends, which opens up many possibilities, not least the example above for challenging rubbish content.

Predictability is incredibly useful for any business, particularly live events where your product is incredibly visible.

As an example, in a lot of our work on 'The DiG', is building prediction models for key (acquisition) channels, and one of the most useful is organic traffic. The buzz of your organic traffic is almost like white noise. It is very predictable, and in the aggregate, you can't make it jump around too much, so it becomes a valuable tool for predicting an event outcome.

If the conversion of this year's event edition from 'organic' traffic is significantly off, you may have a problem, or you could be in for a runaway success depending on which side of the dial it's on.

In this way, simple scores in context can provide foresight into potential future outcomes and enable pre-emptive measures or strategic planning to capitalise on predicted trends.

By analysing historical data around Digitised Events, we embrace data-driven decision-making, identifying patterns and trends that inform our strategies.

Optimising and Increasing Audience Engagement

In events, the visibility of the final product creates a lot of pressure. Digitised Events embrace data literacy and analytics to create more predictability and deliverability, particularly around increasing audiences and engagement.

Understanding data through advanced event analytics enables event organisers to better understand their audiences, from demographic details to behaviours and preferences. This insight allows for more personalised experiences, increasing engagement and satisfaction and higher event success metrics.

For example, not all Key Channels are the same, and audiences behave very differently, but predictability depends on the Key Channel which drove them to engage with your event.

Knowing and monitoring the characteristics allows you to place effort in the right areas and grow audiences and engagement by over 20%. Data literacy lets you know where to look and create extraordinary outcomes.

Enhancing Decision-Making and Avoiding Onsite Nightmares

We can make more informed decisions when data is genuinely joined and placed in a team that can understand and interpret data.

It can have far-reaching consequences. Knowing that a speaker or exhibitor is getting below-average attention on their profile or session eight or nine weeks out from an event can enable action before it is too late.

Providing this information in context may give that organisation's event or marketing manager the ammunition they need to galvanise their organisation.

In one case, analysing content consumption trends led to identifying a whole new subject area, which resulted in double-digit growth.

More crucially, it can help you optimise when to activate key channels to save money on the phases where they are the least effective—particularly important for paid media such as PPC.

Data literacy allows for decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions or guesswork.

Democratising Data Access and Creating Visibility

Digitising Events involves multiple stakeholders - event planners, marketing teams, and sponsors to attendees. Data literacy ensures that everyone involved can understand, interpret, and use the data generated by Digitised Events, empowering them to make data-driven decisions and actions.

There is also a more fundamental impact of having a cohesive data strategy combined with data literacy, particularly in our world of distributed working. It gives visibility around activity, creating an environment where evidence-based decisions are the expectation and increasingly normalised.

A Culture of Innovation & Empowered Employees with Data Literacy

Data literacy is the foundation of a data-driven business culture. By encouraging data literacy within an organisation, teams can become more proactive, innovative, and adaptive to change. This agility can be a significant advantage as we move to truly Digitise Events and create more innovative and symbiotic experiences.

Once you remove the subjective, employees are empowered by data literacy. When everyone at all levels understands data and can make decisions based on that understanding, it democratises the decision-making process. It can lead to more innovation, collaboration, and overall business success.

The Final Case for Data Literacy

It is still all about YOU! Your long-term earning power and ability to ride the digital tiger. We are in a world where data is everywhere - so much so that it can lead to paralysis or even reversion to gut feel because it's all too complex.

If you build the skill, and become comfortable with data and interpret it to drive action. You are developing a fundamental talent that matters in a world where tech and data will be exponentially relevant and in desperate demand, which will help you Digitise Events using the scientific method.