Virtual Magic Show: How to Tell Whether It Actually Worked
Virtual Magic Show: How to Tell Whether It Actually Worked
Whoever booked the session gets asked afterwards whether it was worth it, and the usual answer is an attendance figure and a few nice comments in the chat. That's not evidence, and anyone controlling a budget knows it.
Worth doing better, partly because the honest answer is frequently good. I'm Magical Katrina, an award winning magician and mentalist, and I want to set out how to evaluate a virtual magic show properly, including where the limits of measurement genuinely are.
Attendance Is the Weakest Metric
Start with the number everyone reports. Attendance tells you how effective your promotion was and how obliged people felt, which are both worth knowing and neither of which is the outcome you were after.
A well promoted session with a senior sponsor gets good attendance regardless of quality. A poorly promoted excellent one doesn't. If attendance is your only measure, you're evaluating your internal communications rather than the session, and next year you'll draw the wrong conclusion about what to repeat.
Drop Off Tells You More
The metric almost nobody looks at and the most honest one available. How many people who joined were still there at the end.
On a virtual session with no obligation to stay, that number is a genuine measure of whether the thing held people. Most platforms report it, most organizers never check it, and it's considerably more informative than the headline. If ninety percent of attendees stayed to the end of a virtual magic show, you have real evidence. If half left after fifteen minutes, you have something to act on.
Ask Three Questions, Not Fifteen
Practical, since long surveys go unanswered by everyone except the people with strong feelings. Three questions sent within a day produce a considerably better response rate and more usable answers.
Worth asking: whether they'd attend something similar again, whether they spoke to anyone they don't normally work with, and one open question about what they'd remember. That last one is the most useful, since specific answers indicate genuine impact and generic ones indicate a pleasant hour. Compare the specificity of responses rather than counting satisfaction scores.
Cross Team Contact Is the Real Outcome
Worth measuring explicitly, since it's frequently the actual objective. If you booked this to get people from different parts of the organization interacting, ask whether that happened rather than assuming it did.
A single question about whether someone spoke to a colleague they don't normally work with gives you a number you can report and compare year on year. It's also the outcome most likely to justify repeating the spend, since connection across teams is something organizations genuinely care about and struggle to produce deliberately.
Compare Against Doing Nothing
The comparison that's usually missing. The question isn't whether the session was excellent in the abstract, it's whether it was better than the alternative use of that hour and that budget.
For a distributed team with no other shared moments, the alternative is nothing at all, which makes the bar low and the case easy. For an organization running four other events that quarter, the comparison is harder and worth making honestly. Framing it against the real alternative rather than against perfection produces a more defensible case and a more useful conclusion.
Don't Target Engagement Survey Scores
Worth saying plainly, since it's a trap. Somebody will suggest measuring the session against your annual engagement survey, and that comparison will make the session look useless.
Engagement scores move on pay, workload, management, and career progression, not on an hour of entertainment, and a single session will never show up in them. Claiming otherwise invites the obvious rebuttal and undermines the genuine case. Measure what the session could plausibly affect rather than what you'd like it to affect, which is the difference between an honest evaluation and a claim somebody will dismantle.
What One Session Genuinely Can't Do
Being clear about this strengthens the rest. A virtual magic show doesn't build culture, fix retention, change how people feel about their manager, or resolve anything structural.
What it can do is give a dispersed workforce a shared experience, produce contact between people who don't normally interact, provide an hour people enjoyed in a calendar otherwise full of meetings, and generate goodwill towards whoever arranged it. Those are modest, real, and worth the money. An evaluation claiming more than that is easier to attack than one claiming exactly that.
Ask Whether People Talk About It Afterwards
The soft signal worth noticing, since it's the most telling one. Did it come up in conversation the following week, in team meetings, in the chat, unprompted.
Things people mention without being asked are the things that landed. That isn't a number and it's genuinely diagnostic, and anyone who has run internal events knows the difference between a session that produced a week of references and one that produced a satisfaction score. Note it, since it's the closest thing to an honest verdict you'll get.
Build the Case for Next Time
Practically, the point of measuring is deciding whether to do it again. Collect the drop off rate, three survey answers, the cross team contact number, and any unprompted references, and you have a page that's considerably more persuasive than an attendance figure.
It also tells you what to change. Low attendance with high retention means promote it harder. High attendance with early drop off means reconsider the format or the length. Good numbers with nothing memorable in the open responses means it was pleasant rather than notable. Each of those points somewhere different, which is the value of measuring at all.
Why Book Magical Katrina
If you'd like a session that stands up to this kind of evaluation, here's my case. I'm a member of the Magic Circle in London and the Academy of Magical Arts in Hollywood, I've earned multiple magic awards, and I've performed for companies including Formula 1, the Olympics, Porsche, Zapier, and the Ritz Carlton, with appearances on Penn & Teller: Fool Us. My virtual material is genuinely participatory rather than something people watch, which is what produces retention and the specific answers your open question is looking for. I'm also happy to tell you honestly if a session isn't the right use of your budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why isn't attendance a good measure?
Because it tells you how effective your promotion was and how obliged people felt, rather than whether the session worked. A well promoted event with a senior sponsor gets good attendance regardless of quality, and a poorly promoted excellent one doesn't. Measuring attendance alone means evaluating your internal communications rather than the session.
What should we measure instead?
Drop off, which almost nobody checks and which is the most honest signal available. On a session with no obligation to stay, how many people were still there at the end is a genuine measure of whether it held people. Most platforms report it, and ninety percent staying to the end is real evidence.
What should we ask in a survey?
Three questions within a day, since long surveys are answered only by people with strong feelings. Whether they'd attend something similar again, whether they spoke to anyone they don't normally work with, and one open question about what they'd remember. The specificity of answers to that last one matters more than any satisfaction score.
How do we measure the networking effect?
Ask directly whether someone spoke to a colleague they don't normally work with, which gives you a number you can report and compare year on year. It's frequently the actual objective and the outcome most likely to justify repeating the spend, since cross team connection is something organizations care about and struggle to produce deliberately.
Should we compare it to our engagement survey?
No, and somebody will suggest it. Engagement scores move on pay, workload, management, and progression rather than on an hour of entertainment, so a single session will never appear in them. Claiming otherwise invites the obvious rebuttal and undermines the genuine case. Measure what the session could plausibly affect.
What can't a single session do?
Build culture, fix retention, change how people feel about their manager, or resolve anything structural. What a virtual magic show can do is give a dispersed workforce a shared experience, produce contact between people who don't normally interact, and provide an hour people enjoyed. Claiming exactly that is harder to attack than claiming more.
Is there a signal that isn't a number?
Whether people mention it unprompted the following week, in conversation, team meetings, or the chat. Things people bring up without being asked are the things that landed, and anyone who has run internal events knows the difference between a session producing a week of references and one producing a satisfaction score.
How do we decide whether to repeat it?
Collect the drop off rate, three survey answers, the cross team contact number, and any unprompted references. Low attendance with high retention means promote harder, high attendance with early drop off means reconsider format or length, and good numbers with nothing memorable in the open responses means it was pleasant rather than notable.
Measure What It Could Plausibly Move
Evaluating a virtual magic show honestly produces a better case than overclaiming, because the genuine effects are modest and defensible while the inflated ones are easy to dismantle. Check drop off rather than attendance, ask three questions rather than fifteen, measure cross team contact explicitly, compare against the real alternative rather than perfection, and notice whether anybody mentions it a week later.
Do that and you'll know whether to book another one, which is the only question the exercise is actually for.
Reach out with your event details, and I'll tell you honestly what it can and can't do for you.