Measuring event ROI: Impossible Feat or Simple Process?

If you’re responsible for your brand’s marketing events and campaigns, you need to know more than how to pull them off without a hitch. You also have to be able to show what they’re worth. Even if you’re thoroughly prepared, focused on your goals, and properly resourced with all the teams and tools you need, demonstrating your event’s return on investment (ROI) is critical. Neglecting this piece of the puzzle might be the very thing that prevents your event from being funded again in the future. Do you know how to measure the value of your events?

You’re not wrong if your mind goes straight to money – you certainly need to keep close tabs on your bottom line. Make sure that you know exactly how much you’re spending, what savings you’re making on bulk bookings for hotels and catering, and whether you’re within your budget. There’s no doubt that your execs and funders are going to ask you to report on this after the fact, so keep your number crunching up to scratch. But when it comes to eventing, that’s not where ROI ends.

The power of planning

In one of our previous blogs, we looked into the complexities of eventing ROI, and mentioned some of the more intangible and difficult-to-measure outcomes, including attendee satisfaction, brand awareness and new leads. And then there are the referrals, the deal closures, and the number of cross-selling opportunities gained. If you want to report on these metrics after your event, you’re going to have to prioritise them upfront – and put the software in place to help you.

Before your event kicks off, speak to your event’s key stakeholders, including your execs, partners and content curators, to define exactly what they want to achieve. You might also consider conducting pre-event surveys with prospective attendees so that you’re aware of their needs and concerns. These results can be used to benchmark your outcomes and to create the necessary graphs and gains your senior team want to see.

To help you along the way, make sure you install the right software ahead of time. It’s important that you have a customer relationship manager (CRM) platform in place, for example, that tracks the meetings you hold, the contacts your team makes, the deals you secure and the cross-selling opportunities you capitalise on. Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are options to consider.

After the fact

Developing an online platform or app for your event on which delegates can register, plan their meetings and communicate publically to other attendees, can give you a host of valuable data. This information can prove immensely useful once your event has wrapped up, allowing you to follow up on any conversations that began during the event but didn’t yet conclude in a sale. Every follow-up stands to increase your ROI.

Post-event interaction through your (extensive and well-curated) database and your social media channels is also critical. Speak to your delegates about whether the event met their expectations and what they would like to see in the future. This will help you to know whether you achieved your outcomes, and will help you plan accordingly going forward.

Having these tricks up your sleeve makes ROI a simple process, rather than an impossible feat – and one that you simply cannot do without. If you need help choosing the right approach to measure the ROI of your event, speak to Worx Group. With our years in the industry, we’ve got all the skills and resources you need.