The ROI of Event Marketing
When I started my career in Event Marketing, the word Marketing was conveniently omitted from the job title. I was an Event Manager. The only Marketing involved was letting the Marketing team know how many people had showed up to the event. Those were simpler times. As the old saying goes, ignorance was bliss.
Fast forward to 2016, 12 years later, and the old saying has been changed completely. Ignorance is no longer bliss, it is just ignorance.
We can no longer just throw money at events and hope for the best. As budgets are scrutinized more deeply, and companies depend on all aspects of Marketing to be an income generator, rather than a cost center, we are now responsible to prove our actions and decisions.
But how do we prove the unknown? Where it was once acceptable to show a full theater as a KPI achieved, we now know that a good portion of those guests may not have been potential customers. Where it was once demanded that we stay within budget for an event, we now know that budgets should be more fluid based on the desired outcome of the experience.
So how do we move from “Ignorance is Bliss”, to “Data-Driven Event Marketing”? It is easier than you think. I’ve put together a list of 7 data sets that I have found to be the most important and impactful for proving the event was worthwhile, and worth repeating, or more importantly, not worth repeating.
1. Email/ Digital Invitations
Design 101 says that the packaging is the most important part of the delivery. From your subject line, to your messaging, all aspects of your invitation must be taken into account before hitting the send button. Is it an email you would open? If the answer is no, don’t send it. Make sure you test, test, test, and preferably with an unbiased, outside source.
If you can enlist your marketing team to back up the event with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter posts, as well as website updates, blogs, and newsletters, so that your guests are more familiar with the content, location, time, guest speakers, entertainment, etc., you’ll have a much more successful open rate.
2. Open Rate
It is very important to know your audience. Knowing exactly who you want to attend your event will ensure a better open rate for your invitation based on relevance and interest. The greater open rates will begin to prove the worthiness of the event itself. A greater open rate equals a greater attendance of the appropriate people.
3. Attendance
So, the event is starting in 15 minutes and only half the chairs are full. Where is everyone? Rather than set yourself up for day of panic attacks, make sure you do the following. Send out weekly reminders to your “Yes” list. And always send out a “Day Of” reminder to maximize butts in seats. If you’ve followed steps 1 and 2, the “Yes” attendees should be the right people, so let’s make sure they actually show up!
4. Socialization
Were your attendees breaking down the four walls of your event and sharing the information they learned to a larger audience? Did you create low friction opportunities for them to share your information? Was the event #hashtag properly utilized pre-event and displayed prominently during the event? Were your speakers’ LinkedIn profiles and Twitter handles displayed on slides, printed materials, and on the website? Are you planning on having a dedicated person or team available on site to communicate with your audience members who are engaging your brand/ speakers/ other guests on social?
The post event social metrics are a valuable addition to your overall event ROI reporting. If your social footprint was low, look to enhance your social efforts for the next event with the suggestions above.
5. Spend vs. Return
This is probably the most important ROI aspect, and also the hardest to capture. For my events, I work toward a 5X return. That is to say, for every dollar I spend on an event, I want to make five dollars back. Tracking this information depends on a vital partnership with your sales team, as well as someone who works within your CRM platform. To use Salesforce as an example, your CRM platform manager must create a campaign within Salesforce with the name of the event you’re tracking. This way, when your sales team enters prospect/ customer data into Salesforce, they can mark which event that person’s sales cycle began. This allows that sales cycle to be tracked, and thusly their spend can be attributed back to the event that was marked in the CRM platform.
Having your CRM manager send you monthly reports showing the customer lifecycle spend helps you prove, over a number of months, the actual ROI of your event, and gives you definitive proof of whether an event is worth repeating.
6. Overall Annual Event Comparison
It’s also important to look at your entire event calendar holistically and see your winners and losers. This is especially helpful when planning for future events. When plotted on a chart, perhaps an event that only made 2X ROI isn’t so bad if another event had a 6X return. Rather than cutting the 2X return event, maybe this is an opportunity to adjust, rethink, or experiment with a different approach.
It is also a great way to show leadership why you are making certain decisions. It is much easier to agree and accept a decision based on objective data, vs. subjective date.
7. Post Event Surveys
Although surveys have a typically low open rates, when people do choose to open and take your surveys, the data captured can be vital feedback. I always recommend both an external and an internal survey. Feedback and criticism are extremely valuable tools for improvement. And we always want to be improving.
In short, we can no longer operate in vacuum. As Event Marketers, we have to be able to definitively prove the value of our events, and argue in favor of our budget asks with clear, objective data that leaves our leadership without questions.
-Tom Spano @TomSpano
Director, Event Marketing
SteelHouse, Inc.