Event ROI: A Step-by-Step Guide for Event Success

What is ROI?

ROI, or return on investment, is a fundamental concept in business where you track the amount of money you spend on something versus the amount you spend to make it happen, and then from that determine if it was “worth it.”

To calculate ROI, one can use a simple formula: (Revenue – Total Expenses) / Total Expenses.

This formula allows you to determine the ultimate net value of the investment and evaluate its success.

What is Event ROI?

Event ROI, or Event Return on Investment, is a method that assesses the success and profitability of an event by comparing the return it brings in to the initial investment. This analysis aids in strategic resource allocation and encourages financial accountability.

Event ROI is a crucial metric for businesses, providing a way to assess the effectiveness and impact of events and determine if the investments are meeting the desired goals, thus enabling organizations to justify their expenses to stakeholders.

Various factors contribute to determining Event ROI, including revenue, attendee satisfaction, leads generated, and partnerships formed. Evaluating these aspects provides businesses with valuable insights into the success of their events, enabling them to identify areas for improvement.

To be clear, tracking Event ROI is important for both in-person events and virtual events.

Understanding and measuring Event ROI is essential for event planners, event marketers, and executives at B2B businesses. It allows them to determine the value and impact of their events, ensure accountability, and make informed decisions about future investments. By considering revenue, attendee satisfaction, leads generated, and partnerships established, businesses can adjust their event strategies for maximum returns the next time around.

Importance of Tracking Event ROI

In the fast-paced world of business, every decision needs to be justified, especially when it comes to organizing events. Event planners, event marketers, and business executives are constantly seeking ways to prove the effectiveness and value of their events. One important tool they utilize is tracking event return on investment (ROI).

Why is tracking event ROI important?

1. Accountability: By measuring and analyzing the ROI of events, businesses can understand the impact their events have on the bottom line allowing them to make informed decisions for future events and allocate resources wisely.
2. Justification to Management: Tracking event ROI provides tangible benefits for the business putting on the event. It allows them to demonstrate the value of their events to stakeholders and justify the investment. By tracking metrics such as attendance rate, lead generation, and customer acquisition, businesses can provide concrete evidence of their events’ success.
3. Justification to the Marketing Team: Tracking event ROI offers the opportunity to enhance brand exposure and awareness. Positive press coverage, high attendee satisfaction, and social media buzz generated from events can significantly improve brand perception. This, in turn, can lead to increased customer loyalty and stronger relationships with clients.
4. Justification to the Sales Team: Tracking event ROI helps measure the impact on sales. By analyzing data related to new business generated or deals closed as a direct result of the event, businesses can gauge the effectiveness of their event marketing efforts.

Tracking event ROI is not just a luxury—it is a necessity for event planners, event marketers, and executives at B2B businesses. By doing so, they can confidently justify the resources and efforts invested in events, enhance brand exposure, and measure the impact on sales.

Setting Event Goals and KPIs: The Key to Successful Event Planning

Planning an event can be a complex and time-consuming task. From selecting the perfect venue to coordinating with vendors and attendees, there are countless details to consider. However, before diving into the nitty-gritty of event planning, it is crucial to establish clear and measurable goals. Whether you refer to them as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Objectives, or OKRs (Objective-Key Performance Indicators), aligning your event goals with your company’s objectives is essential for success.

Setting event goals provides a roadmap for the entire planning process. It allows you to strategically focus on what you aim to achieve, ensuring that every decision made during the planning phase supports those goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or improve customer loyalty? Is attendee satisfaction, product training, or social media engagement a goal? Defining your goals will guide your event program, from selecting the right speakers and sponsors to designing engaging experiences for attendees.

Setting clear event goals and aligning them with your company’s KPIs or OKRs is the foundation of successful event planning. By doing so, you ensure that your event is purposeful, measurable, and impactful. So, before you delve into the details of logistics and coordination, take the time to establish your goals and KPIs—it’ll be the catalyst for an event that drives real value for your business.

Identifying key objectives for the event

When it comes to putting on a B2B event, it’s important to have clear objectives in mind. After all, if you’re going to invest time and resources into organizing an event, you want to ensure it’s worth it. But what exactly are the key objectives for such events?

The objectives for B2B events can vary depending on the type of event and the goals that the organizers are trying to achieve. For instance, a trade show may have the primary objective of generating leads and fostering networking opportunities among attendees. Secondary objectives could include educating attendees about industry trends or showcasing new products or services.

On the other hand, a B2B conference may have the primary objective of knowledge sharing and thought leadership. Secondary objectives could include increasing brand visibility or establishing partnerships with other industry players.

It’s worth mentioning that revenue-related key performance indicators (KPIs) are very common objectives for B2B events. Whether it’s through ticket sales, sponsorships, or upselling opportunities at the event, revenue generation is often a crucial objective for event planners and marketers.

For every objective that you want to track, it is imperative to clearly define why that goal is important to your organization. By understanding the significance, you can effectively communicate the value to your stakeholders, gaining their support and buy-in.

Whatever your objectives, determine how you will track them. Aligning the tracking method with the desired outcome is vital in accurately measuring ROI.

Remember, defining measurable goals and tracking them will not only show the benefits of an event but also provide valuable data to optimize your future events. So, keep these principles in mind as you start your event planning journey, and watch your ROI soar.

Example Event ROI Goals

Event goals are an essential part of measuring event ROI (Return on Investment). By setting clear goals for your event, you can effectively measure the success of your efforts and determine the value it brings to your organization. Here are some examples of event goals and the corresponding ROI metrics that can be used to measure them.

1. Increase brand awareness: A common goal for many events is to increase brand visibility and awareness. This can be measured through metrics such as the number of social media mentions of your brand or event hashtag, press coverage, and website traffic generated from the event.
2. Generate leads or new customers: Events are a great opportunity to capture leads and convert them into customers. Metrics such as the number of leads generated, conversion rate, and sales revenue generated from event attendees can help measure the success in this area.
3. Enhance customer loyalty: Events can also be used to strengthen relationships with existing customers. Measurement tools like post-event surveys, NPS scores, or customer feedback can gauge levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
4. Increase employee engagement: Events, like internal SKO meetings, can be a valuable tool for engaging employees and fostering a positive company culture. Metrics to measure employee engagement could include attendance rate, participation in activities, and feedback from employees.
5. Boost revenue: While not all events are directly revenue-focused, it’s important to include at least one event goal that is revenue-related. This could be measured through metrics such as ticket sales, sponsorships, or direct sales made at the event.

To effectively measure these event goals, it’s important to utilize ROI metrics and tools such as event registration platforms, social media monitoring tools, post-event surveys, and CRM systems. These tools can provide valuable data and insights to help justify the investment in your event and optimize future event strategies.

Sources of Revenue for Events

• Ticket Sales: The primary source of revenue for most events is ticket sales. By setting appropriate ticket prices and effectively marketing the event, organizers can attract attendees and generate substantial income.
• Sponsorships: Sponsorships also play a significant role in event revenue. By partnering with businesses that align with the event’s objectives or target audience, organizers can secure financial support in exchange for brand exposure and recognition. Sponsorship benefits can range from logo placement on promotional materials or signage to exclusive marketing opportunities at the event.
• Exhibitors: Exhibitor fees can be another valuable revenue source for events. By offering companies the opportunity to showcase their products or services to attendees, organizers can charge exhibitors a fee for space or booth rentals. This not only generates revenue but also enhances the event experience for attendees by providing them with access to industry leaders and innovative solutions.

In addition to ticket sales, sponsorships, and exhibitor fees, other income sources for events can include advertising or promotional partnerships, merchandise sales, food and beverage sales, and revenue from workshops or educational sessions.

How Social Walls Can Drive Event ROI

In today’s digital age, event planners, event marketers, and executives are constantly searching for innovative ways to maximize their event ROI. Social walls have emerged as a game-changing tool in this pursuit, offering a plethora of benefits and strategies that can drive engagement and ultimately boost the success of any event.

So, what are social walls exactly? They are dynamic displays that aggregate and showcase content using your event hashtag from various social media platforms in real time. They can also provide alternate ways to interact with the social wall for people that are not on social media, like a web form, SMS, or even email.

By integrating social walls into events, organizers can encourage attendee participation, enhance networking opportunities, and amplify the impact of their brand. They can also help to generate more revenue for the event via sponsorship opportunities on the social wall itself.

If you’re interested in having a fully customizable social wall created for your event, you can learn more about Everwall’s social walls here, or schedule a demo here. With our full service offering we often add in unique visuals for event sponsors, like company logos, video overlays, logo tickers, and more.

One of the key benefits of utilizing social walls is the ability to foster engagement among attendees. By displaying user-generated content, such as photos, videos, and posts, on a large screen throughout the event, participants are encouraged to actively contribute and interact with the display, creating a sense of community and excitement.

Because social walls increase the number of social media posts about the event, they can also make it easier to get an unfiltered review of the event, sessions within the event, the attendees preferences and interests, or other interesting information—ultimately providing you with valuable insights that can inform your future marketing strategies.

To ensure maximum impact, event planners should incorporate social walls strategically throughout the event. From showcasing a live feed of event-related hashtags to featuring popular industry influencers’ posts, the possibilities are endless. By curating and highlighting relevant content, social walls can effectively enhance the event experience and drive increased brand exposure.

Post Event ROI Analysis

Post-event analysis is an essential step in justifying the return on investment (ROI) of any event. Whether you’re an event planner, event marketer, or an executive at a B2B business, understanding the importance of analyzing the success of your event is crucial. By doing a comprehensive post-event analysis, you can gain valuable insights on what worked well, areas for improvement, and ultimately, whether the event achieved its intended goals.

To begin, you first need to get the checklist of items that you decided to track from the Identifying key objectives for the event section above, and then go item by item and start gathering the information you need to closeout the KPI on your list.

After you have all the information for each of the KPIs that you set for yourself, you’ll be able to determine if you hit your goals, and then you’re setup for the final step of determining the ROI for your Event: A Post Event Meeting.

The Post Event Meeting

As an event planner, you have one final thing you need to plan—a meeting!

Based on the items you decided to track, you need to get all of the appropriate stakeholders together and discuss the ROI that you achieved for them.

• Sales: If you decided that sales were a goal, then you need the appropriate sales management at your meeting, and then you can report to them any new leads or sales were generated as a result of the event. Also, by tracking the number of follow-up calls or meetings conducted after the event, you can determine the direct impact on revenue—which they’ll likely want to know too.
• Marketing: If brand awareness was a goal, then you probably need management from the marketing team at your meeting. Analyzing email engagement metrics, such as open rates and click-through rates, social media mentions, and press mentions, can help gauge the effectiveness of your event marketing efforts.
• Financial: If your event had a goal of generating revenue, then having the CFO or other financial team members from your company attend will be required too. The double edged sword here is if you created revenue, getting a budget for you next event might be easy, but if not, it can be quite difficult the next time around without major adjustments. Regardless, they should join you in evaluating your event’s ROI.
• Anyone else? Don’t forget any other stakeholders that make sense for you based on your event’s KPIs and goals.

Note: We recommend that you have this meeting with everyone present. If one person didn’t quite get the ROI that they were looking for, but they saw that most others did get it, it’ll make things a lot easier for you overall. They may not have gotten the ROI they wanted, but if they’re a team player, they’ll see that others did and be more supportive.

Now that you have everyone together, go over all the items in detail and use that conversation to determine how to move forward with future events, any changes required, and distribute your key learnings from the event to those that need to know.

Wrapping Things Up

In conclusion, understanding and effectively managing Event ROI is crucial for any event. Whether it’s a small gathering or a large-scale conference, every event represents a significant investment in terms of resources and effort. By meticulously planning, setting clear objectives, and employing tools like social walls, organizations can not only gauge the success of their events but also gain valuable insights for future improvements.

The process of post-event analysis further solidifies the importance of ROI evaluation, allowing for a thorough understanding of an event’s impact and the formulation of strategies for enhanced outcomes.

As we move forward in an increasingly digital and interconnected world, the ability to accurately measure and maximize the returns on event investments will undoubtedly remain a key differentiator for successful businesses.