Three little words.
One big thing every business cares about.
Return on investment (ROI).
Marketers everywhere are feeling the pressure to show the value of their work. When it comes to events, this requires smart budgeting, thoughtful planning, and properly predicting expected event performance.
The easiest way to do all of that? Using a tool that does the math for you.
In this article, we’ll walk through our four-step process for setting and measuring event goals using our custom event ROI calculator.
The first step is arguably the most important.
To set realistic ROI goals, you’ll need a list of historical event data.
If you don’t already have these numbers, you’re not alone. Marketers cite lack of event data as one of their biggest challenges.
Reach out to your revenue operations and marketing operations team to get a list of these metrics for each of your programs:
Note: For virtual programs, feel free to swap the meetings set and meetings held metrics for other stats like your attendance to demo request conversion rate or registration to hand raiser conversion rate. Whatever you choose for these inputs, make sure they’re validated by your operations team.
Ultimately, these metrics will help accurately calculate the following ROI goals for your events:
We’ll talk about this more in the next step.
Once you have all the performance metrics for all of your programs, download the event ROI calculator. (It’s free, and we won’t ask for your email.)
Open the calculator and click File > Make a copy to save your own editable version. Next, open the Goal-Setting Calculator tab and input your validated metrics into their corresponding fields in the Goal Setting Inputs column.
Unlike the rest of the inputs, you can change up the numbers under Campaign Spend and Target Return on Campaign Spend as needed.
Adjusting the amount of your campaign spend will allow you to explore how different budgets will impact your event goals. We recommend setting your target return at a baseline of 2.00x, but feel free to edit this number to align with your specific business objectives.
After you enter your metrics, the Event Goals column will automatically calculate your goals based on your campaign spend, target event ROI, and historical event data.
Once your event goals have been calculated, copy the number under the New Business Closed-Won Revenue and open the Event ROI Performance Tracker tab.
This is where you’ll track your expected ROI against the actual ROI for your events. Paste your revenue goal under the Expected Closed-Won Revenue column, then fill out your event cost, RSVPs, attendees, number of opportunities, pipeline created, and actual closed-won revenue post-event.
We recommend creating separate performance tracker tabs for each of your programs to measure individual program performance. You can also create a separate universal tracking tab to measure performance across all your programs.
The last step is simple: show your revenue leadership team the impact of your work.
The spreadsheet is shareable so they can pop in and view your expected and actual ROI for your programs whenever needed. We recommend linking it in your weekly, monthly, or quarterly performance updates to make it accessible to everyone your team.
Being able to predict and prove event ROI is what keeps businesses investing in events.
In fact, 77% of marketers say events are the most effective marketing channel for their business.
To prove the effectiveness of your own programs, start tracking your historical event data, use it to set goals, and then report on the actual ROI of your programs to better forecast future event performance.
