A staggering 53% of marketers aren’t measuring opportunities created from their events.
Around 54% report they’re not measuring registrations either.
Without these metrics, they’re struggling to attribute events to company revenue and fully understand the impact of their programs.
When it comes down to it, the proof of events is in the numbers. After all, they’re what tell the true success of events.
Here are some of the most common events used in the buying journey and the event success metrics we recommend tracking.
Purpose of event: At their core, thought leadership events are about building brand awareness and educating your audience. They aren’t about promoting your product or service, but instead about establishing yourself as an authority and expert in your industry.
At Splash, we often ask customers and prospects to join our thought leadership webinars as guest speakers. If you’re looking to land an account, asking them to share their expertise on stage with you is a great way to start forming your business relationship and greatly expand your event ROI in the long run.
Buying stage: Problem recognition and information search
Event goals: Increase brand awareness, generate leads, drive high event ROI
How to measure event success:
Purpose: Third-party events can typically be summed up as any non-owned event. Think conferences, road shows, and trade shows. You can choose to sponsor these events, host your own wraparound events, co-host events with partners, or all of the above. The purpose of these events is to meet a majority of your audience where they already are and start building relationships.
Buying stage: Problem recognition and information search or solution evaluation and purchase decision
Event goals: Capture leads, source and influence pipeline, generate high event ROI
How to measure event success:
Purpose of event: Product-led events can cover a range of purposes: giving buyers a first (or deeper) look at your platform, teaching how your product supports industry best practices, addressing a problem, and showcasing first-hand how your product solves it.
An example: At Splash, we host a weekly 30-minute webinar to overview the product for buyers interested in learning more. We also host a monthly product series to address a common pain or struggle for our audience and demonstrate how to use Splash to solve it.
Buying stage: Solution evaluation and purchase decision or purchase and post-purchase evaluation
Event goals: Source and influence opportunities, maximize event ROI
How to measure event success:
Purpose of event: The bottom-of-funnel, or closer events, are all about identifying and addressing any buying holdups to get deals across the finish line. These events are typically smaller gatherings for a specific audience with curated content or discussion topics. The purpose of these are simple: to seal the deal.
Buying stage: Purchase and post-purchase evaluation
Event goals: Close deals, generate closed-won revenue, deliver high event ROI
How to measure event success:
Purpose of event: Customer events are focused on retaining and expanding your existing business. While a majority of event marketing prioritizes new business, current customers shouldn’t be forgotten. Even if these events don’t result in immediate ROI, they provide your team with a wealth of knowledge about your customer base and will better educate the rest of your marketing and sales teams about what your ideal customer cares about.
Buying stage: Purchase renewal and expansion evaluation
Event goals: Retain and expand existing business, build customer loyalty, generate recurring revenue
How to measure event success:
Events are one of the best ways to impact business growth. Just look at some of these stats:
But if you’re not measuring events, there’s no way to prove their effectiveness.
Whether you have a fully stacked business operations team to support or you’re running this effort solo, measuring event success is the key to showing how your work is making a difference in the business.
