Event ROI is simple, right? Value of (business won - amount spent) / amount spent.
Hold your calculators. Every organization looks at event success differently, and you need to make sure yours is properly set-up for event measurement.
We're here to help. In our newest ebook, we share common event ROI measurements and processes for B2B event marketers from the brains of B2B event marketers. We dig into it all: different event types, partnering with sales, the most common event attribution models, and the top KPIs and metrics being tracked right now.
But before you do that -- before you measure the impact of your events program and knock your boss's socks off -- you need to have the right foundation in place. That means, understanding and aligning with the metrics your company already uses, and making sure you're tracking every bit of data coming out of every event.
Here's how.
If your goal is to uncover the impact of events on buying behavior, you need to understand the metrics your company uses to track prospects, opportunities, and new deals. Here are the most common ones:
a) Average duration of the sales cycle. This helps determine your influence window for events.
For example: Say your average deal cycle spans 30 days. If you host an event 90 days prior to a deal closing -- and prospects from that account attend -- that event probably didn’t influence the sale considerably. On the other hand, if you host the event 15 days prior to close – when prospects are weighing and evaluating their options – that event likely did influence the deal closing.
b) Average deal size. Understanding this metric can help you forecast event ROI before deals even close, using the formula Deal Size X Number of Prospect Accounts in Attendance.
For example: if your average deal size is $50,000 and your event draws 100 different prospect accounts, you could forecast that the event could impact as much as $5,000,000.
c) Average conversion rate. To be more precise with your forecasts, you need to understand average conversion rates. This is the formula: Deal Size X Number of Prospect Accounts in Attendance X Conversion Rate.
For example: say your average account-to-deal conversion rate from event attendees is 15%. The calculation would be $50,000 (average deal size) X 100 (accounts) X 15% = $750,000. In other words, you can forecast confidently that your event can help drive $750,000 in revenue.
Understanding these high-level company metrics will help you forecast event success more accurately. If you are on the hook to help generate a certain amount of pipeline or revenue, you can back up the number of events and attendees needed to hit that goal.
Without the right data in the right place, you can’t effectively calculate ROI.
Before you dig into the measurement process, make sure you’ve got what you need.
Here’s what data to look for:
1. Do you have interaction data from all events (registrants, attendees, no-shows)?
2. Do you have complete business contact information for all event registrants (first name, last name, company, job title, business email address, phone number)?
3. Does your event data live in campaigns within your systems of record (e.g., marketing automation, CRM, etc.)?
4. In your CRM system, has your sales team accurately added event attendees to opportunities that resulted from (or were influenced by) your events?
5. Are you time-stamping opportunity stages so you can measure event influence – such as impact on pipeline velocity following an event – as opportunities move through the funnel?
It’s difficult to wrangle event data when it lives in different systems, and especially when it’s on unclaimed paper name tags, business cards, slips of paper, Google sheets, etc.
It’s nearly impossible without the right tools – integrated ones – that enable automated processes and real-time data tracking and measurement. Make sure you put these tools and processes in place to calculate event ROI continuously and consistently.
ROI measurement isn’t one-size-fits-all. It starts with determining your actual event investment, which is often more complicated than it sounds. Make sure your organization knows all the costs associated with events, so everyone is clear on what is considered the actual investment.
What costs do you include in your investment?
ROI calculations become useless when the “I” isn’t consistent. Ideally you want to be able to compare apples to apples across events. For example, you don’t want one
event to include travel costs but another event to exclude it.
Here are a couple common ways companies think about calculating their costs:
• Only hard costs (don’t forget shipping, even if it’s on the
company’s account!)
• Hard costs + marketing travel and expenses
• Hard costs + all travel for staff attendees (marketing,
sales, company leadership, etc.)
• Hard costs + time allocation + travel and expenses
You're almost on your way to event ROI. Download our free guide to get everything else you need: attribution models, event types, and more.
