6 data-driven event planning tactics to increase your ROI

6 data-driven event planning tactics to increase your ROI

While ROI is a pow­er­ful met­ric, only a few event plan­ners are able to max­imise and mea­sure it well. A com­mon ques­tion we often get from many peo­ple is, how do you max­imise ROI in an event? It’s no secret that track­ing, mea­sur­ing, and increas­ing event ROI is crit­i­cal for the con­tin­ued suc­cess of your event. Yet, it’s tricky and quite chal­leng­ing to get clar­i­ty and con­sen­sus on how to increase your ROI.

Good news! In this arti­cle, we’ll men­tion 6 effec­tive strate­gies and tac­tics to get the most out of your events.

Sum­ma­ry


    1. Keep focused on the ultimate business goal of your event

    Set­ting reg­u­lar goals and focussing on them pro­pels your event to success.
    What kind of expe­ri­ence do you want to offer? Are you try­ing to improve cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion? Offer­ing ample net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties? Or launch­ing a new prod­uct or ser­vice? Do you want to reach a new glob­al audi­ence? Are you plan­ning an event to sup­port a cause? List all your goals and think about that spe­cif­ic goal that can make your event stand out.

    Once you’ve a strate­gic goal, you’ll eas­i­ly define the direc­tion in which the event is aligned.
    Always keep in mind that your ulti­mate goal should be in line with the mis­sion and vision of your event. By hit­ting on each of these, you may even expand your attendee pool, as event goers may be com­pelled to refer cowork­ers and friends to the event.

    2. Set your objectives long before your event takes place

    Before you even think of plan­ning an event, define your objec­tives and the pur­pose of your event.

    Defin­ing your objec­tives and the pur­pose of your event can help you stay aligned through­out the event plan­ning process. More­over, set­ting objec­tives enables you to avoid wast­ing resources because every coin you spend relates to your guid­ing purpose.

    Prob­a­bly, you’ve heard about SMART objec­tives. I’m going to explore SMART objec­tives and not goals. But what’s the dif­fer­ence? Well, event goals are the rea­sons you want to have the event, while event objec­tives refer to how you get there.

    • Spe­cif­ic. Your objec­tives should be clear, con­cise, and straight to the point. Avoid ambi­gu­i­ty and know what you’ll do and how you’ll do it. For exam­ple, your objec­tive could be framed as, ‘enrolling 40% of the total audi­ence vis­it­ing my event’s website’.
    • Mea­sur­able. Quan­ti­ta­tive­ly eval­u­ate your objec­tive so that you know if you’ve achieved your goal. Some mea­sur­able out­comes of an event include; the num­ber of atten­dees, gen­er­at­ed rev­enue, over­all return on invest­ment, reg­is­tra­tions, etc.
    • Achiev­able. Cre­ate objec­tives that are with­in your reach and moti­vate you to suc­ceed. While you may want to be too ambi­tious, ensure they are real­is­tic so that you achieve them.
    • Rel­e­vant. Ensure that your objec­tive relates back to your busi­ness goals. If it does­n’t, don’t waste time pur­su­ing it. Research­ing gives you an idea of what’s rel­e­vant to your audi­ence and brand.
    • Time-bound. Your objec­tives should have a defined start date and end date. This means that your objec­tive is aligned with­in a spe­cif­ic time­frame, and any­one act­ing upon it or view­ing it knows the deadline.

    3. Identify your data points

    Now that you’ve defined your goals and set your objec­tives, which data points should you mea­sure for your event? Here are event plan­ning data points that you should focus on for increased ROI.

    • Num­ber of attendees
    • Social media stats and activities
    • Web traf­fic and conversions
    • Num­ber of Food & Bev­er­age sales at your event
    • Pre-event sur­veys
    • Post-event feed­back

    4. The tools you need to track event ROI

    Armed with your data points, you’ll need tools for mea­sur­ing your even­t’s effec­tive­ness and suc­cess. Here are tools to help you track your event ROI.

    • Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM). A CRM soft­ware helps you man­age and track cus­tomer rela­tion­ships and the infor­ma­tion asso­ci­at­ed with them. Even bet­ter, if you use a CRM specif­i­cal­ly con­ceived for events, con­nect­ing the data from all your events, you will make sure to boost your revenue.
    • Ana­lyt­ics tools such as Google Ana­lyt­ics. Ana­lyt­ics tools help you assess traf­fic data and track spe­cif­ic user activ­i­ties, includ­ing down­loads, link clicks, video plays, or form sub­mis­sions. From this infor­ma­tion, you’ll know which met­rics mat­ter the most for your event.
    • Sur­vey tools. You can col­lect sub­jec­tive feed­back from your event audi­ence to gauge their expe­ri­ence and brand perception.

    5. Analyse the results and determine your ROI

    Gath­er­ing the event data is not all that is required for a suc­cess­ful event. You’ll need to go deep­er, analyse and deter­mine your ROI. Many event plan­ners ask, what is ROI in event plan­ning? The secret to a suc­cess­ful event is data analy­sis. In its sim­plest form, ROI in event plan­ning is the total sales rev­enue minus the total cost of the event, then divide it by the total cost of the event.

    The first step to know­ing your event ROI is under­stand­ing the total event costs and know­ing the most impor­tant returns to your business.

    Analysing results and plan­ning helps your event adapt fo

    6. Sell your event tickets online

    Dri­ve your online sales by sell­ing your event tick­ets to a vast pool of audi­ence. When you enable your audi­ence to book online you are mak­ing it sim­pler for them as well as get­ting a lot of inter­est­ing data. Also, note that the pur­chase of the tick­et is the first point of con­tact of your audi­ence with your event, so you should pay spe­cial atten­tion to your tick­et sale process and cus­tomer jour­ney, includ­ing the tick­et design.

    7. Wrapping it up

    To max­imise the ROI of your event, you must align with the vision and goals of your business.

    Defin­ing the ROI of your event can help you make improve­ments for future events.

    Your even­t’s strat­e­gy should be detailed and mea­sur­able as it’s the frame­work upon which the entire event is built. If you’ve the right strat­e­gy, your plan­ning and exe­cu­tion will be eas­i­er, and you’ll ulti­mate­ly increase your ROI.

    It’s essen­tial to con­sid­er your options and assess your exist­ing plans before mak­ing any changes in your event plan­ning approach.


    If you are plan­ning an event, check out how our tick­et­ing, access con­trol, cash­less pay­ment and CRM solu­tions can help you deliv­er a seam­less expe­ri­ence to your audi­ence while mak­ing things eas­i­er for you.

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