Your Event Was a Hit. Now What?
You just wrapped up your biggest event of the year. The booth was buzzing, your team had great conversations, and the afterparty was legendary. Everyone feels good about it.
But when budgeting season rolls around, your boss asks a simple question as they eye potential budget cuts, “What did we get out of events this year?”.
And suddenly, that good feeling evaporates. The anecdotal data was strong, but anecdotal memories don’t last forever, and the touchpoints people remember didn’t necessarily make it into the CRM records. So you find yourself scrambling to prove the event was worth the massive invoice. Sound familiar? Events are often the most expensive thing marketing does, but hard evidence of their value can feel elusive. It doesn’t have to. The secret is to stop thinking about tracking events after the fact and start planning for it from day one.
More importantly, it’s worth the effort. Events are where real relationships are built. In a world of endless emails, ads, and webinars, a face-to-face conversation has an outsized impact.
In fact, 80% of event attendees say in-person events are the most trusted way to discover new products/services (Freeman).
That’s a powerful reason to ensure your event budget stays afloat.
And yet… many event marketers still struggle to prove ROI.
Why Event Marketers Struggle
As many event marketers will tell you, events are a beast. Events come with a long list of deadlines, deliverables, and logistical nightmares. And then comes the people component. Your success with proving ROI from your event relies heavily on collaboration between marketing and sales. Not only do you all need to source, enrich, assign, and reach out leads from the event before, during, and after the event itself, but you need to make sure they make it into your CRM with an association to the event campaign. This is where many event marketers fail. They do everything right to get the most out of their event, ensure follow up with all the right people, but simple lack of documentation between marketing and sales means nothing is trackable. When your only proof that deals were influenced or sourced from an event is a few anecdotal statements, from sales and marketing team members who were there, your event marketing budget finds itself on thin ice.
Event marketers work too hard to have their efforts doubted. So if you want to avoid overzealous event budget scrutiny, here’s how to prove event marketing ROI:
Step 1: Stop Guessing and Start Planning
You wouldn’t launch a digital ad campaign without a way to track clicks and conversions. Treat your events with the same respect. Before you even think about ordering swag, you need a measurement plan.
Ask your team these simple questions:
- What’s the point of this event? Are we trying to find new leads? Speed up deals we already have in the works? Nurture relationships with current customers? Just get our name out there? Be honest about your goals.
- What data can we actually get? Will the event give us a list of everyone who registered? Are we scanning badges? Relying on our sales team to take good notes? Know what you’ll have to work with.
- How will we connect the dots? When a new lead from a badge scan comes in, how will you get it into your CRM? How will you know it came from this event and not somewhere else? This is where simple things like using UTM parameters, contact/lead sources, and CRM notes come in handy.
Step 2: Actually Capture What Happens
This sounds obvious, but it’s where most event tracking falls apart. All the planning in the world doesn’t matter if your team on the ground doesn’t collect the information.
The most important part? Your sales and marketing reps need to get into the habit of creating a new lead or contact in the CRM for every real conversation they have. A quick note on a business card that gets lost in a travel bag is a wasted opportunity. Training this muscle helps to ensure that leads get proper follow up, and that ROI is actually trackable.
Once the information is in your CRM, you can start to see the bigger picture. With a tool like CaliberMind, you can use multi-touch attribution to look at the value of events among all your marketing efforts. For example, you can see that the person who closed a huge deal six months from now actually started their journey with a great conversation at your booth, or that the existing customer you just closed an upsell deal had dinner with your team at an event.
How This Works in the Real World
Imagine you’re hosting a dinner for top prospects at a big conference. Here’s how you’d track it:
- Initial Planning: Before you receive a single list for the event, you’d determine who’s attending from sales/marketing, and set clear expectations for each participant. Expectations for each person should be spelled out with clear SLAs, with the assumption that if one does not complete their required work (lead entry, notes, CRM entries, etc.), that they won’t get to attend future events.
- Pre-Event: You’d get a list of companies attending the event you’re sponsoring from the organizer. Your RevOps team enriches the list with likely attendees, denoting the source of the contact and adding them to a campaign for the event. Then marketing and sales work on outreach to these accounts, using UTM parameters in their email links.
- During Event: Your sales reps would collaborate and share notes in a spreadsheet for initial lead entry, before creating contacts in the CRM for the people they speak with at the event.
- Post-Event: You’d upload the final attendance list, and add contacts to the campaign for the event. Now you can see leads and opportunities influenced by the event, even when the touchpoint is far before the opportunity create date (Events are a long-term play, after all.)
You finally have a real answer when your boss asks, “What did we get out of it?” No more vague feelings or anecdotes. Just clear, undeniable proof of the value of having real live conversations.
