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Importance of Measuring Event Performance

Event managers are under considerable pressure to obtain metrics regarding their events to ensure that they deliver a return on investment. Being able to pull these stats and turn them into valuable information is something many event managers struggle with. It can be difficult to know what to measure, how to measure it, and then how to analyze the data.

The first stage in analyzing event performance is understanding why the event is taking place in the first place. What are the objectives and goals of the event? There are many reasons why companies organize events:

Publicize the company or the product.

generate sales

Generate qualified sales leads

Conduct market research

To enter a new market

To launch a new product or service

To influence or establish relations with the press

Educate or motivate partners and/or employees

To help retain current customers

To support the local community.

It’s a good idea to set one primary goal and one or two secondary goals. Trying to set too many goals will dilute the main purpose of the event and lead to mixed and confusing messages for delegates. Each event you run can have different objectives, but it’s important to understand exactly what it is, as without a clear objective you won’t be able to identify and measure your event’s performance objectives.

Try to make your goals and metrics as specific as possible. For example, if the primary goal is to create sales and the secondary goal is to generate qualified sales leads, some of the metrics to focus on will be:

Income

Number of transactions made

Number of purchase orders received

Expense to income ratio (E:R)

Return on Investment (ROI) Ratio

Number of new accounts/customers

Volume of leads generated

Quality of generated leads

Once you have identified the goals and metrics, the next task is to obtain this information. This can be the most difficult part of event performance analysis. It can be difficult to get this information and turn it into valuable data.

Many event managers are turning to technology to help with this process. Event management software solutions assist event managers in event planning, management, and analysis. They often come with built-in reporting and analytics modules, making event performance measurement an easy task.

If generating leads is an important goal, event management software can help identify the quality and quantity of leads. By understanding what makes a high-quality lead, event managers can create custom registration forms, capturing delegate information that identifies poor and good quality leads.

Understanding the message you’re getting across to delegates is also a key metric that often needs to be measured, but can be hard to come by. By using the information collected on or after the event, managers will be able to improve future events and improve client relationships with delegates. Once again, event management software can help in this metric measurement. By providing a comprehensive feedback management tool, managers can produce surveys that delegates can complete on the day or emailed after events. Online survey results can be automatically populated in the event management solution, ready for instant analysis.

Understanding delegates and their responses to the event will also help managers accurately qualify event contacts. Event management software will provide analysis tools that allow administrators to quickly drill down into the data stored in the system. Providing custom reports, as well as standard management information reports, will illustrate how well attended the events are, how well booked they are and how successful the program was.

In general, it is recommended that managers spend 5% of their budget on event measurement and analysis. By investing in an end-to-end event management software solution, managers can ensure accurate event results are consistently produced. Event management software tools not only help in event analysis but also make event planning, management and promotion easier, more efficient and much more profitable.

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