Rachel Andrews (MPI Rocky Mountain Chapter), senior director of meetings & events, marketing for Cvent, offers a glimpse into her June 14 WEC23 session “The Planning Power Play: Using Event Types to Drive ROI.”

Have you seen the approach to event ROI change over the pandemic years?

ROI and the way we talk about it has definitely changed in the past few years. And the way we set goals for ROI differs by event type. For example, with hybrid events your ROI might factor in more of the digital elements. In my session, I will talk through objectives that are tied to your goals and then, ultimately, what your success metrics are.

Let’s say your event is purely to drive brand awareness—hard to track, right? Not if your goals and success metrics are things you can track digitally like increased website traffic, channel engagement, search volume after the show, etc. If your event objective is to drive revenue, you track things like the numbers of registrations, attendance, number of meetings, number of leads, value of pipeline created as a result, etc.. Event tech has also evolved drastically every day which makes tracking of these success metrics even easier to have in one place. ROI is more than just dollars closed, it’s a broader term now than it was years ago.

Can you share one or two new or evolving best practices that may come up during your session? 

My session is all about organization within your event program at the foundational level. We flipped the script and started at an events most basic level—why we’re doing the event and what success looks like. We identified clear objectives and aligned relevant performance metrics. It’s a critical starting point for every event to be assigned an event type which helps you ultimately measure effectiveness/impact. Exciting stuff.  Think of my session as a roadmap to help you get more organized.

What about return on experience (ROE)? Does that fit into this discussion?

ROE is certainly top of mind and important for our event programs. ROE should be baked into your event matrix. For example, a goal of your event type could be to train and retain and you cannot hit those goals without a good return on your experience.

What is a key lesson that you hope attendees take home from your session?

Organization is the name of the game. Once we stripped down our programs to their clear root goals, we were able to successfully put them in the right buckets. Ad hoc requests now go through a formal scoping process so we don’t have patch work or rogue events for which we can’t define success. Once you get your company to adopt a set model, you can accurately track the right success metrics.