5 Effective Ways to Track Event Marketing Performance
With over 33 thousand conferences, business meetings, and tradeshows held annually, the United States is the world’s most competitive ground for offline events. The demand is always there – even despite the COVID restrictions, millions of prospects are looking for in-person opportunities to interact with brands – but you can only capitalize if you are effective in what you do and flexible enough to update your strategies based on past performance.
Solutions like call tracker, Call Logic, and lead management system, LMS Sync, will help you dissect the customer journey from A to Z so you can pinpoint which marketing channels drew you what leads, how many of them converted, and how you can improve your in-person and online marketing. Automating processes and scaling business with Phonexa’s various automation solutions will put you in the driver’s seat of your marketing initiatives, including offline events.
Without a doubt, tracking event marketing performance will help you tap into your audience and see how you can draw more clicks, sales, and subscribers down the road.
Without further ado, let’s move on to the five most effective ways to measure the success of your marketing events.
Set Your Goals Before Everything Else
Over 83% of marketers see offline events as a way to increase sales, but sales alone are not enough to determine whether a conference or meeting was a success. For that, you need deep goals-driven insight.
What can these goals be? Besides generating and converting leads, you may want to reach new audiences, improve brand awareness, provide value to existing customers, increase brand engagement, or gain new subscribers.
Depending on your goals, you can choose from a plethora of KPIs: the number of (returning) attendees, registrations, sales, conversion via a particular channel (website, email, dedicated landing page, social media, etc.), engagement, net promoter score, social media metrics, and more.
Whether you want to expand your Instagram following, generate $100,000 in revenue, or enrich your list of subscribers by 200 leads, it’s paramount that you set your goals clearly and track them using relevant KPIs.
Get Your Software Ready
In addition to picking the right KPIs, you have to automate the process.
- Software solutions like Phonexa’s suite of performance marketing products will allow you to maximize the amount of information collected at every customer touchpoint. You will know who clicked what ads, filled what forms, and how many of these leads converted, all while enabling a smooth customer journey. Independent tracking will allow you to dissect every touchpoint and identify your top performers.
For example, you can track the calls coming from your attendees by adding your phone number to event invitations, postcards, brochures, guides, and other related materials.
Track These KPIs To Evaluate Your Event Marketing Campaigns
1. Registrations
Registrations can unlock a variety of metrics depending on the information collected from each registration form: price and time preferences, whether your attendees prefer single, group, or VIP tickets, etc.
- Pro tip: AMP emails will allow your customers to register for your events right within the email letter while displaying relevant information about the event. AMP emails are fun and engaging and will likely increase the number of attendees compared to regular emails.
2. Registrations vs. Check-ins
The ratio between the number of users who promised to attend your event and those who actually attended can tell you a lot about the performance of your marketing campaign from its initial launch all the way up until the day of the event.
For those who didn’t attend, ask for an explanation. Why did they change their mind? Were your follow-ups effective? What could you have done to entice them to attend?
3. Cost per Attendee
Cost per attendee is a key KPI that can help you determine whether your event was profitable. To calculate your cost per attendee, divide your revenue per attendee – immediate (from selling tickets) or/and potential (from converting) – by your spend per attendee.
- If the coefficient is >1, the event was profitable.
- If the coefficient is <1, the event was unprofitable.
- If the coefficient is 0, the event broke even.
Likewise, you can calculate your ROI, which is your initial investment divided by your profits from ticket sales and conversions during the event.
4. Net Promoter Score
The net promoter score (NPS) reveals the value of your event for those who attended. To calculate NPS, ask your attendees how likely it is that they would recommend the event to their colleagues on a scale from 1 to 10.
| Score | Impression of the Event | Long-Term Results |
| Detractors: 0 to 6 | Boring and not helpful | None or negative |
| Passives: 7 or 8 | Moderately helpful | Moderately positive: may mention the event, but is unlikely promote it |
| Promoters: 9 or 10 | Extremely helpful | Extremely positive: will likely promote the event and attend future meetings |
As you categorize your attendees, calculate your event’s NPS:
NPS = ((Promoters –Detractors)/(Total Number of Respondents))*100
| NPS Score | Event Quality |
| -100 to 0 | Poor quality, likely unprofitable |
| 0 to 50 | Good quality, breakeven or moderately profitable |
| 50 to 100 | Top-notch quality, highly profitable |
5. Social Media Metrics
As customer behavior is increasingly impacted by the likes on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, it may be reasonable to rely on social media metrics as one of your top marketing priorities, even for offline campaigns.
To quantify the social media impact of your event, measure:
- New followers, shares, and likes
- Impressions (how many times your content was shown to users)
- Reach (how many users saw your content)
- Audience growth rate (at the conference and afterward)
- Engagement with event-related publications
- Click-through rate: content displays divided by clicks
- The use of your branded hashtags
In addition, you can create a landing page for your event and redirect your followers there while offering them a promo code or some other perk.
4 Bulletproof Ways to Market Your Events
1. Appeal to the psyche of attendees.
Time-tested psychological triggers will have the same effect on all segments of your audience, whether online or in a brick-and-mortar conference building.
FOMO. Fear of missing out often compels people to buy what they don’t need, let alone go to an event they’ve been looking forward to attending. Use FOMO to your advantage at every stage of the sales cycle and for every group of attendees. From limited offers to one-time exclusive deals, every marketer should know how to create FOMO.
Reciprocity. People love to give back after obtaining something of great value, so make sure to ask for whatever you want at the right moment — when the value or expectations peak (for example, before or after the show’s culmination).
Loss aversion. There are several ways to use loss aversion to your advantage. For example, you can offer free access to your software for the duration of the event and then begin charging for access after the event concludes. The majority of those satisfied with your software will happily pay for it.
Social proof. Most people trust their social circle when making purchases and seek to act in accordance with consumer norms and trends. In other words, positive feedback, testimonials, and other reinforcement from peers will serve to increase your attendance.
2. Invite experts and influencers.
Influencer marketing is on the rise. Attendees will be dying to shake hands with experts, influencers, and celebrity endorsers they watch on Instagram and YouTube. Besides, influences from related niches will likely bring you a part of their audience.
3. Stream your offline events.
As more people are increasingly interested in livestream commerce – video calls with sales assistance, shopping via influencers, etc. – it becomes advantageous to stream your events online. Not only will those unable to attend stay connected, but many of them will regret not going and won’t want to miss any of your future events.
Likewise, you can offer recordings of on-stage performances to all attendees so they won’t miss anything. This will increase the value of your event for attendees and make them feel safer — even if they miss something, they can catch up while relaxing at home.
4. Run a dedicated email marketing campaign.
There’s no better way to inform your audience about an upcoming conference than by email. Consider that 80% of marketers see email as a more valuable means of communication with customers than social media. A dedicated email campaign – possibly powered by AMP dynamic emails – will likely increase your subscriber base and win you significantly more attendees than traditional, bland emails.
Final Thoughts
Tracking event marketing performance is crucial for every business — from real estate to insurance — to assess whether its offline endeavors are effective or if they need to be improved. But then again, different events serve different goals and, therefore, can only be measured with specific KPIs.
About the Author / Akeem Okunola
