FREE EVENT ROI REPORT TEMPLATE

In running an event there are both hard and soft costs. Figuring out the hard costs is the easy part. Tally up things such as travel, rooming, employees and speaker fees and you’ll be off to a strong start.

However, when tallying up the soft costs of your event, you’ll need to start factoring in things that we (as humans) are bad at. Things like: the time you spent emailing back and forth with venues and the time you’ll spend following up with prospective clients and customers after the event.

The biggest mistake marketers make when planning events is understanding the loss of team and individual productivity after the event. Not only will you be worn out physically and mentally, but the event doesn’t end when the event ends. You may spends weeks and months still engaging around the event’s marketing, helping the sales team close deals, and building partner relationships with sponsors.

Other soft costs of an event may include:

• Preparing for the event
• Travel (to and from the venue)
• Meetings
• Food
• Coordinating a hub to keep records of event information

In order to arrive at the most accurate representation of the investment you’ll be making in the event, both hard and soft costs must be included.

Like an effective marketing endeavor, you have to start calculating the ROI of your event by defining what success looks like.

Many events, such as conferences, may be about brand awareness and potential for future partnerships within a specific industry. Other events may be able to more closely tie to sales goals and thus have a discernible ROI from the start.

The most important part of estimating the ROI of an event will be alignment across the executive and leadership team(s). If goals are misaligned, even the highest event ROI will fall flat.

The second most important part of estimating your ROI will be defining a timeline. It’s recommended that instead of having a hard start and stop date for your event to show a specific ROI, instead project out milestones to see the influence your event has had on marketing and sales goals. The best events will still be having an impact weeks, months and (honestly) YEARS after the event has ended.

Now that you understand the hard and soft costs of putting on your event, you’ll be able to quickly input your data, calculate and project numbers for a more accurate ROI estimate.

With the ability to quickly view your entire event budget on one screen will allow you to move quickly and make adjustments on the fly.

Determining the ROI of your event can be a mix of art and science. Get started immediately with this event ROI report template.