Data-based ROI has long been a reliable measure for event success, but does it really measure what’s most important the way ROE can?
ROI, which stands for return on investment, measures an event’s success based on numbers-driven metrics like revenue gained or leads collected. But is a comparison of money spent versus money gained an effective way to gauge how well a meeting or event meets its goals?
While bean counting will always play an important role, more organizations now are leaning into a new type of metric — return on engagement, or ROE. “ROE is not easy to directly measure, but it’s very important for the long-term success of an organization or a business,” says Katie Moser Stuck, Director of Marketing & Business Development at experiential marketing and event management company GoGather, where she also supports GoGather’s client events.
Prevue recently sat down with Stuck to learn more about the growing role of ROE in meeting and event planning and marketing.
Prevue: With ROI, it’s easy to know what to measure, even if it’s not always easy to actually glean the data. ROE seems to go beyond where data alone can take you. What does ROE seek to quantify?
Stuck: ROE could be looking at, were people engaged? Were they satisfied by the event? Were they impacted by it? For an internal meeting, it could be generating motivation and excitement and energizing your employees, which isn’t always an immediate measurement you can see, but it does impact the long-term success of your company. So instead of looking just at dollars invested versus dollars returned, you’re looking at the overall impact of the event.
Prevue: How do you know when you’ve met that impact or engagement goal? How do you measure for ROE success?
Stuck: It’s not easy, and people are still working on figuring it out, but there are frameworks companies can set up to measure ROE. That could be an on-site and/or post-event survey, but it can’t be the standard “smile sheet.” Instead of asking if they liked the food or the general session, ask what they remember from the event, what relationships they built. But you do need to set those goals up front. For example, for an internal meeting, let’s say one goal is to drive better cross-functional relationships. While you may not immediately be able to measure that impact, you can set up markers throughout the rest of the year to see if you’re moving toward that goal post-meeting. Was the meeting a catalyst for improving that specific metric? You also can measure some marketing metrics such as follows and engagement on social media — not necessarily the spikes that happen right around the event, but has the baseline moved a few months later?
The key is to understand who your attendees are and put their mindset at the forefront of everything you do. When you concentrate too hard on the numbers, you can stop thinking about the people.
You won’t necessarily be able to find a direct correlation between the event and later improvements because other factors may play into it, but you can set the context for it. As someone who comes from the marketing side, I think of it like the difference between demand generation — did they go home and buy it — and brand impact, which is harder to measure but no less important.
Prevue: Are meeting organizers substituting ROE for ROI, or is it an additional way to look at an event’s success?
Stuck: No one is saying to stop quantifying the numbers, because that’s certainly still important. The idea is to layer other ROE measures on top of that. Most organizations are already doing post-event surveying and measurement, so it’s more a shift in mindset to have a longer-term view, to put those markers in place to see if an event continues to have an impact over time. And to ask questions that are maybe a bit different from what you’ve always asked, because while they may have liked the food or the general session speaker, that’s not the same as asking if something had an impact on them.
Prevue: What do you think about the technologies that can be used on site to gather real-time sentiments using facial recognition and AI?
Stuck: It’s fascinating, and it’s great to be able to see in real time the engagement level your speakers are achieving, but it doesn’t give you the complete picture. People can be engaged in the moment without it leaving a longer-term impact. It needs to be a return on engagement, not just engagement.
Prevue: Like having a puppy-petting area for people to snuggle with shelter dogs — it’s highly engaging for sure, but does it move the needle toward accomplishing the meeting’s goals?
Stuck: It’s important to really think about your goals through the lens of attendee experience, and to do that from the very beginning of the planning process. The puppies may be a good engagement tool, but does it move you toward your return-on-engagement goals? It helps to always look at the agenda and the activations in terms of how they help achieve the meeting’s goals, whether that’s improving cross-functional teamwork or future store sales for organizations that have franchisees coming in. It can also help you decide where to cut, and where not to cut. From an ROE perspective, sometimes it makes sense to spend a bit more to get a much larger ROE return than you might think strictly from an ROI perspective. Does it make sense to cut other things to make room in the budget for it, or should you work to get approval to spend a bit more to get a lot more return.
Prevue: How important is post-event follow-up to ROE?
Stuck: Continuing to have touch points to keep people engaged post event is really important. There’s so much digital noise now, that it’s easy to just say, “that was fun,” and then get back to your normal routine. The event organizer has to really think through how to hold onto that energy and excitement and turn it into something that produces long-term success. We haven’t quite perfected that yet.
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