“Take a corporate event as an example; a business executive is looking for revenue-driving returns, like audience generation, pipeline acceleration, and sales closed,” says Brent Turner, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Solutions at Opus Agency.

“While a marketing executive will look for movement on brand affinity, preference, promotion, and loyalty, the event executive is looking at their objectives — like their financial model, attendee satisfaction, and other event-specific goals such as certifications delivered,” Turner says.

Author Maura Keller highlights the opportunity for event professionals to improve their focus on clear ROI. Turner shares that by isolating business, marketing, and event-specific metrics, events can better focus on the actions needed to ensure success.

Turner also says that mistakes often connect to unclear objectives. If the event exists to close deals, then map the strategies, audience acquisition, experience design, and sessions to that goal. “Setting an objective at the ‘center of the bullseye’ is hard. Events can do so much for a business, but with great focus comes greater results,” he says.

And with AI-powered tools making it easier than ever to connect data and transform it into actionable insights, businesses will increasingly expect data-driven insights, intelligence, and actions.

“This means that the expectations for measuring events will increase, all while the technologies and methodologies will become easier, faster, and more standardized,” Turner says. 

All of this data helps planners determine if, when, and how events should happen. “Organizations are recognizing that this is having a material impact on talent attraction and retention—and so the declining ROI in virtual onboardings and trainings is driving a shift back to in-person to maximize outcomes. This consecutive feedback loop, however it happens, will always affect how planners think about programming.”

Read what other event leaders had to say in this Corporate & Incentive Travel article.