Event Engagement Benchmark Report

Introduction

Marketing has experienced a massive, evolutionary shift in the past decade. Today, marketing effectiveness is synonymous with exploiting current technology, being data driven and emphasizing customer engagement. Technology is the enabler of marketing performance, customer engagement is the objective and data provides the scorecard. Engagement is the common denominator of many marketing goals: greater conversion rates, advocacy, shorter sales cycles and better ROI. The modern marketer does many things, but most of them are in some way, shape or form linked to driving better engagement.

Many marketing and sales teams believe that events are a strategy for accelerating the development of customer engagement. Events provide all the ingredients necessary to achieve desired levels of engagement: face-to-face or at least interpersonal interaction with customers, in a controlled setting that is designed to showcase the brand. Sales teams have historically relished the opportunity to interact with customers at events because they can advance relationships and engage more effectively. Events are the broadest, deepest touchpoint for many customers during their buying journeys.

With the appeal of events come some unique challenges. No other marketing strategy is as varied, and few others have the logistical burdens of producing successful events. Attend, a provider of online software that simplifies and automates event management processes, and Demand Metric collaborated to determine how effective events are as a strategy for customer engagement and if the resulting ROI meets expectations. The report details the findings of this study.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Executive Summary
3. Catalog of Events
4. Customer Engagement
5. Establishing Event Engagement
6. Event Metrics & ROI
7. Events Importance & Satisfaction
8. Analyst Bottom Line
9. Acknowledgements

10. About Attend
11. About Demand Metric
12. Appendix - Survey Background

Research Methodology

This 2015 Event Engagement Benchmark Study survey was administered online during the period of August 19 through September 6, 2015. During this period, 265 responses were collected, 202 of which were qualified and complete enough for inclusion in the analysis. The representativeness of these results depends on the similarity of the sample to environments in which this survey data is used for comparison or guidance.