Benchmarking: Understanding Event Success Within Context
What exactly does event success mean?
At first glance, event success might seem straightforward. One can easily categorise a profitable event as a successful one. Or where the sales team have a lot of hot leads to go home with, we can be quick to term this exhibit activation as very successful. Some event planners simply stick with NPS and CSAT scores.
However, these metrics only begin to scratch the surface of what an event brings to a business or industry. Success can also be measured by the impact an event has among its attendees, the connections forged, and the impact it has on the industry ecosystem. Success can be determined within the context of where the particular event stands when compared with previous events that has been held within the organization, within businesses in your portfolio, and ultimately within the entire industry.
Benchmarking: The Ultimate Measure of Event Success
To truly understand the success of an event, we need benchmarks.
Benchmarks are like guideposts that allow event organizers to compare event's performance against established standards, whether they are within their organization or across the broader industry landscape. They provide context, which helps to make informed judgments about the effectiveness of event strategies and the real significance of the achievements.
Chloe Richardson, VP Senior Corporate Relations, Explori
There are three major types of benchmarking within the events industry:
Historical Benchmarks
These benchmarks offer a retrospective view, which allows you to look back on past events. By comparing current data with past iterations of the same event, you can quickly gain insights into trends, whether towards growth or a decline. This insight is very valuable towards identifying patterns to make informed decisions on how the event is performing over time.
Organizational Benchmarks
Individual events are parts of a portfolio within a larger organization; they all come together to achieve a set objective within a business. Comparing the performance of an event to others within the same portfolio helps to easily reveal whether that event is contributing effectively or not. This data influences strategic decisions about the business value of an event.
Industry Benchmarks
Beyond comparing your events within your business, imagine the level of insights you can get by comparing it to similar options available within your entire industry? This makes you fully aware of its value, where it stands against others in terms of NPS and CSAT and the overall indispensability of your event.
Gaining a Competitive Edge with Explori's Industry Benchmarks
The true value of benchmarking lies in contextualization. It's not just about knowing your event's performance, but also understanding how it compares to past iterations and its peers within the industry. By placing your event's data within the larger context of industry benchmarks, you gain a clearer perspective on what constitutes success.
However, a major challenge in benchmarking events lies in acquiring accurate and representative data. Most events don't readily share data like customer satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS), making it difficult to create robust benchmarks. However, the solution lies in the hands of dedicated event industry suppliers who have access to extensive historical event data. And this is where Explori comes in!
Explori is a supplier of choice to over 7,000 events and conferences around the world, amassing a wealth of data that forms the basis of performance analysis for benchmarking solutions. Explori's industry takes your important metrics of isolation and measures it in context, leveraging its robust database of historical data to offer reliable insights needed to understand the full ROI and impact of the experiences your events are delivering.
"Any metric in isolation only paints a small portion of the bigger picture that an organization needs to assess how well their events are performing. To understand whether you're on the path to growth and future success, you need to view event performance in context."
- The Explori Guide to Benchmarking
INDUSTRY guide
The Explori Guide to Benchmarking
A detailed insight into using benchmarks to understand the ROI and impact of your corporate events program
As event organizers seek to understand the impact of their efforts, event benchmarks emerge as indispensable tools. These benchmarks offer the much-needed context to interpret event data accurately. By comparing an event's performance historically, within an organization's portfolio, and against industry standards, organizers can make strategic decisions that ensure success not just in isolation, but in the grander scheme of the events landscape.