Cover Story

ROI: Why It Matters

By Carol Patton

Meeting professionals face myriad challenges in a rebounding global economy. Attrition. Strategic sourcing. Supply chain management. Budget constraints. Increasingly, however, return on investment (ROI) is emerging as the most pivotal and challenging element of meeting professionals’ careers.

The meeting planning function has never been under more scrutiny from “C-levels”—senior executives looking to ascertain value and see proven results. Planners must speak the language of the business world in measuring and reporting a meeting or event’s ROI. To meet executives’ expectations, meeting professionals now must not only stage hard-hitting, quality events, but they also must deliver data substantiating ROI from the event.

“For most of the history of measurement within the events world, it’s been about the quality of events,” said David Rich, vice president of program strategy worldwide at The George P. Johnson Company (GPJ), a global integrated event-marketing agency in North Easton, Mass. “The trend now is to build on top of those and create results metrics. Those are the ones of interest to senior executives.”

Measuring ROI can produce many benefits. Results from a joint survey conducted recently by the MPI Foundation and GPJ revealed that companies that measure results or outcomes are 50 percent more likely to increase their event-marketing budgets than those that don’t. According to Rich, once senior managers understand the value of events, they tend to invest more dollars into those events.

What’s more, measuring ROI can also enhance meeting planners’ credibility with clients and their organizations’ top management because they’re now considered business partners, says Rich, a member of the MPI New England Chapter.

“Most meeting professionals who really want to show their value to their organizations would do well to initiate a measurement program long ahead of being asked and start to merchandise the [results] the program creates to their senior executives,” he said. “That will change the perception of who they are as professionals.”

Start at the Beginning: Many planners start the ROI process by conducting pre-conference surveys.
According to Jamie McDonough, director of meeting and training services at Fusion Productions—a full-service communications firm in Webster, N.Y.—preconference surveys are the first step in a five-part process. He says planners must initially identify stakeholders’ needs, then develop measurable goals and objectives for each of those needs, design and produce a meeting experience that addresses those needs, measure outcomes and create a report for stakeholders so they understand how needs have been met.

“If you don’t identify stakeholder needs before the conference, you won’t know what to measure after the conference,” said McDonough, president of the MPI Western New York Chapter. “You’ll be shooting in the dark.”

He compares the process to a common employee assessment called 360-degree evaluations, which allow a sample of coworkers to evaluate an employee’s performance. The same concept can be applied toward events.

For example, if a meeting’s goal is to boost product sales during a specific time frame, the company’s CEO, marketing and sales directors and a sampling of attendees should be surveyed. Attendees could be asked questions such as, “In what areas are you lacking information?” and “Do you feel a sales aid would be beneficial?” Likewise, questions for marketing and sales managers could include, “What additional information does your sales team need?” A CEO could be asked if the meeting’s goals are in alignment with company strategies.

At that point, McDonough says, planners can start connecting the dots to identify the type of content people want. After the conference, the same people can be surveyed about what they learned, how or if the information was applied and its business impact.

Listen First: Some planners are gathering important data by turning to an inexpensive but often overlooked technique: focus groups.
Karen Massicotte, CMP, is using a focus group for the first time for a health conference including a youth component. As president of Event Connection Inc. in Calgary, Alberta, she recently gathered seven teenagers for approximately 90 minutes to address their conference needs. Later, she’ll ask the group to evaluate the meeting.

“This is a starting point for something bigger,” said Massicotte, a member of the MPI Greater Calgary Chapter. “But unless it’s an event to purposely get business, you can’t put hard numbers to this.”

Mary Beth Woodin, co-founder of MBK Associates LLC, a medical marketing and meeting planning firm in New York, uses focus groups to analyze survey data, assess the effectiveness of materials created by presenters and—if it’s a small conference—evaluate each attendee’s contribution.

Often, she gives focus group members advance homework and asks them to identify which presentations were the most relevant to their needs and how they would restructure the meeting’s agenda. Then they discuss their opinions during the actual group session.

Woodin says this type of information needs to be combined with sales data whenever possible so it can be translated into ROI. Otherwise, meeting planners can measure behavioral changes by asking attendees how they’ve changed or enhanced any aspect of performance as a result of the information obtained at the conference.

Either way, Woodin sets a minimum ROI for each event that shifts based on the industry and meeting objectives. Still, the process always begins with asking the right questions and capturing the right data.

“A lot of times, people don’t stop to articulate objectives,” said Woodin, a member of the MPI Greater New York Chapter. “Make sure every logistical decision is in line with those objectives, then use those objectives to define ROI.”

Reward Information: Some planners offer incentives to attendees who return completed surveys.
Ellen Robinson, director of catering and sales at Palm Management Corp. in Cherry Hill Village, Colo.—which operates 29 U.S. restaurants—says more meeting planners are raffling off gifts, such as weekend getaways, to attendees who complete event surveys. Sometimes, her employer donates $25 gift certificates to its restaurants as prizes.

“People are so tired of filling out surveys—they need something in return,” said Robinson, a member of the MPI Rocky Mountain Chapter. “But it’s usually done by high-end groups that have the budget to do that.”

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, enters the names of attendees who have completed its surveys into a different type of drawing. The winner receives free registration at the association’s next conference, which can cost approximately CDN$350, says Louise Gervais, CMP, meetings administrator at the medical association and a member of the MPI Ottawa Chapter.

The association’s staff also collects completed surveys at the end of each workshop, as opposed to asking people to leave them on their seats or hand them in at the registration booth. This strategy, combined with the drawings, has helped the organization’s survey return rate climb from roughly 10 percent to 35 percent.

Set the Stage: Meeting planners are also beefing up conferences in order to produce measurable outcomes and help ensure a high ROI.
MVKA Productions—an event production company based in Vancouver, British Columbia—often projects important messages on multiple screens or on walls around the room during a conference so that the audience can both hear and see those words or phrases, says Martin A.J. Van Keken Jr., CEO of MVKA Productions and member of the MPI British Columbia Chapter. Others hand out DVDs featuring key messages to attendees after the conference, e-mail those same messages or post them on the company’s Web site.

While Web sites aren’t a substitute for meetings, they can be used to help measure ROI in areas such as marketing, says Philippa Gamse, CMC, president of Total ’Net Value Inc., a Web strategy consulting firm in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Attendees can be given a special code that offers them a discount if they register online. Meeting planners and their clients can then determine the ROI of marketing efforts by tracking a variety of factors, including which strategies attracted attendees and the types of professions and regions attendees hail from.

Different passwords or codes can also be used for different marketing campaigns. By offering additional online support materials for each workshop, along with chat rooms or weblogs, meeting planners can also measure the levels of interest in various topics, workshops or speakers, Gamse says.

“Drive people to your Web site before, during and after your conference,” she said. “You can identify which pages of the site people go to, which they don’t, how long they spend on those pages and where they come from. Your site can tell you a huge amount about what’s going on.”

Dig Deep: Besides asking the right questions, some meeting planners are using clients’ sales data to develop more accurate ROI.
While measuring the quality of events—such as determining how much attendees enjoyed a dinner or keynote speaker—is important, Rich says meeting planners have started measuring outcomes and are using the data to better understand how an event has affected clients’ bottom lines.

He cites one of his firm’s technology clients, which was achieving an ROI of $7 of return per $1 invested for its external events that prospected for new customers. By asking results-oriented questions to those attending the event—as well as the client’s senior staff—then correlating their responses with diagnostic or quality measures, Rich’s firm was able to revise the event’s program and significantly bump up the company’s ROI. Now, for every dollar the company invests, it’s realizing $66 in return.

Rich says survey data can sometimes be connected to a sales department’s customer relationship management system or sales tracking system. With such a connection, meeting planners can help their clients determine how much opportunity an event has uncovered and if it later can be turned into actual business, he says. Those numbers can then be compared to the cost of the event to determine ROI.

Depending upon the relationships meeting planners have developed with their sales departments or clients, they can even identify which events are responsible for enhancing sales or business growth, says Les Selby, CMM, CMP, operations manager, Nortel Networks, at Maritz Canada Inc., a global performance improvement company in Toronto, Ontario.

Maritz runs a series of small, intimate events for one client involving potential customers visiting companies that use the client’s products. The client then reports any new sales within nine months that directly resulted from the show-and-tell event.

By drawing a correlation between sales and events, patterns often emerge.

“They can help you decide which types of events are responsible for business growth and where your investment in events is best placed,” said Selby, a member of the MPI Toronto Chapter.  TMP

CAROL PATTON is a freelance writer based in Las Vegas.

Reporting Meeting ROI

By Helena Tavares Kennedy

An event ROI report is typically distributed among key company decision-makers, including “C-level executives” (CEO, CFO, etc.). In order to provide the most value, the report should be tailored to executives’ needs. This is why the initial conversation is vital. It’s not beneficial to drop an unexpected event report on an executive’s desk that may not contain pertinent information. In the initial meeting, planners should discuss the various items (see below) a report can include and gauge executives’ interest.

• Event analysis and debrief meeting summary
• Evaluation forms summary
• Financial summary
• Attendee lists/follow-up logs
• Copies of follow-up documentation
• Copies of all collected evaluation forms
• Attendance and registration trends

The report should be forthright, not merely hinting at ROI. First, state the goals of the meeting and define how those goals were met. What about the event helped meet these goals? If the goals weren’t fully met, what could be done next time? Was it the wrong type of event to accomplish these goals? Were the wrong types of attendees marketed to? The beginning of the report should state the goals and attempt to analyze the event from a third-party perspective—interpreting the facts. The purpose is to “prove” to executives that an event was or was not an effective and beneficial way to achieve goals and share ideas on how to improve it.

The financial summary and attendee follow-up logs are also crucial to proving meeting ROI. The financial summary typically lists costs, but including any revenue generated from the event is an effective way to show ROI. (For example, a seminar for prospective clients cost $5,000, but what did the organization get in return?)

Of course, also list the soft ROI—non-monetary benefits such as increased face time and networking opportunities with prospective clients. If possible, however, include any hard ROI—actual financial benefits to the company. Were new clients booked at the meeting? Did prospects call with questions that led them to becoming clients within a certain period after the event? How much money is expected from a new client?

By including this information in an event report, executives will know the hard and soft benefits of the meeting. What if a new client isn’t obtained and there is no hard ROI to report to executives? The best bet is to focus on the soft ROI—the branding, networking opportunities, educational value of the meeting—and make suggestions to reach executives’ goals with the next event.

HELENA TAVARES KENNEDY is a national event specialist at Thelen Reid & Priest LLP, a corporate law firm. Based in Washington, D.C., she can be reached at hkennedy@thelenreid.com.

Short Cut

Meeting planners are incorporating pre-conference surveys, focus groups, rewards for attendee feedback, Web technology and client sales to produce more valuable, measurable events and to better assess their ROI.

Getting Your Money’s Worth

In July, approximately 200 professionals attended “The ROI Summit: Applying the Power of Meetings,” held during MPI’s annual World Education Congress in Denver, Colo.

The seminar addressed five measurement levels: satisfaction, learning, application, business impact and ROI. Among the key conclusions reached by the group: there isn’t a standard measurement technique for ROI, and while it may be impossible to measure ROI for every conference, meeting planners must measure other levels beyond satisfaction.

Visit www.mpiweb.org for a full summary of The ROI Summit, including presentations and handouts by participants. You’ll also find ROI-related tools such as a budget template, forms (program evaluation, stakeholder analysis, senior management team pre-meeting questionnaire, etc.), articles and Web links.