In this blog we will follow on from the previous tip where we looked at setting Objectives for ROI to review the measurement of ROI objectives, incorporating different levels of ROI Methodology used to measure ROI of an event.
As mentioned in the previous tip on setting objectives for ROI which is another way of expressing the contribution to profit made by an event. The profit is the net value created by the event minus the event costs. ROI is the profit expressed as a percentage of the cost of the event.
Measuring Level 0, Target Audience
- The target audience should be the right people attending the event. They are the ones with the greatest learning and behaviour gap in the potential participants.
- The target audience is therefore defined by a method of deduction from desired behaviour (level3) and required learning (level2)
- Measuring that have the right target audience, the post event evaluation could ask the question ‘To what extend is the topic of this session relevant to you job?’ Or ‘ How much of what was covered in this session did you already know?’
Measuring Level 1, Delegate Satisfaction and Learning Environment:
Normally the delegates satisfaction is measured by asking the questions as to whether they were satisfied with the facilities of the venue, the logistics of organising the conference, such as registration and information sent, content of the sessions, the topics covered, quality of speakers, enough time for discussion and Q&A, was networking beneficial?
The learning environment is very important in the learning of the delegates and the changes in their behaviour which will provide value to the stakeholder.
Level 2 – Learning
- Learning in events comes under that of information, skills attitudes and relationship learning, this can be done by self reporting. Questions such as indicate on a percentage scale your level of knowledge or skill both before and after the session.
- Attitude learning, can include questions which indicate changes in brand perception, where the respondent expresses his degree of agreement or disagreement with an attitude statement, using the Likert statements.
- Relationship learning refers to the building of affinity between people, getting to know others, trust and liking, the answers could be scored on a scale from very low to very high
Level 3 – Behaviour
- Behaviour is the application of learning but either stop doing something, doing something differently or something new as a form of their learning experience.
- Behaviour is often best measured by observation, e.g. if the delegates has learnt how to set up a website, and he claims to understand and remember well enough the steps and procedure to put into practice, by using learning measured by self reporting you could at some time later see if he has used the processes learnt
Planned Actions
It is useful to measure the intended application immediately after learning, with question such as ‘How do you plan to use what you have just learned? Also by suggesting possible actions and asking delegates to consider whether they are likely to follow this through, question delegates if there are any barriers to these planned actions or if there are enablers
Level 4 Impact
- The business impact is the very reason for which the event was designed, such as increased sales to new clients or wider range of products to existing customers, increased customer penetration, or customer loyalty. Internal events such as team building are likely to reduce costs as their business impact. The impact data may be obtained from accounts of the company sales performance.
- For measurement of business impact then one has to isolate the effect of the meeting to know if the sales when up after the customer event that it was this and not for example a new advertisement campaign. The best method of doing this is to have a control group, comparing the results from one group which attended and the other that did not. For this to be reliable then the groups need to be closely matched to see if they respond in the same way or if other influences and difference was due to the event.
- Some business impacts are monetary like sales, others which are intangible need to be converted into money values for ROI calculation. Such as reduced employee turnover or absenteeism after an event, motivation of staff. This can lead to time saving cost per hour, recruitment by the HR department.
- Impact values when expressed in monetary value deducted from the total cost of the event you will get the profit or loss for the event. The profit or loss value is the same costs as the percentage of the ROI figure. The return is the impact value and the investment is the total cost.
The benefit of applying ROI methodology will always out way the costs. It forces you to be precise in setting event objectives when planning the event, these are clear and measurable, resulting in the event programme focusing on achieving them, thereafter improving each event when applying the measurable results
B2B Event Management 