Event KPIs: Real tips for real results with Carisa Bartelt

Carisa Bartelt:

People then get more excited when you are involving them and you're sharing that information and that impact. Then kind of just keep asking and keep justifying for their support, right. You're making them a part of the process and you're making that data work for you because you understand what they care about and what it means.

Alyssa Peltier:

Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences, well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Hello, everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Alyssa, and I will be your host for this week's episode of the Great Events podcast, a podcast by Cvent. Carisa, I would like to welcome you back to the show. We're going to be talking about some really fun stuff today. For those of you who have been previous listeners, Carisa has been a repeat contributor to the Great Events podcast. So we're excited to see what she's been working on in her product marketing role here at Cvent. Carisa, what's been going on?

Carisa Bartelt:

Hey, everybody. Happy to be back. Always good to talk to everyone. I think it's been kind of a wild year. It's been a couple months since I've been here. Think over the last ... We're about halfway through the year now. There's been this really intense focus on what are we doing and why are we doing it and how do we prove or justify impact or resources or anything going forward because I think there was such a fear at the beginning of the year. And now there's this opportunity to kind of reinvent, but there's still a little bit of caution of how much can we spend? What are cutbacks looking at? What's the economy going to do? So I've been doing a lot of work involving kind of understanding what the needs of event and marketing teams are to kind of survive and still execute decently and host great events within this current landscape.

Alyssa Peltier:

And I think we're here to discuss acutely what we need in terms of data, right. What data do we need to prove the impact of our programs? I know we talk loosely about that usually on every single episode in some capacity, right. But I think what's interesting about the work that you've been doing, and I'll let the cat out of the bag here, is that Carisa and her team and our larger marketing group have been working on a KPI framework that can help event managers, event organizers, event planners, event marketers all better calculate the value of their event programs in a more standard way, right.

We've seen kind of a lack of maturity in this space when it comes to data and proof of impact. And so I think the opportunity to have something that's a little bit more consistent in the form of a framework is advantageous to this profession specifically. So Carisa, let's dive into this KPI framework. I guess starting off with what are event KPIs? What are we even actually talking about? I think KPI is relatively widely known term, but there are organizations, associations, nonprofits that use different terms. So when we say KPI, what are we talking about?

Carisa Bartelt:

Data, KPI, these are all buzz terms that we all like right now. And I think the capability to understand what the heck they mean and how do I activate them is really something that we found as just a gap that a lot of us don't have. So I like to think of it in the sea of data, we can report on anything. Anything is reportable. I can give you numbers on anything that you want. And those things, what those are is really ... Those are metrics. Those are one single data point, right. It tells you something really specific, but it doesn't tell you something on its own, right. I can give you a number, 82 for this one thing that we tried to do, and you're like, "Well, great. What does that mean? What do I do with it? How do I improve it?" Right. And a KPI becomes then a combination of metrics or a single metric that you get a deeper analysis of that provides an insight to performance that matters to your business goals or your overall strategic objectives, right.

Alyssa Peltier:

So why does this matter now? I know we touched on this in the opening here. I have assumptions here related to the economic environment that we're in. But why now? Why KPIs for events in 2024?

Carisa Bartelt:

I hate to harken back to the last couple years, but events especially have been this untrackable thing that we just know works. We all do events because our customers like them and our prospects like them and they're great, and face-to-face connections are great, but now with so much of the digitization of just even in-person interactions and the ability to track things, all of a sudden now I've got all this data that I can report on. And my programs are getting cut or my events are getting cut. And I can't cut back on the experience at events because that is something that people in your audience tangibly feels. I think from a marketing standpoint, if I cut back on my Google Ad spend, my customers aren't going to notice, right. They're not going to feel that cut. But if I cut back on the food and beverage on my events or the types of events and the quality of the events I'm doing, they really, really feel it.

So for marketers and people in the event space in general, there's this pressure to ... You still have to deliver great events, but also, we want to give you less. And they need to find a way to justify, one, their impact, and two, the full scope of really the experience that they want to create. And now they have all this data everywhere, right, that's like, "Oh, I can report on how many people attended this particular session and what time everybody checked in. And did they have a great time? And did they like that particular activation that I did?" Are very, very granular. And events teams aren't used to dealing with that much data or dealing with them, that kind of granular nitty-gritty.

Alyssa Peltier:

But let's talk about dealing with the data and what this framework aims to provide, which is a little bit more consistency, a little bit more structure around how to organize that information. Because like you said, it is a sea of information. And part of what we've been lacking historically is a means to make sense of it and categorize it, right. So what are some of these kind of specific examples of these KPIs or even categories of data and KPIs that we're organizing to help event managers improve their programs, to make sense of their programs, to make sense of the data that's part of their programs?

Carisa Bartelt:

Yeah. From a really basic level, getting really simple, because I think data is such a complicated topic and it's very, very intimidating to put your arms around, we're trying to build this framework for us to understand what, who, when, and where each data point kind of fits. We've seen a lot of people out there and they're like, "Here's 200 things that you can measure." And you're like, "Great. But why? What do I do with that? Where does it fit within my understanding of it?" So we've got the what, right, which is what you're trying to accomplish. And we're trying to assign a what to each data point that you might potentially get from an event. Is it to help with brand awareness? Is it measuring the participation and engagement of the people on site? Is it really just a direct revenue financial kind of piece?

Those are all different things of the objective themes, the what that we're measuring. Then we have who. Who cares about it? A lot of different data points are relevant to the event execution team, right. The nitty-gritty tactical. Or the sales team. I want to know about pipeline. I want to know about lead conversion. Or even the financial team, right. And for me, when I have all these things I can now measure, I want to know who cares about what so I can have better conversations with my stakeholders. And then we have it broken down into when, which are these maturity stages, right. When can I start measuring this? You can start measuring it right away. Or you need the foundation of data. Before you can start measuring this, you need this baseline. And then after you start measuring that, you can start looking at year-over-year information or cross event information. And that's that maturity of your data kind of approach. And then where. I think-

Alyssa Peltier:

You beat me to it. I was like, "Am I going to get her? Can I give her the where question?" But you're good. You're on top of your stuff today.

Carisa Bartelt:

Where? Where? Well, I think that's the really important part, right. Okay. I can pull this data. And there's this kind of growth of events as a part of the marketing organization as a whole where we understand not all of these data points are tracked or able to be ... Live in just my event management program or my event software, right.

Alyssa Peltier:

I think that's an important distinction, right. Because oftentimes we get ... There's a lot of event data within a platform like Cvent, right. There's tons of that. But we started this conversation where KPIs are often dependent on multiple data points. And sometimes those data points come with multiple data sources. And so I think the where is very important because we often take a very myopic view within our event planning profession, which is, "I'll just go to my event technology provider," but oftentimes the scavenger hunt exists beyond the tool that you are actively in every day.

Carisa Bartelt:

As we try to grow, I think everybody right now, you want to grow your event impact, you want to grow your personal career, you want to grow the contribution that you have to your organization. That doesn't just live in your specific data segment, right. I want to show impact to the org as a whole. I need to look at data points across the organization or across marketing channel. And that's where you start pulling data from your marketing automation platforms or your CRM or any of your data sources, right, to really get the full picture of what's going on. Not just to optimize the execution of an event, but to really optimize and show the impact that it has on organizational goals and [inaudible 00:09:59].

Alyssa Peltier:

And I also think also when you're looking at the tools and the ecosystem of data that supports your event program, the who actually is oftentimes intrinsically tied to the tool. So for example, use CRM as an example. CRM is a tool that's most commonly leveraged by your sales organization, your financial organization, your marketing organization, those that are responsible for the growth and revenue for your company, your organization, what have you. And so it starts to become clearer what stories you need to tell with those KPIs, with those data points when you know what tools are being leveraged for those particular KPIs. And sometimes the path forward becomes a little bit more transparent as opposed to this kind of opaque situation that we've been in for a really long time.

Carisa Bartelt:

Well, I think too, when you talk about the path forward, I really like the concept too of you need more of these other teams to make what you're trying to do a success, especially because resources are getting tighter. You want them to care about the things that you're trying to produce just as much as you do. And you need to make their involvement easier. And if the data is in a way that they can understand and you're speaking their language, and then also you're pushing information to them so they can see it in their own kind of system of truth or their tool, that helps them feel more bought into the process and creates kind of more organizational alignment.

Alyssa Peltier:

Organizational alignment and opportunity for scalability, for growth of the event program. I think so often we're in a position of defense, right, to defend the program, to justify the spend. But how nice would it be for event professionals to be on the offensive? For them to be able to say, "Look at all the good that we're doing as opposed to look at all the spend that we're trying to defend," right. And so again, KPIs are really the secret behind that. But knowing who you're talking to, where to find that information, what KPIs are of importance not only to you, but also to others, I think, is where the industry is headed.

Carisa Bartelt:

And then you can also help measure how they are impacting what you're doing. And that's kind of that proactive offensiveness of you're giving everybody a nudge because they're all contributing to selfishly your own goal, right, but they feel like a part of the process and they feel ... They can see their own impact of if you participate or if we help activate the sales team here to help drive registration. Or we want better conversion at the end, how can we get better about our nurture programs? People then get more excited when you are involving them and you're sharing that information and that impact. Then kind of just keep asking and keep justifying for their support, right. You're making them a part of the process and you're making that data work for you because you understand what they care about and what it means.

Alyssa Peltier:

No, I think that's great. I think that's perfect. Okay. So I don't want to gatekeep on this framework here. So I know I heard really positive praise from a session that was conducted at Cvent CONNECT just over a month ago now that was related to developing a KPI framework for your own organization. And I do believe, Carisa, there is either an upcoming webinar or a webinar that was just done that might be available on demand. Can you talk about some of these assets that we have for people to learn more about developing a KPI framework and tapping into the KPI framework that Cvent is developing?

Carisa Bartelt:

Yeah. Absolutely. So we've got a webinar coming up, I think it's the first week of August, so two, three weeks, that we're hosting, outlining the framework and what they are, what all the different categories are, what we've identified as the way to categorize your data. We just did a really nice presentation with AMA at their analytics marketing conference. So we've got that also on demand. And then we're working on putting together an asset or a resource for people so they can see individual metrics and how we're tagging them to fit within these themes, these categories, these stages, right, and then where they can find it as a starting point, right. Here's how you can start thinking about it, and here's how we're thinking through where this point fits. But it's really all about the framework of the categorization so that you can learn how to take a metric and fit it in within how we are organizing and teaching you to understand your metrics.

Alyssa Peltier:

I love that. I remember seeing kind of in the chat from the session that happened at Cvent CONNECT. Obviously, this webinar will be an accompaniment to that, and also this conversation that we're having here today. But I think I noticed in the chat this is the best session and the most practical information at Cvent CONNECT this year. So when we see stuff like that, we're like, "All right. We need to continue this conversation." So listeners, I hope you dig in more, dig in a little bit deeper on the data conversation and the data goldmine that is within your event programs to develop those KPIs, to justify the spend, but more importantly, to grow your programs more than ever before. With that, I want to say thank you to Carisa, our repeat contributor on the podcast. We will be happy to invite you again, Carisa, as always, but thoroughly enjoyed this conversation today. So we will see you next week, listeners. Have a great rest of the week.

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Felicia Asiedu:

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Alyssa Peltier:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.