Everybody is talking about “Big Data,” but in your mind, the best way to gauge an event’s success is by examining the little things. An event planner is naturally inclined to count the bodies moving to the beat on the dance floor, measure the tenor of the conversation among attendees, or study the smiles of guests. But, alas, the bean counters want numbers, and you begrudgingly agree that hard data offers some useful insights. But there are a gazillion ways to measure an event’s success. You only want to bother with the most important. Here, we present the ten marketing metrics for events in 2025 that will satisfy the bean counters and help you pull in even more smiling guests.
Social Media Metrics
Google’s AI Overview makes it more difficult to get organic traffic to your event website. Marketing company Bounteous estimates that AI Overview reduces organic click-through rates between 18-64%. However, that’s not the only bad news for event marketers. Kantar reports that consumers are fatigued with “over-targeted” paid campaign ads, and the power of influencer marketing, while still effective, is starting to decline.
Social media marketing’s heyday, on the other hand, is far from over. Social Sprout reports that social media marketing has a powerful, positive impact on brand loyalty and recognition, competitive positioning, and public relations outcomes.
The reason social media marketing is the bees-knees in this time of digital marketing upheaval is because it’s “customer-centric.” Using social media (your strongest channels, anyway) to market your event is a great way to engage your audience in real-time, get in on the conversation, and, most importantly, earn trust.
So, without further ado, these are the most important social media metrics for events in 2024.
- Engagement rate measures the love — and the hate — your social media posts receive. Every little interaction, from comments to likes to shares, gets tallied to create an overall picture of the impact of your event’s social media marketing campaign.
- Social listening metrics further analyze the engagement rate to give you an idea of how people feel about your event. Did the golf tournament fundraiser have the net positive result you expected, or did your audience silently grumble about your charity event’s lack of transparency or its prohibitive entry fee?
- Click-through rate measures how often people perform the all-important click-through action that nudges them a little further down the sales funnel. By measuring click-through rate, you can determine which posts were more successful, which posting time garnered the most click-throughs, and which social media channel arguably led to the highest conversion rate.
Revenue-Centric Metrics
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can finance bigger and better events, drive company success, and serve as a meaningful metric for your event’s triumph — especially in the eyes of the decision-makers holding the purse strings.
Tracking your event’s revenue will help you improve the attendee experience, secure the go-ahead for future events, and generate profits. Your event likely has multiple revenue streams and several tiers of tickets. Let’s look at the most useful revenue metrics for events.
- The revenue-by-promo code breaks down the numbers for the various promo codes you used throughout your event’s marketing. Promo codes do more than give attendees a deal. They give event organizers insights into which marketing channels are most effective. Assigning unique promo codes to different influencers, email campaigns, and giveaways will tell you where your marketing ROI paid off.
- Revenue-by-ticket type tells you where the sweet spot is in terms of ticket pricing and add-ons. You’ll gain insight into how effective your early bird pricing is. You’ll also learn how attractive your VIP packages are and whether group discounts led to more sign-ups.
- Advertising and sponsorship revenue helps you offer lower ticket prices to your audience. If you find this metric lacking, then reassessing perks and offerings can help you bring more sponsors and advertisers on board for next year.
- Merchandise sales, in addition to increasing your event’s revenue, also give you a window into your brand’s reputation. Are attendees willing to pay for a shirt with your logo splashed across it? To increase merchandise sales, you can hire better designers, explore ways to broaden your brand’s appeal and reimagine your event’s vibe.
- Lead conversion rate helps you determine how your event translated into sales, even after the event’s end date. To accurately measure lead conversion rate, you’ll need a reliable method of capturing and tracking leads at your event.
Reputation Metrics
Speaking of reputation, the public’s opinion of your brand is everything. According to Statista, respondents overwhelmingly agreed that it’s important the brands they buy from have a good reputation. And as you already know, events are a powerful way to boost your brand’s reputation.
Events nurture a community, are vehicles for interactions with your customers, and foster positive memories associated with your brand. These reputation metrics will help you ascertain whether your event hit the mark and increase positive feelings for your brand.
- Net Promoter Score is a classic metric that distills your brand reputation into a single, elegant question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this event/our brand/this product to a friend?” Those who answer with a 6 or less are considered detractors. Those who answer with a nine or 10 are promoters. Those in the middle are neutral.
Your Net Promoter Score has a direct impact on your bottom line. Survey Monkey reports that the median score is 44, with 44% of respondents being “promotors.” However, the top 25% of organizations have an NPS score of 72 or higher.
- Social media mentions of your brand can be important indicators of how your event affected your reputation. You’ll gain greater insight if you monitor social media mentions to gauge your brand’s reputation before the event, leading up to your event, and after the event.
Learn More About How to Wow Event Guests at The Event Planner Expo
Maybe the bean counters are on to something. Tracking these event marketing metrics will help you improve your events’ success. And that means you get more of the real measure of an event’s success: high energy, lively conversations, and smiling faces.
Get your fix of the satisfaction of a job well done when you learn more event planning insights at The Event Planner Expo. During three days, more than 50 speakers and thousands of attendees converge in New York City. They come together to talk shop about all things event planning. When you attend The Event Planner Expo, you’ll experience the high energy, lively discussions, and big smiles of a widely successful event. Buy your tickets today!
