What is the value of an event? It’s a deceptively simple question, and one that’s harder than ever to answer.
Businesses are upping their investment. Final forecasts from the 2025 Q1 Bellwether Report indicate a strong anticipated rise in events marketing budgets for the 2025/26 financial year, with a robust net balance of +16.6% — though this comes with growing pressure to deliver measurable results.
As most event professionals will know, that’s a significant challenge. Not all event impact is tangible, and there’s real difficulty in proving ROI. In fact, our industry often finds itself “bottom of the class” when trying to return to the boardroom and show how an experience contributed to the business.
During EC’s latest industry roundtable – chaired by Marketing Director Abby Hartley and Strategist Rob Sellers – we explored this tension between measurement and value. In a wide-ranging discussion spanning behavioural science, experience design, and event programming, two key themes stood out:
- The ongoing challenge of measuring real business impact
- The need to involve a broader group of stakeholders to make that possible
So, how do we prove the value of events? Here are four key insights from the conversation:
1. Move from event measurement to event value
Events generate plenty of data from attendance to social media engagement to lead capture and sentiment – but often what’s easy to measure isn’t what matters most.
As Einstein famously said: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
Long-term impact is particularly hard to pin down. One roundtable participant said “some things are impossible to measure” – like a sale that happens two years later, influenced by multiple interactions.
However, you can quantify value if you rethink what it means. Rob Sellers, EC strategist, said true event value comes down to two things: what people remember and what they do differently afterwards. If nothing sticks, or nothing changes, the event hasn’t worked.
Ultimately, it’s this change in behaviour – whether it’s a prospect engaging in a conversation, a customer purchasing your new product, or a colleague adopting a new way of working – that links an eve
2. Use behavioural objectives to connect events to outcomes
Sellers outlined a four-stage approach to designing events that drive measurable value:
- Define organisational objectives
the core business goals and KPIs - Set behavioural objectives
the desired attendee actions and outcomes - Apply behavioural science
through experience design to encourage those behaviours - Measure the business impact
both short-term (feedback, engagement metrics, and post-event actions) and long-term (memory, behavioural change, and business outcomes over time)
For example, in a sales kick-off, the organisational objective might be to increase revenue and reduce time to close. That only happens if people behave differently – so the behavioural goals might include things like more sales calls and consistent CRM use.
“Most [event professionals] are in organisations where leaders know events are really important,” said Sellers. “They just need a little bit of proof. Something concrete around the intangible. And that ultimately comes back to behaviours.”
3. Track outcomes over time – not just immediately after
Real impact takes time. Several participants stressed the importance of measuring event effectiveness across multiple time horizons – not just the next day.
One shared a structured approach: define your audience (e.g. net new vs existing customers), set clear goals, follow up on every lead within three weeks, and measure outcomes at 30, 60, 90 and 150-day intervals.
This kind of process is what links short-term engagement to long-term value – and equips event teams to go back to the boardroom with confidence.
4. Break down the silo and align with stakeholders early
Events often sit in a silo – briefed in late, focused on delivery rather than strategy. But to create meaningful value, event professionals need to engage in conversation with stakeholders from across the business from the start.
A cross-functional KPI workshop can be a powerful tool. Involve sales, marketing, product, operations – anyone whose objectives the event is meant to support. Together, define the organisational goals, then build behavioural objectives around them. “One workshop with a few different stakeholders can radically impact the event and expectations,” said Sellers.
And crucially, the platforms to measure success may already exist within your business. “A lot of the behaviours we’re trying to drive are already being tracked – like sales performance or CRM usage,” Sellers said. It’s about linking those behaviours directly to the event, and ensuring that someone is responsible for monitoring them.
Want to create internal events that resonate across generations?
This overview shares just a few of the powerful ideas from our latest roundtable. If you’d like to continue exploring what value really means in events – and how EC can help you design experiences that deliver real, lasting business impact – we’d love to talk.
Our mission is to make the extraordinary everlasting. Let’s unlock the full potential of your events together.
