This is the first part of our two-part blog, Mastering Brand Experience ROI: A Strategic Guide to Proving Your Value and Driving Brand Growth. In Part 1, we cover metrics for success, while in Part 2, we break down ROI and brand growth strategies.

In the ever-evolving marketing landscape, brand experiences have become a powerhouse for brand loyalty, awareness, and revenue. You know it, and so do we. But do your leaders?  

In today's competitive landscape and with tightening budgets, event marketers and brand leaders must prove their value with measurable ROI, which is especially challenging for brand experiences. Between siloed data, event wifi struggles, and a lack of overarching insights, the deck seems stacked against field marketers in ways it isn’t for other marketing fields like digital. 

In this blog, we’ll show you how you can prove the value of events and experiences to stakeholders and play an active role in driving brand growth. 

Key Metrics That Matter

Understanding and measuring key metrics is paramount in the ever-changing marketing realm, especially for brand experiences. These metrics provide insights into your efforts' success, helping you clearly demonstrate the return and act as the compass guiding your strategies for future endeavors.

Brand Perception and Sentiment: The Net Promoter Score (NPS) as Your North Star

Among your metric arsenal, The Net Promoter Score (NPS)) typically emerges as a front-runner. This metric offers brands a great way to gauge consumers’ sentiment towards your brand and, when measured correctly, the impact of your events on brand perception. 

What it is: Customers are asked to rate, on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely they are to recommend your brand. Scores of 9 and 10 signify brand promoters, while lower scores indicate detractors. Consistency in high scores signifies a positive brand sentiment, while a trend towards detractor scores demands attention and corrective measures.

How to get it: Post-event surveys are one of the best ways to get a Net Promoter Score from a consumer. Often, it is the only question asked in a follow-up email, with an option to take a longer survey since it’s considered one of the more valuable metrics. 

Expert Tip: If you include a question measuring NPS into the event registration or RSVP process, you can measure the change between before and after the event with follow-up surveys to fully understand how the event changed brand perception.

Purchase Intent: A Litmus Test for Event Success

This is one of the most pivotal metrics for tying your event to consumer purchasing.  Knowing if attendees are inclined to convert into consumers is a game-changer. 

What is it: A measurement of whether consumers plan to purchase your product, and in this case, if your event impacted that intent. Asking your attendees, “How likely are you to purchase [brand product] in the next six months?” will give you this insight, with answers from “Not Likely” to “Extremely Likely”. 

How to get it: Pre-event registrations, digital interactions, and post-event surveys help map this transition, offering you a more nuanced understanding of the consumer journey. Post-event surveys and on-site sales data contribute to unraveling the mystery of purchase intent, helping you align your strategies with audience behavior.

Marketing Opt-Ins: From Registration to Action

Marketing opt-ins are your invitation to deepen your relationship with a consumer. When attendees give you their contact details after engaging in on-site activities, they’re saying they liked the experience you created enough to want to hear from you again. 

Many brands, like The Flower Shop, use marketing opt-ins to promote their CPG products directly to their consumers and have found that these sign-ups have been proven to lead to purchases. 

It goes like this: a consumer signs up for The Flower Shop’s email list. Then, The Flower Shop sends newsletters, promotions, and more to encourage purchases. They have been able to assign an average transaction value to those on their email list. Armed with that information, they can put a dollar sign on their marketing opt-in numbers at events and showcase their ROI to stakeholders.

What is it: The marketing opt-in rate is the percentage of consumers who, when given the choice, decide to subscribe or opt-in to receive marketing communications from your brand, providing a key metric for evaluating audience engagement and the effectiveness of event strategies.

How to get it: Find the number of people that attended your event or registered during your activation, and calculate the percentage of those that opted-in to marketing communications from your brand. 

Brand Loyalty: Identifying Your Super Fans

The ultimate goal of any brand experience strategy is to cultivate brand loyalty. Identifying and nurturing super fans who are not just excited but become fervent advocates for your brand is the pinnacle of success. 

What is it: Post-event feedback, social media engagement, and continued enthusiasm from attendees are indicators of a successful event, but true brand loyalty can be measured by who’s making repeat purchases from your brand. 

How to get it: Identify returners, brand promoters through NPS, and other trends through loyalty programs and VIP events to see who’s spending the most after your events. An experience marketing platform, like AnyRoad, can surface specific trends on one dashboard about brand loyalty, like average age, gender, location, and more. 

Want more? Stay tuned for Part 2, where we dive into the strategies behind ROI and brand growth!