This article has been originally published by our media member Mash Media Group Ltd. C+MW Magazine and has been featured in full below with their permission.



“Jonathan Sivak, director at Tapfuse, discusses the importance of ROE over ROI when it comes to event technology



It is difficult to underestimate the advantages of live events as marketing channels. Events facilitate communication between brands and their customers, build relationships, create communities and increase public awareness. However, in spite of being a great promotional tool, their impact can be difficult to measure.



When a company or a brand decides to invest in events they have to evaluate their success or failure. That’s where Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Engagement (ROE) come into play.



So what is ROI and why is it important?



ROI is defined as ‘the benefit to an investor resulting from an investment of some resource’. Calculating the ROI helps the event organisers convince sponsors that their investment makes sense by determining the number of tickets sold, booths occupied and revenues obtained.



However, short-term financial gain is not the only reason for organising events. Events help increase brand strength, release a new product with style or further develop those valuable customer relationships. If an event aims to improve brand performance in the long run through increasing awareness and creating trust among its customers, solely considering financial indicators (ROI) of success does not give the best insight into the customer’s journey and the brand experience. In this case the qualitative metric of the ROE needs to be considered.



The aim of ROE is to determine the impact of the event on the brand strength in terms of audience participation, perceptual change or company visibility.



However, measuring one’s ROE might seem like a tough task to accomplish, as interaction and networking at an event are difficult to quantify using the standard tools available. That’s why choosing the right event tech tools allows an event manager to capture and evaluate the important data on audience engagement.



For example, live polling and Q&A stimulate interaction between speakers and attendees and at the same time create a collaborative learning environment. The results displayed in real time during sessions generate discussions and grab the audience’s attention.



To conclude, while measuring financial success is important, short-term financial gains are not always the sole goal of event professionals. Very often an engaged and loyal audience is much more valuable. Using the right technology at events allows both sponsors and organisers to significantly increase audience engagement and improve ROE.”