With industry professionals bringing a heightened focus to the ROI of their events, particularly due to soaring event costs and structural changes to events as a result of the pandemic, Event Leadership Institute (ELI) launched the industry’s first course specifically centered on measuring, interpreting and communicating an event’s performance to stakeholders. 

The online Event Measurement & Analytics Certificate will teach participants a variety of data-driven ways to measure an event’s success for different stakeholders, including attendees, hosts, exhibitors and sponsors. More importantly, they will learn how to calculate event ROI and use it to tell a story about an event’s performance, including how well it helps the organization achieve its goals.

While event surveys provide some data, decision-makers are increasingly scrutinizing how much money, time and energy they invest in hosting, attending, exhibiting and sponsoring events, according to Howard Givner, CEO of ELI. The course is designed to provide more valuable and actionable data that can drive decisions. 

“The event industry is awash in data now, but the challenge is knowing which pieces of data are most useful to evaluate ROI,” Givner said. “Think about the last time you drove a car. There are hundreds of data points collected by the car’s computer, but only a few critical ones are displayed in the dashboard: how fast you’re going, how much gas/power you have left, etc.” 

Givner added that zeroing in on the key pieces of information needed to measure the success of an event is the key first step, following by knowing where to obtain that data and presenting it as a compelling narrative to stakeholders. 

“That’s what this course is all about,” he added.

ELI tapped two event tech experts to lead the course: Joe Colangelo, co-founder and CEO of Bear Analytics, an event data aggregation company, and Vinnu Deshetty, founder of EVA, an events management platform. 

“Armed with data that today’s event professionals collect, we no longer have to rely on our gut to make strategic decisions about our events,” Deshetty said. “Listen to the data. It’s trying to tell you something.” 

ELI’s new course is designed for a wide range of event professionals, including:

• In-house meeting and event planners who want to be able to evaluate an event’s success and present key metrics to senior stakeholders
   
• Exhibit managers looking for better ways to measure trade show ROI
   
• Agency account managers who want to help their clients determine the ROI of their events and prove the value of their agency
   
• Event planners and producers looking to integrate event goals, data capture and KPIs into the event design process
   
• Senior event professionals looking to be more comfortable engaging with executive management on event data and performance
   
• Junior event professionals who want to demonstrate their value by collecting and analyzing event data for their managers.

The Event Measurement & Analytics Certificate course will begin Sept. 21 and run for five weeks. Live office hours with the instructors and a community forum for student discussion are included. To register, click here.

ELI provides progressive online education, training and professional development programs for meeting and event industry professionals. In addition to instructor-led professional development courses, group training and webinars, ELI has more than 180 on-demand video classes.

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