Case Study: Value of Annual Finance Business Conference

The Brand Challenge

A multi-national financial institution wanted to increase its presence with small- and medium-sized business customers.

The Campaign

The Agency supported the execution of three B2B conference sessions held throughout the year which culminated into a large, internationally-attended, annual finance business conference where the financial institution leveraged corporate sponsorship.

The Measurement Strategy

The goals of the Agency and Brand were threefold.

1. First and foremost, there was a need to measure the conference experience and how it impacted the likelihood of attendees to move their relevant financial services to the Brand.
2. Second, it was critical that both the Agency and the Brand understood the priorities of the participants, how those priorities were met by attending the event, and if or how the experience caused them to change their overall business practices.
3. Finally, all parties needed a clear, highly customized, return-on-investment model to understand what value was being delivered to the Brand and how that value could be increased.

The program measurement strategy had been put in place before the goals were fully understood and, thus, data collection was well under way by the time PortMA was engaged. After clarifying the goals and reviewing the data collection process already in place, PortMA worked with the team to fine tune the current process and ensure the resulting data could be used to help achieve the measurement needs of the program.

Key Findings/ Insights

• Conference attendees valued the networking opportunities as much as they did the content (if not more). When participants felt sufficient time was provided for structured networking sessions, they were more likely to find the overall experience valuable and more likely to report a favorable impression of the Brand after the event.

• An analysis was conducted of the revenue generated for corporate sponsors. At one event it was discovered that the corporate sponsor’s content and presence at the event generated upwards of $93,600 in incremental revenue, which was much more than one sponsor’s costs.

• Overall, it was estimated that upwards of 13% of non-customers might switch their service to the financial institution.