Many of the event marketing campaigns we measure activate in several markets, primarily in the US. Helping agency clients understand why teams in certain markets are generating greater impact than others is a key measurement initiative we undertake. In order to compare metrics between activating markets, it’s important that we help the client ensure each team is well-represented in the data. Here is the approach I usually take to accomplish this.
For the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to refer to survey data as the means to collect event marketing metrics. Some campaigns may focus solely on field staff reports for measurement, but the majority of our work involves survey and field staff data.
The ability to measure differences in event marketing performance between activating markets is invaluable, because there may be insights gleaned from high performing markets (e.g., high purchase intent for the brand promoted) that can be highlighted as a best practice for other markets to improve. One challenge we often face is some markets collect more surveys than others, so they take up more of the sample than they probably should. Let me explain a process to prevent this.
The ideal solution is to set a survey goal for each market to reach before the end of the campaign. We usually recommend each market submit at least 400 surveys, because in a perfect world, that gives each market a margin of error around +/- 5% at a 90% confidence interval when comparing to one another. In other words, we should be able to explain any differences in impact between markets with statistical confidence.
Taking this a step further would be to recommend a per event/activation survey goal to reach 400 at the end. The best way to do this is to receive a routing calendar of each market’s activations and divide 400 by the number of events. If the number comes out to fewer than one survey per activation, go with five.
Going another step further would be to vary said survey per event goals by the size of the event. Some of the campaigns we measure activate at large festivals and small retail events simultaneously, so it would be worthwhile to collect more surveys from the festivals than retail events, as an example. An easy way to do this is to recommend a greater number of surveys at the large events compared to the small ones, and keep the overall goal of 400 in mind.
For example, if the campaign schedule includes five large festivals and 20 small retail activations in a particular market, I would recommend a goal of 40 surveys per festival and 10 surveys per retail activation. That way the campaign finishes with 200 surveys from each type of event and 400 altogether in that market.
Of course, things don’t usually work that smoothly, so it’s important to communicate with the client on a regular basis. I like to send a spreadsheet at least once a week to each client with the total number of surveys collected in each market and the number of surveys per event needed to reach the goal of 400.
Sorry for all the math. I had to check it over a couple times.