How to Guarantee Your Experiential Recap Report is Actionable

Written by Chris Clegg

How to Guarantee Your Experiential Recap Report is Actionable

In experiential marketing, knowing the decisions your stakeholders need to make is at the heart of delivering a recap report with actionable insights. By aligning your data with their needs, you can greatly improve the usefulness of your reports and why it’s essential to focus on stakeholder decisions.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes


Why Stakeholder Interviews are Crucial for Event Success

Stakeholder interviews help you gather data that’s not just relevant but also useful. When you know the decisions stakeholders need to make, you can collect and present data that directly supports those decisions. This makes your research more focused and impactful. The process involves a handful of key steps:

  1. Report Findings: Present the findings in a format that directly supports the decisions stakeholders need to make.
  2. Identify Stakeholder Decisions: Understand what decisions stakeholders need to make.
  3. Determine Information Needs: Clarify the type of information required to make those decisions.
  4. Source the Information: Decide if the information already exists (e.g., in third-party data) or if it needs to be collected through primary research.
  5. Collect and Analyze: Gather the data and analyze it in a way that aligns with the information that is needed.

Deconstruct Stakeholder Decisions into Cause and Effect

Once you have identified the process above, think about the data you’ll collect. Consider what the marketing team can control and define the structure and approach of the experiential campaigns (i.e., “The Cause”). Then, determine the outcomes that define success and align with the go/no-go decisions the stakeholder needs to make (i.e., “The Effect”).

After collecting detailed data on these outcomes (e.g., sales, purchase intent, advocacy, etc.) you’ll be able to segment your findings by the measures that define the activation (e.g., engagements, venue type, market, consumer profile, etc.).

Maximize Event ROI via Stakeholder-Focused Research

To maximize ROI in experiential marketing, it’s crucial to use these causal segments to identify what is working well and what is not. When this aligns with the decisions we know stakeholders need to make, we can ensure that we are delivering actionable reports.

It all starts with detailed stakeholder interviews and thoughtfully segmenting data on what the stakeholders have control over.

If you’re curious about the types of decisions experiential marketing stakeholders are making and the data that helps them achieve their outcomes, take a closer look at PortMA’s Event RecapIQ.

Everything your team needs to optimize campaigns, improve ROI, and make better decisions about future activation strategies.