There are a lot of ways to count. There are as many tools, apps, and consultants available with different ways to count the activities of your event marketing campaign. However, if you don’t have a solid reporting plan in mind, you’ll be stuck with a spreadsheet of data and a blank PowerPoint template at the 11th hour. Knowing a little more about what makes a good report will help.
The last thing we need are another 40 pages that no one will read in a PowerPoint deck.
So let’s talk briefly about reporting techniques that will ensure that the data gets used by your team, your field staff, your tour managers, and your Client. Let’s talk about a method of reporting that is easy to produce, insightful, and that allows you to manage your programs performance while controlling the conversation with the brand team.
Creating Event Marketing Status Reports The Clients Will Read
At PortMA, we champion using flash reports, a common element of monitoring success at the corporate level. It’s designed to efficiently communicate the overview that managers need. We use the report for senior Client brand managers and tour managers.
It’s a report designed to appeal to every type of person. It turns out we all tend to be one of three types of learners. And this is a match to the type of reports we like to see.
- Visual learners like photos and have less tolerance for text. They appreciate the tables and text mix. You can lose them if you don’t have data broken out in blocks of information.
- The audio learner needs the text. It must be simple, easy to read, with clear value.
- The taciturn learner needs the charts. They need to see the numbers presented graphically. They’ll take notes in the margins, circle the things that matter to them.
The PortMA flash report does all of these things. Summary date is presented together in a single page. Delivered weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, it is a quick status report for the entire team.
Sample reports are available to paid subscribers to our coaching services. Click here if you are interested in learning more about our Event Measurement Training solution.
Flash Report Components
Executive summary. It’s just a few sentences. If you don’t read anything else, read this.
Up top, we see that this is the Week 9 report. It reads: “Strong levels of consumer engagement are matched with higher than anticipated purchase intent figures which continue to trend above industry averages…” Quick, concise facts that tell the team what’s going on.
We see the program is planned to last 14 weeks and that we’re 64% of the way through activations, with a little over 45,000 samples to date on 56,000 interactions.
This is followed by a review of our demographic targeting, answering that question, “How often am I reaching the right person?”
We see that the program demographics were one third male, two-thirds female last week. This reflects the program average to date. Our target is about one-third male, so we’re on track for that demographic.
However, the age demographic is off. Last week, the average male interaction was with someone over 51 years old. This is higher than the program average to date, indicating that we’re trending upward in age above the program target of 45 to 40 years old. While our gender profile is on track, our age profile is not. The team should be looking for opportunities to engage younger participants in the remaining weeks .
Activations. On the right you see the table titled, “Reach and Distribution – Overview.” We have total figures for “Attendance,” “Interactions,” “Samples,” “Coupons,” and “Purchase on-site”. You can can compare last week to the program to date and the targets. Below we have this broken out by samples per market.
The tables that follow make information actionable. Look at the table titled, “Reach and Distribution Run-Rates.” We have the “Program to Date” figures, but now we include an “Average per Week” and “Projected” column, indicating where the program is trending and reasonably anticipated results.
Interactions are projected to reach 73,514 on a target of 75,000. We’ll need to pick up the pace. Samples are also trending a little low. We’re projected to do about 63,000 on a goal of 65,000.
We’re going to have a problem with Coupons, if we’re not careful. We’re targeting 65,000, but we’re projecting almost 87,000. Either we tell the team to slow down or we need to order more before inventory is depleted. Since onsite sales are also projected to exceed the target, it makes sense to print more coupons.
Impact projections. Here we see the core figures (projected) in our ROI modeling. We can do some quick math in the margin and know if our ROI is positive or negative long before it’s time to deliver the recap. The flash reports help us to know how things are going to turn out so that we can make appropriate adjustments along the way.
Activation Summary. Because not everyone likes to read numbers we need to write it up. Here we start with some simple text around what happened last week.
That’s followed briefly by some essential data interpretation . Let’s address talk about why gender targeting is working and how we’re responding to those coupon figures. Let’s talk about what we’re going to do about the age issue and why we’re not concerned.
You’re letting folks know that you are aware, you’re on the job, and you’re ensuring a successful program. You’re monitoring ROI. You’re managing your program.