Marketing & GrowthFree
Event Sponsorship ROI Evaluation Report
Staff days added to the invoice, pipeline that existed before the event stripped out, and last year's cohort compared at the same age.
Pentreath's spring show invoiced at $48,000 and sat on the budget line at $92,100. Seven people spent 45 days on it, which at burdened rates is a further $30,911, so the sponsorship cost $123,011. That is 2.56 times the figure the team reported to the board, and the staff days are 25.1% of the real number. Those days appear on no event budget, which is why the ratio always looks healthy. Travel was costed against the published per diem rather than waiting on expense reports.
The CRM credits 18 opportunities worth $1,240,000. Six of them, worth $560,000, were already open before the show, so a badge scan is a touch on a deal that was already running. Four more had prior recorded activity and stay contested. Eight are net-new with no earlier contact record, worth $470,000. Against the fully loaded cost that is 3.82 times rather than 25.83, and the hurdle here is five. The two corrections move the answer further than any argument about awareness could.
Every one of those eight came from a meeting booked before anybody flew. Booth traffic and the stage slot produced seven conversations between them and no net-new pipeline at all, so the recommendation is the tier that keeps the attendee list and drops the booth. That is $51,571 fully loaded instead of $123,011. Written for whoever signs the renewal. Pair it with what the recording is worth and the follow-up list built from the attendee export.
Three places an event ROI model quietly goes wrong
No attribution model asks the question that decides this. HubSpot's own documentation lists what an attribution report can be set to. First touch gives all credit to the first interaction, last touch gives all credit to the last interaction before conversion, linear splits it evenly and time decay weights the recent. Each of them assigns credit by where an interaction sat in a sequence. None asks whether the opportunity already existed on the day the show opened.
Two lines on the same invoice cost different amounts. IRS Publication 463 is direct that a company can no longer deduct an expense for an activity generally considered entertainment, amusement or recreation, while a business meal stays 50% deductible if somebody from the company is present. Pentreath's $6,900 dinner costs $6,176 after tax at 21%. The $4,800 party costs $4,800, which is 11.7% more per budget dollar. Only one of the two is traceable to a meeting.
Travel days do not need estimating either. The GSA publishes the maximum allowances for lodging, meals and incidental costs that federal travellers are held to, city by city and month by month, which is a defensible published rate. Pentreath costed four nights for seven people against it rather than waiting for expense reports, which is what lets the decision happen before the deadline instead of after. A late precise number is worth less than an auditable early one.
How it works
Load the cost
Staff days at a burdened rate and travel at a published per diem, added onto the invoice.
Strip the pipeline
Every credited opportunity checked against whether it was already open before the event.
Split the sourcing
Meetings traced to the attendee list or to booth traffic, and the opportunities to each.
Match the ages
This cohort against last year's at the same day count, never against its closed total.
What you get
- Every cost line including the staff days at a burdened rate, and what each one produced.
- Each credited opportunity marked already open, prior activity, or net-new, with the evidence.
- Meetings split by how they were sourced, so the list and the booth are priced apart.
- The ratio recomputed on every defensible pairing of numerator and denominator, and the spread.
- Last year's cohort at the same age rather than its closed-to-date, so the comparison holds.
- A smaller footprint priced line by line, and the net-new count the full one would need.
Common questions
Is stripping the open deals not unfair to the event?
It is the only way to compare the event to anything else. A deal that was already in stage three does not need creating twice. Those six stay in the report as influenced pipeline with a note on what the meeting moved, and out of the ratio that decides whether to buy the tier again.
How do you cost a staff day?
Base salary times a burden multiplier, divided by working days. Pentreath used 1.31 and 240, so an account executive on $145,000 is $791.46 a day. It is a convention rather than a truth, so it gets stated and applied to every role the same way, and the multiplier is on the sheet.
The pipeline has not closed. How can we decide anything?
By comparing cohorts at the same age. Last year's net-new cohort held $510,000 at day 90 and has closed $196,000 since, which is 38.4%. This year holds $470,000 at day 90, so it is down 7.8% and its expected close is $180,627. That is decidable at the deadline.
What about brand awareness?
Not measurable at this budget, and the thing usually meant by it is. People who met you and came back through another channel land in the prior-activity bucket, four opportunities and $210,000 here, counted separately and labelled contested rather than folded into either side of the argument.
Why separate booth traffic from pre-booked meetings?
Because they cost different amounts and returned different things. The booth and the stage slot are $11,400 of build plus most of the travel, and they produced seven conversations and no net-new pipeline. The 24 pre-booked meetings came from six days of one person working the attendee list.
So the answer is always to cancel?
No. The same $123,011 in paid search buys more pipeline, $568,131 against $470,000, and converts at 21.5% rather than 38.4%, so its expected revenue is lower. The show is worth attending and the booth is not, which is a tier change rather than a cancellation. Channel-level comparison lives in the mix review.
What actually gets delivered?
A Sheet with every cost line, the staff days and their rates, one row per credited opportunity with its bucket and the evidence, and the meeting sourcing. Then a Doc with the recommendation, the ratio at each defensible reading, and the smaller footprint priced against the one you bought.
Event Sponsorship ROI Evaluation Report
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