How To Design Events Around Meaningful Outcomes

[00:00:00] Mahoganey Jones: No event can happen unless there are goals and quantifiable outcomes. So what is the outcome that you want to have? So it's just to remind everyone that an event technically is a strategy and there should be a business behind it.

[00:00:13] Alyssa Peltier: Great events create great brands. But pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences, well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

[00:00:24] Rachel Andrews: I'm Rachel.

[00:00:25] Kelly Cheng: I'm Kelly.

[00:00:26] Felicia Asiedu: And I'm Felicia.

[00:00:28] Alyssa Peltier: And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

[00:00:36] Felicia Asiedu: Hi everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? I am Felicia, and I am your host for this week. And today I am joined by the wonderful Mahoganey Jones. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Mahoganey.

[00:00:49] Mahoganey Jones: Hi, I'm Mahoganey Jones. I'm the founder and CEO of Event Specialists. We're an event management and production company based in Toronto, Canada. We service the executive event space, and we do a lot of forums and some fun events.

[00:01:00] Felicia Asiedu: I like that. Excellent. I like fun. So there's a good reason for you joining me today because we are going to talk about how you track performance of your events and the things you should be thinking about. And one of the things that I know my team has been talking about is tracking performance against what good looks like versus what you've done a hundred times before and saying, "Well, it was better than last year, so it must be good." So you ready to get in?

[00:01:23] Mahoganey Jones: Let's get started.

[00:01:23] Felicia Asiedu: Let's get started. So let's think about that. If you're thinking about performance and thinking about what we're tracking, what would you say event teams miss by just looking internally and saying, "Well, we did this and we're going to just track it against that."

What is the big miss there?

[00:01:38] Mahoganey Jones: Aside from what I call the vanity metrics, I feel like we're all focused on the easiest tangibles. So the easiest to say, "Well, last year we had 50 registrations. This year we're going for 75," without actually wondering what is it that we can do to make more impact to get us to 75.

So I'll have to say some of the biggest misses, in my opinion, is not looking for impact rather than only looking at tangibles. Because sometimes your impact is a little bit of both, like saying your content didn't translate, but how did you actually measure that?

What did you actually look at to see if said content translated?

[00:02:15] Felicia Asiedu: You said vanity metrics. I know we've been talking about... I've heard people talk about that. Sometimes people say attendance is vanity, but I always say it depends on what your goal was.

[00:02:24] Mahoganey Jones: Thank you.

[00:02:26] Felicia Asiedu: So what would you call some vanity metrics?

[00:02:28] Mahoganey Jones: One of the biggest ones, I do actually think a registration number is a vanity metric if it isn't quantified by a goal.

[00:02:36] Felicia Asiedu: Okay.

[00:02:36] Mahoganey Jones: So a lot of times we'll say, "Well, the average person or the average event gets said number of registrations," but did we actually study what that research was? We have an event that we've seen be produced. But looking at the industry, they're like, "The average person in this industry, we get about an 80% show-up rate."

I was like, "Well, what are you measuring 80% against?"

80% of a hundred is very different than 80% of a thousand. So your number, what are you actually quantifying it with? So I feel like vanity metrics, a lot of it is whether or not it's the number of registrations. For me, a better number would be how many are returning registrants? How many are new registrants? What is your net new versus the returning?

Dig a little deeper into what that registration number can be. Do you have virtual that turned into in-person? Do you have non or competing industry, which I feel like is a borrowed industry? Are you borrowing from another industry to bring attendees to yours? Look at registration and make it a little bit deeper.

[00:03:38] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. I love that. And I think what I like about that so much is that I don't like saying, "Hey, reg is not enough or attendance is not enough."

It could be, but it depends on the objectives and you've got to dig a little deeper, it sounds to me, down into... Because even when you said new versus returning, it depends what your objectives are, right?

[00:03:56] Mahoganey Jones: That's right.

[00:03:56] Felicia Asiedu: So if someone's like, "I need broader reach. I want more people to know who we are and get our brand out there," then new's great, right?

[00:04:02] Mahoganey Jones: Absolutely.

[00:04:03] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. So I think it's that paint the objective game that we're talking about.

[00:04:06] Mahoganey Jones: Absolutely.

[00:04:07] Felicia Asiedu: What are some of those better measurements that you've seen? You spoke about content earlier and measuring what's the efficacy of the content. Is it working? How are people measuring those types of things?

[00:04:18] Mahoganey Jones: I feel like if we took a page out of the medical education playbook, no event can happen unless there are goals and quantifiable outcomes. So what is the outcome that you want to have?

So I feel like a good use of understanding your content and the value is looking at not just survey results. Congratulations, everyone got a five out of five. That was a fantastic session. But what is the actual impact of that?

So is there something that was tangible and able to be applied? How can you measure that? Then we have to design for that. So if you want to know if your content is being used, what is something that we can add as a metric to verify that? Add something that's of value that will help the outcome.

[00:04:59] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah.

[00:05:00] Mahoganey Jones: So content is one of those ones that I feel like isn't as easy. Yes, we can look at survey results like we said, but can we look at what that return is?

In medical education, they have what's called a feedback loop. So you would look at, through survey or through content or published, bringing it back to the forefront. So messaging your attendees, what did you apply?

[00:05:21] Felicia Asiedu: Right.

[00:05:22] Mahoganey Jones: Asking them at the beginning of an event or a conference, what are you looking to accomplish? What is your main goal? And then following up to see if said goal was met. That will allow to see if there's transformation or not from the content.

[00:05:33] Felicia Asiedu: I love that. I heard that quite recently actually. It was Scottish Power of all the businesses. They do a lot of internal training. And they were saying what they do is right at the beginning of, say, a webinar, they'll ask a question and they ask exactly the same question at the end of the webinar to show that progress.

I thought that was really good. I actually used that in a session recently.

[00:05:52] Mahoganey Jones: I love that.

[00:05:53] Felicia Asiedu: If you had to ask a client, "Hey, listen, what are we doing here? What are the objectives?" How do you get them to think about that tying back to their business goals? What are the best kinds of things that you can ask the client to get that out of them? Or do they come ready-made? Do they know what they want to do?

[00:06:08] Mahoganey Jones: I feel like we have a framework that we use internally that's a one-page business plan. So it's just to remind everyone that an event technically is a strategy and there should be a business behind it.

But one of the ways I get around this, we've always done the things, it's very simple, but I apply the SSK method, which is the start, stop, keep.

And you frame it in the sense of what do we want to start? What do we want to start that we've actually never started that would be excellent? What do we want to stop doing?

And framing stop, not necessarily because it's bad or it's not impactful or all of those things, but what would you like to stop because it is too heavy of a lift, because it is too hard on the budget? Think of other opportunities to ask your questions.

[00:06:52] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah.

[00:06:52] Mahoganey Jones: Because we know as planners and producers that some of those keynotes are a little bit too costly. So you can frame it in a, "What would we like to stop if we could put more time into a schedule?"

If your keynotes are naturally long, your answer is naturally going to be something closer to where you want it to be. We call it a little bit of a persuasion happening in your stop method, but it'll at least allow you to direct the conversation.

I mean, we're strategists at the end of the day, so add that. And then, of course, what do you want to keep? And then the keep, you can also put caveats around that.

Let's say we start to put it into the framework. Maybe this year keep is only we keep three things. We cannot keep all five, but we can choose three.

So it'll allow you to get at least around or open the conversation of, "We've always done it that way."

[00:07:46] Felicia Asiedu: And so let's say someone says they want to keep something, but there's no metric. Do you even ask, do you say, "Hey, you said you want to keep this. Do you have a real reason, a metric behind that?" Do you challenge your clients?

[00:07:58] Mahoganey Jones: Absolutely. And I feel like that's our job, to challenge. Does it mean they won't push back? I mean, they could always say, "No, we are still going to do it because I personally enjoy doing said items."

[00:08:10] Felicia Asiedu: Sure.

[00:08:11] Mahoganey Jones: But sometimes there is space for that nostalgia, or there is space for,

"Our CEO just happens to really like this venue."

[00:08:21] Felicia Asiedu: Sure. Yeah. And then you just go with it.

[00:08:24] Mahoganey Jones: Then you go with it.

[00:08:24] Felicia Asiedu: Which is nice because I think there's a little authenticity in the event that they're running. Events don't need to be these kind of mechanical structures that are completely data driven.

[00:08:32] Mahoganey Jones: Thank you.

[00:08:33] Felicia Asiedu: We love a bit of data.

[00:08:34] Mahoganey Jones: Absolutely.

[00:08:34] Felicia Asiedu: Proves it in the board and all that. But I do think within a brand, if you know your brand really well, and let's say your CEO is the... Like ours is the founder. Some CEOs, they come in, they're there to do a particular job.

But for us, for example, he's got his heart in this thing. So when he's making decisions, they're often very heart, gut-felt decisions.

[00:08:55] Mahoganey Jones: And there's nothing wrong with that.

[00:08:57] Felicia Asiedu: Right. Which is nice. It does shine through.

So if you were to think of a simple way a team can start benchmarking and thinking about the KPIs that are important, maybe give us what are those core KPIs that they should start thinking about. And how can they get started with this?

[00:09:15] Mahoganey Jones: I mean, keep it simple. I know we said vanity metrics, but we don't always have to add an extra layer. Maybe this year our benchmark is the true KPIs and the true numbers.

What is the number of registrations? What is the registration data saying? How early do people register? Do they register at the early bird?

I feel like that is actually one of the biggest missteps in analyzing registration data, is to see how many people register before an early bird closes and how many register after.

Because we've seen events that we've actually completely wiped early bird from the conversation because no one actually registers until after.

So why do we offer an early bird discount and go back to it when our revenue will allow us to literally budget from the full conference fare versus an early bird?

[00:10:03] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. And thinking about that, I actually think what it does, you come across as, I wouldn't say untrustworthy because that's a little bit too much.

[00:10:11] Mahoganey Jones: It's fair.

[00:10:11] Felicia Asiedu: But there's something a little bit nefarious in being like early bird when we all know that's not a thing. And that's why everybody waits because they know you're going to drop the price at the end of it.

That's right.

There's no point. It just kind of cheapens your event.

It does. 

Yeah.

If you could change one thing about how people are thinking about those benchmarks, is it external, is it internal, all of that, what would be the thing that you'd be like, "Please stop this. Move in this direction."

[00:10:42] Mahoganey Jones: The fact that we are so ingrained in our own industries that we believe we're the only industry that does something, without looking outside of ourselves.

I really wish we would borrow from each other versus just, "Well, this is how event marketing events are run. This is how a medical event is run. This is how whatever industry is run."

Versus saying, "I myself am someone from the event tech industry. What can I borrow from the real estate industry that they're doing really well? What can I borrow from sport franchises that are running really well?"

We can learn so much from other industries. We just have different titles. But at the end of the day, we do similar jobs.

[00:11:32] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. I love that a lot because it kind of brings us back full circle to where we started, of working in a bubble, doing your own thing.

When actually there's other things outside of your own bubble that can be interesting and really good for your audience.

[00:11:46] Mahoganey Jones: Absolutely.

[00:11:47] Felicia Asiedu: I love that. Okay. Fun question for you. What's something you've seen or done that you're like, "Now that I'm really proud of, amazing, really cool"? Something that our listeners could hear and be like, "I might like to try that."

[00:11:59] Mahoganey Jones: I feel like I'm back in the producer seat. We have now purchased an event that we own, so we're producing it on our own.

So that gave us carte blanche to do a few things. I remember calling the venue and I said, "Okay, I need to know how long it takes to go in the elevator to go from the floor up to us."

And then they're like, "Like real time?"

I was like, "Legit." I said, "I need to know seconds." I said, "So I can program an intro that is going to run from when they step in the elevator to when they get off the elevator so that they're already immersed in the theme."

They thought we were crazy. They genuinely did and even said it afterwards. They're like, "We genuinely thought you were crazy."

Because the elevator actually was locked. So they didn't actually have the elevator and we had to do the escalator.

So we put a speaker at the bottom of the escalator that still played the same video that would've been in the elevator. And it literally said, "Welcome." And then you could see everyone's face when they kind of came up the escalator hearing this, "Welcome to the journey. You're about to step into the adventure and it is about to begin."

[00:13:09] Felicia Asiedu: Oh my God.

[00:13:09] Mahoganey Jones: And they did. They walked out into this beautiful set space.

[00:13:13] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I think I would've been freaked out.

[00:13:16] Mahoganey Jones: It was priceless. The photos of those coming up the escalator were priceless.

[00:13:22] Felicia Asiedu: This event planning life that one lives, that level of detail and forethought that you have to think of, I just think that's great.

And I love the fact they thought you were crazy because that's what most people think when you're carrying the CEO's dog and the stuff and doing something.

[00:13:37] Mahoganey Jones: It's true. And when you have a great partner, I have a great partner who's a strategic planner, so he always thinks that way first. So I think that also helps. It allows you to have someone to share the crazy adventures with.

[00:13:51] Felicia Asiedu: Absolutely. All right. Awesome. So I think the things I want to take away from you, the biggest one is think outside of your industry. I really like that one quite a lot. Getting deeper in those metrics. So reg is cool, but what's underneath it? I'm going to take that one away from you. And do something cool on escalators. No, that's not...

[00:14:10] Mahoganey Jones: But that was one of the recommendations. They said, "That would've been cool if we had activated the elevators for Cvent."

[00:14:16] Felicia Asiedu: Oh. Okay, so I'm going to take that.

[00:14:18] Mahoganey Jones: Take it. Take it.

[00:14:19] Felicia Asiedu: All right. Thank you for that. Where can people find you if they want to reach out and say, "You were great on the podcast. I'd love to get more information. Where can we find you?"

[00:14:27] Mahoganey Jones: I am on LinkedIn as Mahoganey Jones.

[00:14:30] Felicia Asiedu: Awesome.

[00:14:30] Mahoganey Jones: Yes.

[00:14:31] Felicia Asiedu: And your business is there too.

[00:14:33] Mahoganey Jones: Event Specialists. Yes, you can see all of the details.

[00:14:35] Felicia Asiedu: Thank you for plugging the name again. I wanted to do it.

[00:14:37] Mahoganey Jones: I know it's a boring name, but it is what we are, event specialists.

[00:14:40] Felicia Asiedu: What it says on the tin. Love it. Thank you.

[00:14:44] Mahoganey Jones: Thank you so much.

[00:14:47] Alyssa Peltier: Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

[00:14:57] Kelly Cheng: And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

[00:15:07] Felicia Asiedu: Stay connected with us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

[00:15:14] Kelly Cheng: Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM, or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

[00:15:24] Felicia Asiedu: Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

[00:15:34] Alyssa Peltier: And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.