As marketing has evolved to be much more ROI-centric, event marketers have been constantly under pressure to prove their worth and justify the immense costs associated with running an event. For some event marketers, their events are expenses, while for others, they are profit-centers.  But, how do you know if your event's contribution is more than the expenses shelled out to pull it all off?

Tracking marketing spend and attaching direct ROI to events has been a challenge for quite some time.  Tracking direct event expenses have always been possible.  You know how much your F&B and venue costs are.  You know how much your vendor and hotel costs are.  But, do you know what marketing campaigns (email, direct mail, word-of-mouth, advertising, etc.) drive the most registrants?  Do you know which campaigns are simply sucking money from your bottom-line? (Begin loud sucking sound)

We've had customers ask us these questions for years and finally, this year, we've got an industry-leading solution to this problem.  Introducing the Web Analytics by WingateWeb, powered by Omniture SiteCatalyst.  Omniture is the industry-leader in Web analytics and dynamic marketing tools.  Their tools power the world's largest Web sites like WalMart.com, GAP.com, Microsoft.com, NYT.com, Cnet.com and more. 

Omniture knows Web analytics and marketing tracking.  And... they are just down the street from us. It sure is nice to have such a powerful partner nextdoor (a huge advantage for us.  In fact, I have used Omniture SiteCatalyst at other organizations and know some of their top consultants personally.  Their success is obvious and their tools are second-to-none.

So, what does this mean for event marketers?

Firstly, it means that you can track and analyze your Web traffic to your heart's content. You can know all about the visits, page views, paths, exits, referrers, keywords, etc. all with the click of a button. Secondly, and more important, you can get a bead on your marketing spend and understand what marketing campaign drove individual registrations and registrations as a whole.  You can know what campaign or campaigns influenced my decision to attend, compare those to the rest of the attendees and then understand trends and opportunities for capturing more and more attendees like myself.

This solution is definitely a win-win and also one of the first of its kind in the event management software world.  We are an Omniture Genesis Partner and will be continuing to grow this relationship and expand the metrics we can track.  The combination of their reports and the WingateWeb event reports will be invaluable tools for event marketers to have. 

We're stoked on it and are sure you will be too. You can check out the latest press release from Omniture on their Genesis Partners.