For an event to be crowned successful, it takes more than the best and brightest vendors to bring everything together. While an attendee’s journey and feedback certainly count for something, one of the biggest factors used to determine an event’s success is ROI.
And with event sponsorships revenue expected to increase from $520 million in 2020 to $710.7 million by 2028, planners are honing their pitch skills to land the right sponsors not only for their audience but for their bottom line as well.
To make your event really shine all-around, check out this expert guide to event sponsorships, and keep reading for expert tips on how to secure superb event sponsors and over-deliver on ROI.
1. Attract the right sponsor by taking a data-driven approach to determining the value of your event and your event audience.
Event sponsorship is a mutually beneficial partnership only if it’s the right sponsorship for your event. If the chosen sponsor doesn’t make sense for your event’s audience, you’ll be hard-pressed to see ROI from that partnership.
So, attracting the right sponsors for your event starts with researching and understanding your audience, which will, in turn, allow you to properly pitch sponsors on the value your event—and, more specifically, your event community—brings to them.
By taking a data-first approach (think: Google Analytics, email campaign data, social media analytics), event teams will be able to prove their event’s value and go after sponsors that are the right fit for their defined audience.
2. Research the sponsor landscape and begin reaching out sooner than later.
First things first: You shouldn't be reaching out to any and all sponsors. Access to audiences is a top priority for sponsors—and key for a mutually beneficial sponsorship that sees ROI—so only seek out companies whose potential buyers, amplifiers or influencers mirror your attendee audience.
Start reaching out early in your event’s planning process to ensure sponsors get the most exposure and benefit from their involvement. Look to resources like SponsorMyEvent and SponsorPitch to help you get started scoping out potential sponsors. You can also look at a brand’s event portfolio for a feel of whether your event is a good fit for its audience.
As you’re reaching out to the brands you’ve determined to be the best fit for your event, it’s important to be personal in your approach so you don’t end up as one of the many mass emails getting quickly deleted or sent to spam. The best event sponsorship pitch emails aren’t too lengthy, highlight audience data and key-value points, and include a prompt to connect. This step-by-step guide for sending event sponsorship proposals is also sure to help you craft the perfect message and seal the deal.
3. Provide value to your secured sponsors before, during, and after your event to maximize opportunities of exceeding ROI expectations.
Arguably the most important aspect of an event sponsorship partnership is proving its value. This gives sponsors an incentive to return as a sponsor for future events, ultimately making your job easier in the long run!
How do you offer value to your sponsors? Ultimately, know that the sponsor will determine the value of the event by their ability to tap into your audience and see a return on investment, which means you should be maximizing every opportunity before, during and after the event to do just that. (For planners producing virtual events, check out this useful e-book for how to deliver six-figure value to event sponsors.)
Investing in pre-event marketing to promote your event is key. After all, how can anyone register to attend the event if you don’t promote it? And the more attendees present at the event, the more opportunities there are for sponsors to connect with them.
During the event, ensure you’re offering valuable attendee engagement opportunities. This looks like providing thought-leadership speaking opportunities and avoiding super sales-y or product-pushing activations that won’t click well with attendees. The goal is to create a relationship between attendee and sponsor—and you can’t do that if the sponsor is merely pushing their product or service.
Post-event, the majority of planners ask attendees for their feedback. Share this data with sponsors and provide a full follow-up report that shows how your event helped the sponsors reach their goals. If you succeeded in meeting their expectations, this could lead to a renewed sponsorship (yay!). If you failed to meet expectations, you can offer and kickstart a digital marketing campaign to cover the gap.
While these tips are sure to help you build a credible event sponsorship strategy, it doesn’t hurt to continue learning new ways to build partnerships and increase ROI. Here are a few educational resources from leading event platform Hopin:
