The Trouble With Engagement
In a recent monthly forum, we asked members their feelings on “measuring engagement.” The term engagement has long been a catch-all for event marketers - used often and in many different ways. I asked ChatGPT how someone should track engagement in event marketing. In response, I was given 12 different metrics and told that “by using a combination of these methods, you can gain a comprehensive view of engagement levels in your event marketing efforts.” Due to its nebulous definition, it’s challenging, if not impossible, to establish event engagement benchmarks. As an organization, the EMMC was founded to improve measurement across the industry by defining a consistent, standardized set of metrics.
As an industry body, the EMMC cannot endorse engagement as a credible metric.
But if you’ve decided to use it, or a client requires you to use it, there are a few things to consider to be most effective.
What You Can Do
Agree on a definition. Engagement is often defined based on the experience. Ideally you would be able to break down your (or your client's) concept of engagement into discrete performance metrics like 1:1 interactions, social shares, website analytics, video views, or booth activity. If you're able to do this, you can set a target for each and evaluate performance against those targets. You may be able to pivot stakeholders away from "engagement" by showing them that you're actually tracking these other metrics. If you're not able to shift the perception that "engagement" needs to be measured, you are at least building your definition on tangible metrics that can be compared across events. Keep in mind that any definition of "engagement" you settle on will not be universal.
Keep it consistent. Keeping metrics consistent* is important as it allows marketers to make directional decisions based on outcome measures. We say directional because the results may not be perfectly accurate, however they will be analyzed in the same way. The accuracy becomes less important than the direction of the result. Set expectations that engagement can only be used for event-by-event or year-over-year reporting and cannot be applied across portfolios or clients. *Watch out for changing technology that may alter the consistency of the metrics being tracked.
Analyze why. Should you determine one event is outperforming another event, or itself from a previous year, you will want to hypothesize “why” in an effort to optimize performance. To do so effectively, you will want to go a level deeper. Because “engagement” is something artificially created as a metric, look toward the contributing factors. Did booth visits increase? Are you seeing more social shares? It is these performance metrics - the ones with clearer definitions that were agreed to as part of step 1 - that are likely to help uncover lessons learned to drive continued improvement.
What Not To Do
Trying to understand how engagement with one program aligns with another is likely a barrier due to varied definitions of the metric. Without a consistent methodology for defining engagement, it will be impossible to tell if what is tactically being done for one brand would have any bearing on impacting a different brand trying to achieve different goals. Therefore, don’t attempt to standardize engagement or compare your results to any published “standards.”
Regardless of whether you choose to measure “engagement,” recognize that alone it will not tell the complete story. This performance metric ought to be used in parallel with impact metrics, such as intended behaviors or conversion, to determine the true value of an experience on a brand’s business outcomes.
We hope this blog has been helpful and we welcome feedback. Please contact us for further dialogue on the subject.