Most organizations can tell you how many people registered for an event. But fewer can tell you how much revenue that event generated. And even fewer can explain whether their virtual event platform helped them retain customers, grow business revenue, and assist in entering new markets.
Today’s organizations need a data-driven framework that connects event performance to critical business outcomes, including monthly recurring revenue (MRR), average revenue per user (ARPU), customer acquisition, customer retention, and overall market impact.
In this guide, we will learn about virtual event ROI, MRR, ARPU, and more.
What is Virtual Event ROI and Why Does this Matter?
The ROI (return on investment) of a virtual event is a metric used to evaluate how much value an event generates compared to the resources invested in planning, promoting, and organizing the event. It involves tracking numerous metrics such as attendance numbers, audience engagement, leads generated, revenue generated, and more.
Tracking the return on investment (ROI) of a virtual event is essential as it allows you to know whether the event reaches its goals and delivers meaningful results for the business. By tracking key indicators, you can identify what worked well and where improvements are needed, and accordingly optimize future events to maximize the impact of your virtual events.
Why Do Most Companies Incorrectly Measure the ROI of Virtual Events?
Most discussions about the return on investment (ROI) of a virtual event start with the event’s metrics. These metrics are easy to collect, such as the number of registrations, attendance, average session watch time, networking participation, and engagement scores. However, these metrics do not show the full impact of the virtual event.
Many organizations do not track how virtual event attendees move through the sales funnel, become paying customers, upgrade their plans, or renew subscriptions. Plus, they ignore revenue-related metrics such as Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), customer retention, and more. So, businesses get an incomplete picture of their event’s return on investment.
What is Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)?
Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is the estimated amount of revenue a business earns each month from subscription-based products or services.
When it comes to measuring virtual event ROI, MRR helps companies know how much recurring revenue they generated from attendees who became their paying customers, upgraded their plans, or renewed their memberships after attending an event.
For example, if a software company hosts a virtual event and gains 20 new customers who pay $50 per month, its MRI would be $1,000.
MRR is important as it allows businesses to calculate subscription revenue, predict future revenue, and identify growth trends. It helps businesses evaluate whether an event attracts high-quality leads that continue to generate revenue over time.
What is Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)?
Average revenue per user (ARPU) is a metric that measures the average income generated from each user or customer over a specific period of time. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue generated by the number of users or customers.
In the context of virtual event ROI, ARPU helps organizers understand the value each attendee or customer brings to the business after participating in an event.
For example, if a virtual event generates $10,000 in revenue from 100 customers, the ARPU would be $100.
Calculating ARPU is important for businesses as it helps measure the quality of revenue generated from virtual events. A high ARPU indicates that attendees are purchasing your premium offers, upgrading subscriptions, or buying products and services.
How Businesses Can Improve Their ARPU Through Virtual Events?
1) Run Live Product Demonstrations
Demonstrate your product’s features, functionality, and capabilities live to your audience. This helps you effectively communicate the value of your products to potential customers. Through live demos, attendees will better understand how a product works and how it can address their needs.
2) Use Cross-selling
Cross-selling is an amazing strategy to boost ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) at virtual events. During a webinar, workshop, or product demonstration, you can promote your additional or complementary products and encourage new and existing customers to make a purchase alongside the primary products.
3) Segment Audience and Tailor Offer
Not all of your event attendees are at the same stage of the customer journey—some may be first-time buyers, while others may already be existing customers. So segment your audience into groups and create a personalized offer for each group.
When segmenting your audience, consider the industry, company size, and their webinar engagement level. This will help you create a targeted offer that resonates with each audience segment.
4) Leverage Customer Success Stories
Customer success stories serve as powerful testimonials as they provide direct evidence of the value of the premium products, advanced features, or additional services you offer.
During a virtual event, you can invite existing customers to share how your product solved their specific challenges and helped achieve business outcomes. Unlike traditional sales pitches, customer-led presentations often carry greater credibility because they are based on actual and real-life experiences.
Final Thoughts
Virtual events help businesses generate real revenue through hosting webinars, workshops, and interactive sessions. Therefore, it is not enough to just track attendance and audience engagement metrics. Businesses need to track key performance indicators like monthly recurring revenue (MRR), average revenue per user (ARPU) to measure the return on investment (ROI) of an event.
Virtual events not only increase the overall ROI on your event, but also build long-lasting relationships with customers and complete the sales process in less amount of time.
FAQs
Organizations should track performance for 30, 60, or 90 days after an event. Businesses with long sales cycles, such as B2B SaaS companies, should track performance for six months or longer.
Virtual event ROI metrics like MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) can help organizations understand which customers are getting the most value from their events.
For example, if attendees who regularly join webinars, the company can create more personalized content and follow-up campaigns to keep them engaged with your brand, which helps improve customer retention and renewal for your subscription plans.
Airmeet can engage the audience through interactive features such as live chat, polls, Q&A, breakout rooms, networking, and boost their participation throughout the event, which leads to longer attendee session durations and improved attendee satisfaction. When participants get more engaged in the event, they are more likely to be interested in your products and services, allowing businesses to maximize the value of their event investments while creating deeper connections with prospects and customers.
