Hi Laura,

Not sure. I suppose there'd only be a few, if any, differences in applying the ROI Methodology to conferences vice other business endeavors.

It seems that gauging the ROI for a conference could be a bit daunting due to the large audience and number of organizations that would participate.

My posting is to find others that may have some "lesson's learned" to share.

Yes, there are some slight differences considering the following:

*Professional contacts would be considered something acquired at the meeting (level 2) in addition to information and skills learned.

*Each conference attendee may have attended different breakout sessions - thus no one attendee had the same conference experience.

*Information acquired from the trade show would need to be considered.

*There are different perspectives from which to measure ROI: attendee, host organization, exhibitors, sponsors, speakers and maybe even the hotel/convention center in which the conference is held.

I too am looking at the best way to determine ROI for an annual sales conference that I lead for my health care organization. It's not easy to link results to actual sales. I'd like to communicate with others who have done that.

The primary underlying goal of most conferences is to boost membership enrollment. Secondary to that is typically to increase awareness of whatever it is your organization does. Determine a specific number for that, and you've got a way to measure the ROI right there. You have to determine how many new members you need to make the conference worthwhile. The challenge is creating a conference and marketing it in such a way that you do in fact draw in more members.

You measure ROI by starting with something that is, indeed, measureable. This is not something new or unusual or different from any other business endeavor.