Tracking 'return on relationship' can contribute to an event’s value long after it has taken place. Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/svetazi
Measuring an event’s return on investment in 2025 will be increasingly influenced by the ‘return on relationship’ (ROR), a metric that tracks long-term relationship-building outcomes that go beyond lead generation.
This finding was discussed in more detail as part of a recent webinar on event trends hosted by Cvent. It examined what ROR means, how it differs from return on engagement and how it can help brands build deeper connections with attendees.
The webinar explored how relationship events go beyond a traditional business-to-business meeting in a conference centre. A relationship event is about solidifying something deeper than a moment’s engagement, focusing more on building a community and making friends within that community.
“It’s about seeing the value of events beyond the hard dollars,” said Alyssa Peltier, director, market strategy & insights at Cvent Consulting. “The executive space is so used to the revenue side, like revenue and costs. They speak in dollars – that's the currency of conversation. This return on a relationship feels fluffy, for lack of a better word, but there's value here.”
“It’s about seeing the value of events beyond the hard dollars… This return on a relationship feels fluffy, for lack of a better word, but there's value here.”
Alyssa Peltier, director, market strategy & insights, Cvent Consulting
Beyond engagement
ROR goes beyond return on engagement, according to Felicia Asiedu, director, Europe marketing at Cvent. She says the latter tracks how switched on a delegate may be, or how engaged they are at a particular time of an event, while ROR goes beyond this moment.
“For that event or that moment, you were super switched-on, super engaged,” she says. “But to come again and say 'Oh, I want to follow you,' or, 'I want to know what you're saying next,' or 'Where should we meet next?', that just shifts the balance.”
Asiedu highlighted how the ROR metric can be particularly valuable for the hotel industry, as it can help generate repeat bookings.
“For a hotelier to build up a relationship with an event planner, [that] is gold,” she said. “That relationship means that that planner might book you again and again. We often will take planners to a hotel and the hotel partner will really partner with us because they know the value of building a relationship with those people that are coming to their venues.”
Rachel Andrews, senior director, global meetings and events at Cvent noted that further documentation might be needed in order to refine the ROR metric. It could be viewed in terms of the number of renewals, content downloads related to an event, whether attendees come to more events and the length of time they stay, for example.