Corporate ticket management – 6 Simple steps to determine customer entertainment ROI

In today’s economic climate, management demands justification from sponsorships and customer entertainment spend. Many traditional aspects of sponsorships are continually discussed and measured, including signage, product placement and advertising. These translate into a sales lift and support brand strategy.

What about customer entertainment? How does one justify and measure entertaining clients? Vague terms, such as reciprocity, have been used. However, accountability and direct measurement of specific key customer entertainment goals will produce customer entertainment ROI. Whether entertaining customers at the US Open or a NFL game, companies have the opportunity to measure the impact of entertainment and determine ROI. How do you do this?

Ask yourself a few questions:

  • What is your overall entertainment strategy?
  • Are you entertaining the appropriate prospects and clients?
  • What data should be collected and measured?

There are six simple steps to determine customer entertainment ROI:

  1. Strategic Plan: Define, document and share your company’s customer entertainment strategy, including how assets should be used, communicate the goals and objectives, and how entertainment affects the bottom line.
  2. Take Inventory: Take stock of your company’s entertainment assets and allocate appropriately.
  3. Collect Data: Track which employees are entertaining which prospects and clients. Capture pertinent data and establish baselines, such as current sales, to determine what impacts your company’s goals and bottom line. Integrating with your company’s CRM system will provide much of this data.
  4. Follow-Up: Send a simple post event email to your employees to validate who was entertained and why.
  5. Report and Analyze: Create reports to easily measure data and determine if goals have been met.
  6. Insights and Improvement: Evaluate your company’s entertainment strategy in relation to the analyzed data. Are your goals and objectives being realized?  If not, make changes to better support your strategy.