Event organizers are increasingly turning to data to manage, improve and grow their shows. One crucial tool they have at their fingertips is the ‘pacing report’. But what is a pacing report and how can they be used effectively? Let’s get started…

What are pacing reports?

An event pacing report is an essential tool for tracking and managing the progress of an event’s planning and execution, ensuring alignment with its goals and timelines.

What are the benefits of pacing reports?

The elements of an event pacing report and the benefits they bring, include:

- Budget tracking: Track the allocation and spending of the event budget over time, ensuring expenditures stay within the planned budget.

- Attendance metrics: Monitor your ticket sales, registrations and actual attendance to confirm that attendance targets are being achieved.

- Activation metrics: Track to see how many participants have started using your event app or which exhibitors have completed their profiles.

- Marketing performance: Assess the effectiveness of event marketing efforts, including metrics such as website traffic, social media engagement and email open rates.

- Milestone tracking: Review critical planning milestones and deadlines, ensuring all tasks are completed on time.

- Exhibitor and sponsor management: Track the status of agreements and deliverables with vendors and sponsors.

These reports are crucial for detecting discrepancies early, allowing for timely adjustments to secure the event’s success.  One example is dialing up marketing activity, if your pacing report suggests registrations are lagging behind last year’s show.

Late registrations and how pacing reports can help

One of the most impactful post-covid trends in the event industry is late registrations. Research reveals 12% of attendees register a week before the event. Put simply, professionals are delaying their decision to register until just before events start. Julius Solaris has written extensively about this.

Without reliable data, it can be hard for organisers to see how this trend has developed over the years. There are several reasons why this is difficult:

1. Events don’t happen on the same day every year. For example, an event could start on the 8th October 2023 but on the 12th October the following year. Therefore, any metric in your pacing report should not be an absolute date, it should be based on ‘X days before the event’.  This enables you to compare ‘like with like’ by looking at the same event you ran last year (e.g. year-on-year).
2. Compare events in different regions. You might want to compare multiple events across the globe (e.g. event-on-event). Maybe you want to know how registration pacing differs between your European and US events, which happen at different times.
3. Aim for real-time pacing reports. Getting ‘pacing reports’ once a week is too slow to truly know if you’re beating last year’s metrics. As an organizer, you want the data in real-time, readily available to be able to take action quickly.

Real-time pacing reports at Grip

With these use cases in mind, we’ve created a set of new, real-time pacing report graphs as part of our Insights feature. They enable you to compare your events in multiple ways and tweak your tactics accordingly.

The data is provided in the lead up to your event (up to 50 days out) so you can instantly see trends and identify when to take action.

Examples of the data provided by Grip, include:

1. Total participants: See how many people have registered for your event. If it’s lagging based on previous shows, it’s time to dial up your marketing activity.
2. Active participants: Identify which participants have activated their account. If the metrics are down on previous events, it might be worth running a webinar for a specific audience (e.g. VIP attendees) detailing how to get the most out of your event app.
3. Total companies (exhibitors/sponsors): Spot when the number of exhibitors or sponsors aren’t registering as quickly as you predicted. You can then take action by calling previous sponsors and exhibitors, asking what’s stopping them from rebooking.
4. Active companies: Get real-time data on which sponsors and exhibitors haven’t created their profiles yet. Data from Grip reveals that the most successful companies (and therefore the ones that get the most ROI from your show) are those that complete their profiles in detail before the event. This metric can alert your customer success team to start hitting the phones, asking your exhibitors to complete their profiles.

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Grip’s real-time pacing reports are now available to all customers for free in the dashboard. Not a Grip customer and want to learn more? Feel free to click the link below and book a demo. Our experts are on hand to show you how real-time pacing reports can benefit your next event.

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