Epic Events Podcast with
Evan Babins

Event ROI: Why Your Best Event Might Just Be an Expensive Party

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  • Evan Babins

    Evan Babins has 15 years of experience in corporate event production, managing event logistics and technical production for clients including Nissan Canada, Equitable Bank, Novartis, Scotiabank, and Intuit Canada. He's currently Senior Event Manager at PointClickCare, a Canadian health tech company, where he manages a biennial user conference that draws around 2,300 attendees across the US, plus two of the company's largest trade show presences.

About the Episode

Is your event actually driving the business, or is it just a really well-produced party? In this episode, Muhammad Younas sits down with Evan Babins to unpack what separates a real event strategy from an expensive one-off. Evan argues that most event planners don’t have an events problem, they have a business problem: without strategy, data, and clear outcomes tied to revenue, retention, or brand perception, you’re just planning a costly get-together. 

The conversation covers how to measure success using both tangible metrics (open rates, app sign-ups, scan data) and intangible ones (speaker quality, food, overall experience), and why the two need to be combined to tell a complete story to leadership. Evan also explains why his company runs its flagship user conference every other year instead of annually, using the off year for webinars, dinner series, or smaller regional events to keep momentum going without the full travel and budget commitment. 

They also get into where the money actually goes to waste (hint: celebrity keynotes), why swag should be part of your brand story instead of landfill filler, and how Evan uses AI tools day to day without losing the human touch in his work.

Key Takeaways:

  • Treat event strategy as a repeating cycle: this year’s outcomes should directly shape next year’s plan, not just get filed away. 
  • Track two kinds of metrics: tangibles (open rates, app downloads, scan data) and intangibles (speaker quality, food, overall vibe), and combine both when reporting to leadership. 
  • Consider moving a flagship conference from annual to biennial, using the off year for webinars, dinner series, or smaller regional events to sustain pipeline and hype. 
  • Expect events to get more targeted over time: smaller, handpicked audiences may eventually replace open registration pages. 
  • Celebrity keynotes are one of the biggest budget wastes; curated speakers who tailor content to the audience deliver more value. 
  • Prioritize attendee experience end to end, from the first invite to months after the event, while staying disciplined about ROE (return on events).
  • Make swag part of your brand story, not just a giveaway; custom, high quality items get used and remembered long after the show.
  • Use AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) for research, first drafts, and recurring reports, but keep a human pass on everything before it goes out. 
  • To grow into a leadership seat, be visible in the industry and keep putting yourself around people who know more than you do.