EnablingEvent-to-Pipeline Visibility

About the Client:

A U.S.-based industrial manufacturing company that regularly attends trade shows, regional meetups, and client site events. They engage both prospects and existing-deal contacts in face-to-face meetings, and rely heavily on these interactions to nurture ongoing deals and generate new opportunities.

Primary Goal:

Understand the ROI of each in-person event by directly tying event activities to pipeline deals—both those already in progress (“nurtured” deals) and net-new deals sourced on-site.

The client tracked event ROI via spreadsheets, manually recording deal values at a point in time—leading to stale data, reporting delays, and lack of visibility into how ongoing deals were influenced by events.

Out-of-the-box, Marketing Events in HubSpot didn't support their use case due to:

• Tracking contact registrations and attendance only

• Cannot associate events to Company or Deal records

•  Enterprise license requirement for custom behavioral events

• Offer limited cross-object reporting

1. Object Selection & Repurpose
   • Reviewed HubSpot’s standard objects for one that supports both pipelines and deal associations
   • Identified Services (a legacy object with built-in pipelines, company & deal links) as the closest fit to an “Event” object
2. Reconfiguration
   • Renamed Services → Events throughout the portal
   • Configured a custom pipeline with stages: Planned → In Progress → Completed
   • Created custom properties to capture event-specific data:
     • Line of Business (LOB)
     • Event Dates
     • Budgeted vs. Actual Cost
     • Location & Event Type

3. Associations & Labeling
   • Linked Events to Company and Deal records
   • Used custom “Association Label” properties to distinguish:
     • Initiated (new deals originating at the event)
     • Nurtured (existing pipeline deals worked at the event)

4. Reporting & Dashboards
   • Built custom reports:
     • Event Spend vs. Budget over time
     • Pipeline Influence by Event (number and value of Initiated vs. Nurtured deals)
   • Embedded these into a Marketing Operations dashboard

• Centralized Data: All event details, budgets, and deal associations live in HubSpot.

• Improved Reporting: Real-time dashboards reveal which events generate net-new deals vs. nurture existing pipeline.

• Operational Efficiency: Sales and marketing no longer juggle separate spreadsheets—associations are automatic and standardized.

• Scalability: As deals evolve, their current values flow into event reports—ensuring up-to-date ROI calculations.