Stop Measuring Events by Registrations: Track Real Pipeline Impact

Webinars, roundtables, and virtual summits have become central demand generation channels for B2B SaaS teams. They often represent the first time senior decision-makers engage with your brand. Yet most marketing teams continue to measure their success with vanity metrics like registrations, attendance, and survey scores.

According to The State of B2B Attribution 2025, over 92% of marketers stop at surface-level tracking. A majority, 54.5% measure only short-term outcomes such as attendance or participation. Another 37.9% rely on registrations without tying them to pipeline impact. Only 7.6% of marketers connect events directly to pipeline velocity and conversion rates.

This is a massive missed opportunity. Events aren’t just about “getting people in the (virtual) room.” They’re about influencing pipeline, accelerating opportunities, and generating revenue impact. If that connection isn’t measured, events remain undervalued in boardrooms and underfunded in marketing budgets.

‍

Why Registrations Don’t Equal Revenue

On the surface, registration numbers and attendance figures make events look successful. But those metrics fail to reveal true revenue contribution. Three realities highlight the problem:

• Attendance ≠ Influence: Many registrants attend passively and never move forward in the funnel. Without linking event touchpoints to opportunity records, there’s no way to know who truly advanced.
• Events Create Momentum, Not Just Leads: A senior executive attending a webinar may not convert immediately, but their participation could accelerate a deal weeks later. Traditional event reporting fails to capture this delayed influence.
• Channel Isolation Skews ROI: Events often work in tandem with email nurtures, SDR outreach, and paid campaigns. Without multi-touch attribution, the combined lift of these activities goes unrecognized, making events appear less impactful than they are.

The bottom line: registration metrics undervalue events while over-crediting the channels that touch the deal later in the cycle.

‍

The Event-to-Pipeline Shift

To move beyond vanity metrics, GTM teams must treat events as pipeline accelerators. That requires shifting measurement from counting registrants to quantifying influence. This begins with capturing every event touchpoint- registration, attendance, poll responses, and Q&A interactions at both the contact and account level. These details must be entered into the CRM and mapped to opportunities.

Next, teams need to measure post-event engagement. Did attendees take follow-up meetings, download content, or revisit key pages on the website? These behaviors reveal whether the event advanced buying intent.

Finally, organizations should run conversion lift analysis. Comparing accounts that engaged in an event against holdout groups that didn’t will isolate the incremental impact. Did event participation increase conversion rates? Did it shorten deal cycles? These are the questions that prove ROI.

With AI-powered attribution, the connection between event engagement and pipeline progression can finally be measured, not as anecdotal influence, but as quantifiable revenue impact.

‍

Benchmark: The Untapped Potential

The survey data shows how much is being left on the table. With only 7.6% of marketers measuring event-to-pipeline attribution, most teams cannot justify their investments beyond top-of-funnel activity.

This lack of precision has consequences. When events are reported as “registrations and attendance,” finance leaders see them as brand plays rather than revenue levers. Sales teams don’t have actionable insight into which accounts engaged. And marketing struggles to secure budget for events in the next cycle.

The small minority of teams measuring pipeline impact are proving the opposite: events, when tied to pipeline acceleration, are among the most powerful levers for growth. They generate credibility with executives, alignment with sales, and confidence in budget planning.

‍

RevSure Event Attribution: From Touchpoints to Revenue Outcomes

This is where RevSure transforms event measurement. Instead of treating events as disconnected campaigns, RevSure integrates event data directly into its full-funnel attribution platform.

Event touchpoints, from registration and attendance to poll responses and Q&A, are synced at the contact and account level. These touchpoints are then tied to opportunity records, showing exactly how events influence pipeline velocity and conversion.

Marketing gains visibility into which events are driving opportunities forward. Sales sees which accounts engaged and can tailor outreach accordingly. Finance receives validated ROI rather than vanity metrics. And RevOps can forecast the pipeline with a clearer understanding of event-driven acceleration.

By connecting events to the entire revenue funnel, RevSure repositions them as strategic growth drivers rather than tactical brand activities.

‍

Action Plan: Measuring Event ROI in 2025

If your team still measures events by registrations or attendance alone, here’s how to evolve:

• Sync Event Platforms with CRM & Attribution: Ensure every attendee and interaction is captured at the contact and account level.
• Tag Event Touchpoints in Attribution Models: Attribute influence to opportunities, not just leads.
• Run Incrementality Tests: Compare pipeline outcomes for attendees versus holdout groups to measure lift.
• Share Insights with Sales: Equip sales teams with actionable data on which accounts engaged and how.

These steps transform event reporting from surface-level metrics into strategic revenue analysis.

‍

Final Thought: Events Are Revenue Plays, Not Just Registrations

In today’s digital-first B2B landscape, events are too important to be dismissed as vanity metrics. Registrations may look good on a dashboard, but they don’t prove ROI.

The measure of success isn’t how many people registered; it’s whose pipeline moved. By connecting events to pipeline outcomes, marketing leaders can justify investment, sales teams can prioritize outreach, and executives can see events for what they truly are: revenue accelerators. The teams that make this shift will unlock new levers for growth, elevate marketing’s credibility, and ensure events are funded not as awareness tactics but as measurable drivers of revenue.

Want to see how leading B2B SaaS companies are transforming event measurement? Download The State of B2B Attribution 2025 for full survey findings, frameworks, and benchmarks.