How Much Should You Charge For Your Event App Sponsorship Package?

So you’ve developed a strategy for your event app sponsorship, created the perfect sponsorship package, shown all the cool ways you’ll advertise your sponsor, and you’re excited to leverage your event app features to deliver exceptional value to your sponsors. You’re sure your sponsor packages will be a big success. But how much should you charge for success?

Pricing Basics

Charging a fee based solely upon your own costs and objectives often won’t fly with a sponsor; it’s important to consider the perspective of the sponsor as well. Does the perceived value of your sponsorship package warrant your sponsorship fee? If not, you’ll have to improve your value proposition with some advertising or promotional tactics, or you’ll have to compromise. Your task in selling sponsorship is to persuade your prospective sponsor that your package has the best chance of generating a better return on investment over other sponsorship initiatives and marketing opportunities available to them.

Getting a ballpark figure of your sponsor’s budget can also be very helpful. If your sponsor can only afford $30,000 for all of its marketing initiatives this year, you probably don’t want to ask for $25,000 unless you think your event will absolutely make your sponsor’s year. However, if your sponsor is not willing to divulge (most won’t want to give you a number), don’t try guessing how much they can pay. Too many variables, such as industry nuances, competition and conversion rates, are involved. Instead, focus on providing as appealing of a sponsorship package as possible.

Now that you have some basic starting points for arriving at a good price, lets go through a step-by-step guide for pricing.

Let’s Talk Specifics

For the purpose of our demonstration, we’re going to use some hypothetical conditions. You’ll need to get four key pieces of information:

1. Projected Number of Attendees. How many people do you expect to attend your event? Your event’s overall scale has bearing on the number of impressions for particular sponsorship opportunities you can expect and the impact of your event in the scheme of your sponsor’s marketing plans.

2. Projected Mobile Adoption. Of your attendees, how many do you expect will download and use the event app? Consider adoption rates from your previous events if available. You can boost this number with a strong promotional plan. To get a detailed walkthrough of the different promotional strategies available to you, talk to an expert.

3. Event App Cost. What is the total cost of your event app including development, maintenance, on-site support, etc?

4. Monetary Objective. Do you want to break even and cover the cost of your event app, or do you want to generate profit at the same level or beyond your traditional printed event guides?

A Calculated Approach to Event App Sponsorship Pricing

Step 1: COLLECT DETAILS

Sponsorship Objective: Generate 50% profit from event app
Projected Attendance: 1,000
Projected Adoption Rate: 75%
Event App Cost: $3000

Step 2: CALCULATE YOUR EVENT APP “COST PER ATTENDEE”
After you have the necessary inputs, you can begin attaching hard numbers to your goals. In this example, you would have to raise $4500 in sponsorship in order to meet your profit objective. Since you expect 750 attendees to access the event app, you will need to get sponsors to spend $6 to get exposure to each attendee.

Step 3: ESTABLISH CO-BENEFICIAL VALUE-ADDS
At this step, all the strategy you developed earlier will really come into play. The deeper your understanding of your event app, your attendees, and your sponsor, the better you will be able to identify where values intersect.

Think about which sections of your app attendees are likely to use at your event and capitalize on these high-traffic areas to create additional value for your sponsors. For example, a map will likely be more useful at a trade show than it would be at an association gathering. With attendees trying to navigate between all the booths and exhibits, the high traffic to the maps feature of your event app creates new opportunities. Try highlighting sponsor booths, or include their logos on the map. Conversely, the speakers page will likely be much less visited at the same trade show than it would be at an association gathering. If you’re organizing the latter, think about focusing your sponsor’s brand messaging on the speakers page.
If you cater opportunities to your sponsors and attendees, you will find it much easier to reach both your sponsors’ goals, as well as your own.

Step 4: PACKAGE & PRESENT YOUR OFFERING
Now put everything together into three combinations of opportunities. See the example below and get in touch with us to receive a template which you can customize for your event app.

EXCLUSIVE – $4500
Have your company profile linked directly on the Home Screen, provide staff with in-app private chat to attendees, and an animated banner ad that appears on every page on the event app.
SHARED A – $3000 ($1000x 3 available)
Be one of three exhibitors listed at the top of the exhibitors list and receive one rotating banner ad and one pre-scheduled alert sent to all attendees while on-site.
SHARED B – $1500 ($750x 2 available)
Be one of 5 companies with banner ads rotation throughout the event app

The Ultimate Guide To Event App Sponsorship: Wrap Up
So now that you’ve determined the right price to charge your sponsors, you’ve completed the last step in our Ultimate Guide To Event App Sponsorship. Congratulations! Before we conclude, there is something very important to remember: while this guide works well for a single event, the best way to see consistent success with event app sponsorship is to see the whole process as a cycle.

With the knowledge of the various industry best practices and features included in this guide, you’ll be ahead of the curve. But to stay ahead, you should be constantly collecting attendee and event data, as well as sponsor feedback. By iteratively improving upon your strategy, sponsor pitch, and pricing, you gain the most benefit from your experience.

In addition, be sure to stay tuned and attentive for more industry trends and insights. Similarly, share your experiences with us! Let us know how you are using this guide to improve your event app sponsorship. And as always, we’re here to help; if you have any questions or concerns, or you would like a walkthrough of the full feature suite in an event app, join us in a free live webinar.

Now go forth and wow your boss, sponsors, and attendees! Download the Ultimate Guide to Event App Sponsorship to learn more!