Setting Goals in the Growth Report

Before setting goals, it helps to understand what the Growth Report is showing you.

Once you understand your performance view, the next step is to define what success looks like.

The Goals section helps your team turn referral growth data into a shared business target. Use it to align on what you want your advocacy program to achieve, whether that means growing registration revenue, reducing acquisition cost, generating pipeline, supporting exhibitors, saving time, or tracking another objective that matters to your team.

Setting goals gives your team a foundation for the rest of the Growth Report. Your goals help inform your plan, guide execution, and make it easier to measure whether your referral growth program is creating the impact you expected.

Open the Goals Section

From InGo Admin, select Growth Report on the left hand side menu, select the Goals section.

This opens the goal-setting panel, where you can review the inputs that shape your benchmark, choose the business goals that matter to your team, and save those goals for planning and execution.

Review Your Community Inputs

At the top of the Goals panel, you will see the inputs used to calculate your Community Benchmark and potential impact.

These inputs reflect your community-wide Growth Report view, not just a single event. They help InGo estimate growth potential across the active events in your community.

These may include:

• Expected Attendees: The total expected attendees across all active events in your community. This updates automatically as events are added or changed.
• Expected SPEX: The expected number of sponsors and exhibitors across all active events in your community.
• Acquisition Rate: The percentage of connection clicks expected to result in attendee acquisitions. InGo automatically suggests the platform average, however this field can be manually adjusted.

Review these values before saving your goals. If the inputs are inaccurate, your benchmark and projected impact may not reflect the full growth opportunity for your community within InGo.

Use these fields to make sure the Growth Report is working from the best available community-wide assumptions before you set goals, establish your plan, and track execution.

Understand Your Community Benchmark

The Community Benchmark helps drive the Planned target shown in the Growth Report progress bar. It shows what similar events are expected to achieve based on your expected participants and your activation plan.

This benchmark helps your team understand the growth potential for your event or portfolio. If your benchmark looks higher than you'd expect, check that your Expected Attendees and Expected SPEX inputs reflect realistic numbers for your upcoming events. A benchmark that feels out of reach usually means the inputs are set too high, or your activation plan includes channels your team hasn't confirmed yet.

If your benchmark looks lower than you'd expect, it may reflect a conservative activation plan. As you add channels in the Plan section, your Planned projection will increase.

If you're not sure whether your benchmark is realistic, your Account Manager can help you compare it against similar events in your category.

You can measure the Community Benchmark by:

• Connection Acquisitions
• Connection Clicks

Choose the benchmark view that best matches the outcome your team cares about most. If your team is focused on registration impact or audience growth, Connection Acquisitions may be the better view. If your team is focused on reach, traffic, or referral-driven interest, Connection Clicks may be more useful.

Choose Your Goals

Under Your Goals, select the goals that best match what your team wants to accomplish.

Available goals may include:

• Grow Registration Revenue: If your team tracks attendance numbers, registration revenue, or is trying to grow the size of your event year over year.
• Thrill Exhibitors: If sponsor and exhibitor satisfaction is a success metric for your team, or if you need to demonstrate value to your exhibit hall partners.
• Generate Pipeline: If your event is primarily a sales or business development vehicle and you're tracking opportunities or meetings generated.
• Reduce Acquisition Cost: If you're trying to shift budget away from paid media, ads, or email acquisition and grow more through word of mouth.
• Save Time: If your team is manually managing referral or advocacy outreach and wants to automate or streamline that work.

You can add or remove goals based on your priorities. Selected goals are included in your goal summary and may contribute to your Planned ROI calculation.

Add Goal-Specific Inputs

Some goals include additional fields that help the Growth Report estimate impact.

For example:

• Grow Registration Revenue may use average revenue per attendee.
• Reduce Acquisition Cost may use average cost per click.

Review these values and update them if needed. The more accurate these inputs are, the more useful your Planned ROI and Achieved ROI will be.

Add a Custom Goal

If your team has a goal that is not listed, use the custom goal field under Something else on your mind?

This is where you can describe your goal in your own words. For example, you might use this field to capture a goal such as increasing returning attendees, proving the value of InGo to leadership, or supporting a specific internal initiative.

Use the custom goal field when your team needs to track context that does not fit neatly into one of the standard goal categories.

Review Planned ROI and Achieved ROI

At the bottom of the Goals panel, you will see a summary of your selected goals and their estimated impact.

This section may include:

• Planned ROI
• Achieved ROI
• A breakdown of selected goals
• Progress toward each goal

Planned ROI shows the value your plan is expected to create.

Achieved ROI shows the value generated so far.

Use this section to compare what your team is planning to achieve with what has already been achieved. This helps stakeholders understand both the opportunity and current progress.

Save Your Goals

Once your goals and inputs look correct, select Save Goals.

Saving your goals makes them available as the foundation for the rest of the Growth Report. Your team can then use those goals to establish the right activation plan and track whether that plan is being executed.

What to Do After Setting Goals

After your goals are saved, move to the Plan section of the Growth Report.

The Plan section helps you decide which activation channels should be used to reach your goals. Each selected channel contributes to your Planned projection, so your plan should reflect the channels your team can realistically activate before and during the campaign window.

Learn more: [Establishing Your Growth Plan]

Frequently Asked Questions

What if my goal looks too low?

If your goal appears too low, review your activation plan and make sure the right growth channels are selected. Your Planned projection may increase as you add channels that are expected to drive more referral activity.

What if my goal looks too high?

If your goal appears too high, check whether the required activation channels are realistic for your event timeline and available resources. You may need to adjust your assumptions or focus on the channels your team can confidently execute.

What if I do not know which goal to choose?

Choose the goal that best matches the business outcome your team cares about most.

If your team wants to grow registrations, start with Grow Registration Revenue. If you are trying to reduce paid media dependency, choose Reduce Acquisition Cost. If your focus is sponsor or exhibitor value, choose Thrill Exhibitors. If none of the listed goals match your objective, use the custom goal field.

Can I select more than one goal?

Yes. You can select multiple goals if your team is trying to measure more than one business outcome.

For example, your team may want to grow registration revenue and reduce acquisition cost at the same time.

Why do some goals ask for additional inputs?

Some goals need additional values to estimate business impact. For example, average revenue per attendee helps estimate registration revenue, while average cost per click helps estimate acquisition cost savings.

Can I update my goals later?

Yes. You can return to the Goals section and update your inputs, selected goals, or custom goal as your campaign changes.

Getting Help

If you have questions about your Growth Report or need help setting your goals, contact your InGo Account Manager or Customer Success contact.