The booth cost sixty thousand and nobody can say what came of it. Here is the model behind an event tracker, the prompts to build it, and what it takes to run it.
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An event management tracker is four parts: logistics with deadlines, a cost picture that includes the staff time nobody counts, lead capture with context, and attribution over a real window. The number that decides whether to go again is cost per opportunity, not cost per lead, and getting there means counting the travel, the stand, the staff days and the follow-up as one figure.
Events
64,200
Full cost, SaaStr
38%
Of that is staff time
112
Leads captured
9
Opportunities, 90 days
Run-up to SaaStr Annual, 22 October
You run field marketing or events. You already know how to run one. What you want is a defensible answer to whether it was worth it, and the same answer next year without rebuilding a spreadsheet.
What happens across the life of one event, from booking it to deciding whether to book it again.
Artwork, shipping, badge list, staffing, follow-up, each due at an offset from the event date so a date change moves everything.
Sponsorship, stand, travel, giveaways, and staff days at a rate per role. The invoice is usually under half the real figure.
Pipeline, opportunities or meetings. If it cannot be a number, the post-mortem cannot reach a conclusion.
With what the person actually said, and offline, because conference wifi is reliably bad.
With a due date derived from the event, because leads going cold in the following week is where the money actually goes.
Sourced and influenced counted separately, and the verdict is cost per opportunity compared only against other events.
An event tracker is not a spreadsheet of registrations. It is four parts, and the second is the one that makes the verdict honest.
Artwork, shipping, staffing, badge lists, hotel cut-offs. All anchored to the event date so a date change moves the whole plan rather than requiring a rebuild.
Sponsorship, stand build, travel, accommodation, giveaways, and staff days valued at something. The invoice is usually well under half of it.
Who they were, what they actually said, what they need, and how warm it was, recorded at the event rather than reconstructed on the flight home.
Opportunities and pipeline touched, measured over a window set before the event, with influenced and sourced counted separately.
These prompts start from a Helix project, which is what handles sign-in, credentials and hosting. Start with Helix
Paste these into Claude Code, Codex or Cursor in order. Each one leaves you with something that runs, so you can stop after any step.
Deadlines anchored to the event, not typed in.
In this Helix project, build me an event management tracker.
An event records: name, type (conference, our own event, webinar, dinner,
roadshow), dates, location, the objective as a number, the audience, the
owner, and the status.
Then tasks, generated from templates by event type, with every due date
expressed as an offset from the event date rather than a fixed date.
Artwork due six weeks before, shipping cut-off three weeks before, badge
list two weeks before, staffing confirmed one week before, follow-up
within three days after.
Event dates move, and when they do the whole plan should move with them
rather than someone rebuilding a spreadsheet.
Each task has an owning team and an owner, and anything past its due date
escalates. The logistics risk in events is almost entirely missed
deadlines, and the expensive ones are the ones with no second chance:
artwork, shipping, and the badge list.
I sign in through Helix, so do not build a login page. Read the signed-in
user from the runtime. And do not put any key or connection string in the
code: if this needs to reach another system, tell me and I will create the
connection in my workspace.Because the invoice is under half of it.
Now costs, and be complete about it.
Record sponsorship, stand build and design, shipping, travel,
accommodation, food, giveaways, and any agency fees. Then record staff
days: who attended, for how many days including travel, valued at a rate
I set per role.
Show the total, and show it split between cash spend and staff time. Most
event post-mortems quote the sponsorship invoice, and the real cost is
routinely twice that once four people have flown somewhere for three days.
Compare committed against actual as the event approaches, and let me
record a commitment when I sign rather than when I am invoiced, so the
remaining budget is honest in the month it matters.
And let me set the objective as a number before the event: pipeline,
opportunities, meetings booked. Not "brand awareness". If the objective
cannot be a number, the post-mortem cannot be a conclusion.Worth knowing. Valuing staff days is the change that makes event comparisons real. A cheap sponsorship that consumes twelve person-days is not cheap.
While it is still fresh.
Build lead capture for use at the event, on a phone, in about twenty
seconds.
Name, company, role, and then the fields that matter: what they actually
said, what they are trying to do, how warm it was on a simple scale, and
what the next step should be. Let the person who spoke to them record who
they were, because that is who should follow up.
A badge scan with no context is a cold lead within a week, and everybody
knows this and does it anyway because the alternative is typing on a
stand. Make the alternative twenty seconds.
Support offline entry that syncs later. Conference wifi is bad in a
predictable way.
Then follow-up: assign each lead an owner and a due date derived from the
event, chase the ones not actioned, and report follow-up rate per person.
Leads going cold in the week after an event is where most of the money
actually goes.An attribution window set in advance.
Set the attribution window before the event runs, and record it on the event
record. Ninety days, a hundred and eighty, whatever fits your cycle.
Deciding the window afterwards is how every event turns out to have been a
success.
Then measure inside it: opportunities created from event leads,
opportunities influenced where an attendee was already in an open deal,
and pipeline value for each. Keep sourced and influenced separate rather
than adding them together, because adding them is how a number becomes
unbelievable.
Derive cost per lead, cost per opportunity and cost per pipeline pound,
using the full cost including staff time.
Judge on cost per opportunity, and compare events only against other
events. Comparing an event to paid search on cost per lead reliably
produces the wrong decision, because they produce different kinds of
pipeline that convert differently.
Then a year-on-year view per recurring event, which is the report that
actually decides whether to book again.Worth knowing. Setting the window in advance is a small discipline that prevents the most common piece of self-deception in event marketing.
The step that turns a working prototype into something with your data in it.
Now connect it to the systems we actually run, so it works on real data
rather than the rows you seeded.
Anything in angle brackets is a placeholder. Swap it for whatever we use
instead, and have the app name the connection it wants rather than assume
a vendor, so changing my mind later is a config change and not a rewrite.
<Salesforce>. Push captured leads with their context, and read back the
opportunities they became for attribution.
<NetSuite>. Read committed and invoiced event costs, so the full cost is
not a spreadsheet estimate.
<Workday>. Read the role and cost rate of the staff you send, which is
what a staff day cost is calculated from.
<Slack>. Assign follow-up and chase it, because leads going cold in the
first week is where the money goes.
<Okta>. Verify whoever is on the stand before they can capture a lead,
since this is personal data collected in a hurry on a shared device.
<Marketo>. Push captured leads into nurture the same day, not the week
after.
<Brex>. Read the actual travel and stand spend rather than an estimate.
<Google Sheets>. Import the badge scan export, which every event organiser
hands you as a spreadsheet.
Only write where I have said to write. Everything else is read only.
Do not write a key, a token or a connection string anywhere in the code,
and do not ask me to paste one. Tell me which connections you need and I
will create each as an authentication in my Helix workspace. Reference
them by alias.Worth knowing. Every name in angle brackets is a placeholder for whatever you run. Helix holds the credential as a workspace authentication, so the app references an alias and never the secret itself.
The last step of every build: a URL, and the right people on it.
Deploy my app.Worth knowing. Your assistant runs helix deploy underneath and the app comes back as a URL. Lead capture at an event holds personal data collected in a hurry, so set Access Control before sharing and be deliberate about who sees it.
Leads captured at an event are worthless if they sit in this app, so the CRM connection is the important one.
Salesforce
Push captured leads with their context, and read back the opportunities they became for attribution.
NetSuite
Read committed and invoiced event costs, so the full cost is not a spreadsheet estimate.
Workday
Read the role and cost rate of the staff you send, which is what a staff day cost is calculated from.
Slack
Assign follow-up and chase it, because leads going cold in the first week is where the money goes.
Okta
Verify whoever is on the stand before they can capture a lead, since this is personal data collected in a hurry on a shared device.
Marketo
Push captured leads into nurture the same day, not the week after.
Brex
Read the actual travel and stand spend rather than an estimate.
Google Sheets
Import the badge scan export, which every event organiser hands you as a spreadsheet.
Each line says whether the app reads, writes or both. Anything not described as writing should be read only.
Named systems are the ones most teams actually run, not a list of the only ones that work. Swap in whatever you use.
Each connection is an authentication in your Helix workspace, referenced by alias. The app names the connection it wants and never holds the credential, so nothing here ends up in your code and any of it can be rotated or revoked without a redeploy.
The build gets you a working tracker. It collects personal data at events and feeds pipeline reporting, so it needs to be run properly.
AI Deployment
One command takes the app from your assistant to a live address, so the people who need it get a link rather than instructions for running it locally.
App Security
Event leads are personal data collected in a hurry, and cost data is commercially sensitive. SSO means people sign in with their existing account, and access is scoped so staff capture leads while owners see the economics.
App Security
Pushing leads to the CRM and reading back opportunities for attribution needs real access. Granting it to the app rather than pasting a key into it means it can be rotated or revoked without a redeploy.
App Registry
Every app carries a named owner and an entry IT can see, so the tool does not become nobody's problem when the person who built it changes role.
Cost Management
Per-app spend visibility, with budgets and caps, so an internal tool cannot quietly become a line item nobody can explain.
Cost per opportunity over an attribution window set before the event, using the full cost including staff days. Cost per lead flatters events, because the leads are numerous and frequently cold.
Staff time. Most post-mortems quote the sponsorship invoice, and the real figure is routinely twice that once four people have travelled somewhere for three days. Value staff days at a rate per role and show cash and time separately.
Before the event runs, and recorded on the event. Deciding the window afterwards is how every event turns out to have been worthwhile, because you can always find a period where the numbers work.
On a phone, in about twenty seconds, with what the person actually said rather than just their badge details. A scan with no context is a cold lead within a week, and offline entry matters because conference wifi is reliably bad.
Because event dates move, and when they do the whole plan has to move with them. Offsets mean artwork, shipping and badge deadlines reschedule automatically instead of someone rebuilding a spreadsheet.
Yes. The prompts here are written for Claude Code, Codex or Cursor and stage the build. The judgement calls are your task templates per event type, your staff day rate, and your attribution window.
Marketing
Track committed spend alongside invoiced spend by programme, so a channel owner knows what they have left before they commit it. Prompts to build it, and what it takes to run it.
Marketing
Capture enough in a brief to start work without a meeting, prioritise against capacity rather than volume, and show requesters where their work sits. Prompts to build it, and what it takes to run it.
Sales and RevOps
Register referrals, protect them for a defined window, show partners the status of their own deals, and calculate what you owe. Prompts to build it, and what it takes to run it.
Last reviewed September 2026.
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