Build the Asset: A One-Page Event Portfolio Plan for Zendesk

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Events & Experiential Marketing

All projects·From: Events Marketing 101: Why Experiences Still Convert

CoreBuild the Asset· 45 minutes

Zendesk

Objective: Produce a one-page event portfolio plan that allocates a fixed budget across the four event formats against three named business goals, with one success metric defined per format before any event is booked.

You're a junior events marketer at Zendesk, the customer-engagement SaaS company. Leadership gave you a $500K quarterly budget and three goals, no format list, and asked for a one-page plan before they'll approve spend.

Turn three business goals and a fixed budget into a portfolio plan: which formats, how much each, and the one metric that proves each line item worked.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeBuild the budget-and-metric one-pager

Free, sufficient for a single table leadership can review in one sitting

Paid upgrades (optional, faster/deeper)

The free path (Sheets) is complete for planning and approval. A paid CRM/marketing platform only helps once events are running and you need automated actual-vs-target tracking.

HubSpot Marketing Hub(optional)

FreemiumTrack actual pipeline/revenue against each line item's target once events run

Attaches real campaign performance data to each budget line for the post-quarter review

No access? Google Sheets with manual entry from each event's registration and CRM exports

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Building a goal-to-format budget allocation

The lesson's four questions, need pipeline volume fast, need to retain and expand, need to break into named accounts, need brand awareness, each point to one format: trade show, owned event, field event, or experiential.

Zendesk's three stated goals this quarter are: (1) generate new pipeline in the mid-market segment, (2) retain and expand its top 30 enterprise accounts, (3) break into 8 named target accounts in a new vertical. With $500K, how much goes to each format and why?

Google Sheets— Build a 4-row table (one row per format) with a budget column and a 'goal it serves' column.

Procedure

List the three goals in one column
Match each goal to its lesson-assigned format (pipeline volume → trade show, retain/expand → owned, named accounts → field)
Assign a defensible dollar amount to each matched format, leaving a small experiential line for brand awareness as the fourth goal-adjacent bet
Total the allocation and confirm it sums to $500K

Sample output

Goal                                  Format        Budget
New mid-market pipeline               Trade show     $220,000
Retain/expand top 30 accounts         Owned event     $180,000
Break into 8 named target accounts    Field events    $75,000
Brand awareness in new vertical        Experiential    $25,000
TOTAL                                                  $500,000

Healthy

Every dollar traces back to a specific stated goal and its lesson-matched format.

Unhealthy

A budget split by round numbers or last year's spend, with no goal named next to any line item.

What this means

A portfolio plan is not four unrelated bets, it's three goals each getting the format built for them, plus a small deliberate brand-awareness line.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Leadership can't tell which line item serves which goal	Add the goal column to the budget table before presenting it	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Writing the one-metric-per-event success framework

The lesson's Callout instructs writing down the one metric that would make an event a win, pipeline, retention, or brand lift, before booking anything.

For each of the four budget lines above, what single metric proves that line item worked, and what number counts as a win?

Google Sheets— Add a 'success metric' and 'target number' column to the same table.

Procedure

For the trade-show line, define a pipeline-dollar target tied to the mid-market goal
For the owned-event line, define a retention or expansion-revenue target tied to the top-30 accounts
For the field-events line, define a named-account meetings-booked target
For the experiential line, define a brand-lift or impressions target, explicitly not a lead-volume target

Sample output

Format        Success metric                  Target
Trade show    New mid-market pipeline $        $1.1M sourced
Owned event    Expansion revenue from top 30    $400K upsell
Field events    Named-account meetings booked    6 of 8 accounts
Experiential    Branded social impressions       2M impressions

Healthy

Every line item has exactly one metric and one number defined before the event is booked.

Unhealthy

The experiential line is graded on leads generated, the same metric as the trade show.

What this means

Grading every format on the same metric erases the reason the portfolio has four formats in the first place.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Post-event reporting compares all four formats on lead count	Report each line item against its own pre-defined metric, not a shared lead-count scoreboard	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A one-page event portfolio plan: four budget lines, each tied to a named goal and a single pre-defined success metric with a target number.

See a reference example

Sample output

Chewy, Q4 Event Portfolio Plan (excerpt)

GOAL: Grow subscription reorders among lapsed pet-supply customers
  Format: Field/regional pop-up sampling events, $60,000
  Success metric: reorder rate among sampled customers within 30 days
  Target: 18%

GOAL: Retain top pet-hospital B2B partners
  Format: Owned partner summit, $90,000
  Success metric: partner contract renewal rate
  Target: 90%

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Every budget line is tied to exactly one of the three stated goals
Every budget line has exactly one success metric and one numeric target
The total allocation sums to the full $500K budget