Companies Like Splash for Experiential Marketing ROI

Written by: Bryan Grobstein, Vice President, Global Revenue, AnyRoad

Key Takeaways

• Experiential marketing ROI depends on connecting activations to verified retail purchases, beyond registration or attendance metrics.
• Splash, now part of Cvent, excels at event registration and ticketing but does not provide purchase attribution or revenue tracking.
• AnyRoad closes the loop from activation to first-party data capture, post-experience incentives, and receipt-verified purchase attribution without POS integration.
• Platforms such as Captello, Bizzabo, and Goldcast focus on pipeline or virtual engagement instead of consumer purchase verification at third-party retailers.
• AnyRoad combines technology with white-glove service for alcohol and CPG brands that need measurable experiential ROI.

See how AnyRoad connects activations to verified purchases

What Is Cvent Splash and Where Its Measurement Stops

Splash was acquired by Cvent and now operates as a product within Cvent's portfolio. Cvent's own event-registration content describes Splash as a tool for building branded event landing pages and emails, managing invites, guest lists, ticketing, and reporting. It functions as a registration-experience platform rather than a full experiential-measurement platform.

As of Cvent's July 24, 2026 product release, Splash continues to receive active development under Cvent ownership. The most recent update added full bi-directional sync for six key attendee fields, including first name, last name, email, company, title, and phone number, between OnArrival and Splash. Attendee information updated on-site now flows back into Splash and then into CRM and post-event follow-up tools. That positions Splash as an operational registration and check-in product within Cvent's ecosystem rather than a standalone measurement platform.

For buyers, Splash's measurement stops at registration, attendance, and on-site engagement. It does not connect an attendee to a bottle sold at a third-party retailer, a receipt-verified purchase at Total Wine, or a cashback rebate redeemed via Venmo. Registration and attendance metrics describe participation. They do not provide attribution. That distinction drives the rest of this article.

For a deeper look at how Splash's interface, scalability, and reporting flexibility compare to alternatives, see AnyRoad's existing coverage: 9 Scalable Splash Alternatives With Stronger ROI Tracking and Advanced Reporting Alternatives to Splash for Experiential. This article focuses on measurement mechanics.

If Splash's measurement stops at registration, brands evaluating experiential ROI need platforms that carry attribution all the way to a verified purchase. The shortlist below covers the platforms most often named as alternatives, organized by how each one measures ROI so you can see where each approach ends.

Companies Like Splash for Experiential Marketing ROI: The Named Shortlist

AnyRoad

AnyRoad connects activations to first-party data, purchase conversion, and revenue attribution. It captures first-party consumer data before, during, and after an experience from every attendee in a group, not only the person who made the booking. Its FullView feature makes that possible at scale. Proximo Spirits realized they were missing contact information for over 66% of their guests. After implementing FullView, they collected 69% more guest data and 34% more NPS responses.

AnyRoad's AI-powered feedback analysis, PinPoint, turns open-text survey responses into insights by aggregating themes and sentiment across thousands of responses. Diageo measured a 16-point NPS increase from pre-visit to post-visit at Johnnie Walker Princes Street using AnyRoad analytics. The team also found that an under-targeted demographic was 40% more likely to drink whisky after visiting, though the specific demographic is not identified in the available evidence. Absolut Home increased average revenue per guest by 36% since 2018 and achieved an 85% brand conversion rate post-event.

AnyRoad separates from every other platform on this list through its connection to retail purchase. After an activation, AnyRoad sends each consumer an SMS with a cashback rebate redeemable anywhere the product is sold. Because the rebate ties to a receipt rather than a POS system, the consumer can buy the bottle at any retailer, photograph the receipt, and text it back. AnyRoad's AI then reads the receipt, confirms the eligible SKU, and pays the rebate via Venmo or PayPal. The same mechanic also runs as a sweepstakes variant. In a one-month ambassador tasting pilot with a single unnamed craft brand on a small dataset, 56% of records collected converted to a bottle purchase. That early result should not be read as a platform benchmark, but it illustrates the direction of the mechanic.

AnyRoad's Lifetime Loyalty suite extends this connection. Its Bottle Clubs and Premium Memberships turn a one-time visit into recurring revenue. Spirits industry experts coach on-site enrollment, working directly with tour guides, retail managers, and mixologists to make the pitch. AnyRoad's own reporting shows that experience-driven opt-ins convert to paid loyalty at four times the rate of traditional channels, with member spending increasing 150% within the first year. Publicly announced Lifetime Loyalty customers include Heaven Hill Distillery, Nearest Green Distillery, Lux Row Distillers, Castle & Key, Catoctin Creek Distilling, and Tarnished Truth Distilling.

AnyRoad also offers managed CRM services for brands without in-house email marketing capability. The team runs segmentation, programmatic emails, and campaign management on top of the same first-party experiential data the platform already collects. These services come from people who understand alcohol compliance and spirits release calendars.

For a full breakdown of AnyRoad's ROI tracking capabilities versus other platforms, see Best Software to Track and Prove Event Marketing ROI in 2026.

Turn experiential data into repeatable revenue. Schedule a demo.

Captello

Captello's ROI measurement mechanism turns live engagement interactions into qualified, ranked leads and attributes them to the pipeline they influence. Every interaction is tied to a lead record that flows into scoring, follow-up, meeting scheduling, and revenue attribution via its Revelation attribution platform. Captello's Event Revenue Intelligence assigns revenue to each individual lead and meeting at the record level instead of using a program-wide average. A customer measured $6.6M in pipeline influence from a single event using Captello's Revelation module.

Captello's attribution is lead-, meeting-, and pipeline-based rather than purchase-receipt based. It suits trade show and B2B event contexts where the output is pipeline, not a bottle leaving a shelf. For consumer brands running ambassador tastings or on-premise activations, that distinction matters.

EventROI

EventROI functions as a dedicated measurement layer for teams that need attribution modeling across events. It connects event participation to downstream outcomes. Its focus is event measurement and attribution rather than operational event management or consumer purchase tracking.

eshots/EventBoss

eshots/EventBoss serves field and experiential teams that need to capture consumer data at activations and report on event performance. Its core capability is experiential data capture and event analytics. It supports teams that need structured data collection from activations but do not yet connect that data to retail purchase verification.

Ether

Ether focuses on connecting experiential activity to measurable outcomes across the event lifecycle. Its positioning centers on event and experiential measurement for teams that need a measurement framework instead of a full operational platform.

Cvent

Cvent is a comprehensive enterprise event management platform covering registration, venue sourcing, on-site operations, and analytics. Its on-site capabilities include Attendee Hub for networking and updates, and OnArrival for on-demand badge printing and attendance tracking. Measurement focuses on event operations and attendee engagement. Cvent does not connect an attendee to a consumer purchase at a third-party retailer.

Bizzabo

Bizzabo is a B2B event experience platform that uses attendance, engagement, and guest experience metrics to help organizers prove event ROI to sponsors. Its Klik SmartBadge combines an event badge with a wearable device that tracks attendee movements in real time, producing live event heat maps that organizers can use to verify dwell times at booths and justify ROI for sponsors. Attribution is engagement- and pipeline-based, suited to B2B event contexts rather than consumer-brand purchase attribution.

Goldcast

Goldcast is a virtual and hybrid event platform. Its measurement centers on virtual event engagement and content performance, including session attendance, replay views, and content interaction. It belongs on a shortlist for digital event programs, not for field marketing teams trying to connect a tasting to a retail sale.

How Experiential Marketing ROI Is Actually Measured

Operator frustration in Reddit threads on field marketing ROI often sounds the same. Teams can produce attendance reports but cannot produce a number that connects an activation to a purchase. B2B marketers most commonly measure experiential impact through event engagement metrics like attendance and participation (70%), followed by customer feedback such as NPS and surveys (46%), and revenue-based ROI (46%). Revenue-based ROI, however, requires a different infrastructure than registration tracking. The sections below outline that infrastructure.

First-Party Data Capture

Effective experiential ROI starts with collecting data from every attendee, not just the booker. Most platforms capture only the person who made the reservation. AnyRoad's FullView feature captures data from every attendee in a group, with custom questions before, during, and after the experience. Campari Group's partnership with AnyRoad enabled a 3X increase in marketing opt-ins and identified 4,500 brand champions. POPLIFE captured 45–50% more consumer data using AnyRoad compared to competitors during festival activations, with 42% of attendees opting into future marketing communications.

Cvent's 2026 experiential marketing analysis states that data capture must be built into the experience rather than bolted on afterward. When ROI is hard to demonstrate, the problem usually starts during planning rather than in the post-event report. First-party data capture forms the prerequisite for every attribution step that follows.

Post-Experience Incentives

Post-experience incentives create a bridge between the activation and a purchase. Cashback rebates, punch cards, and sweepstakes entries sent via SMS drive immediate action and create a trackable thread between the experience and a sale. This is the same receipt-verification mechanic described earlier: the consumer buys the product anywhere it is sold, texts a photo of the receipt, and AnyRoad's AI confirms the SKU and pays the rebate.

AnyRoad data from Conversate Collective's events for a CPG beauty brand showed that 74% of guests were more likely to purchase the brand's products after attending. Eighty-five percent of consumers engaged at festival activations reported intent to purchase the mezcal brand's product post-event, with a 75% lift in purchase intent post-experience.

Receipt-Verified Purchase Attribution

Receipt verification makes on-premise conversion tracking possible. The consumer buys the product anywhere it is sold, photographs the receipt, and texts it back. AnyRoad's AI reads the receipt, confirms the eligible SKU, and pays the rebate. This process works in any account, including Total Wine, bars, and grocery stores, without asking a retailer or bar to integrate a POS system. A rebate tied to an identifiable SKU on a bar tab is measurable in a way a depletion report never is.

The lifetime value math supports this investment. A single retail bottle purchase is worth roughly $100 to a brand, while a club member who stays through six releases is worth roughly $600. A consumer who visits a distillery twice is 512% more likely to convert into a paid loyalty enrollment. Churn concentrates around the six-release mark, and the underlying cause usually relates to depletion, since members who have not consumed what they already have resist additional purchases. The receipt-verified mechanic creates the first-party record that connects the activation to the sale. The Lifetime Loyalty suite then turns that sale into a recurring relationship.

Measure ROI from brand activations with verified purchases. Schedule a demo.

The Software-vs-Agency Fork

Brands must decide whether they need a platform, an agency, or a combination of both. AboutMartech's 2026 Provider-Fit Test advises that if a team lacks a marketing operations person to own the attribution model week to week, it likely needs a managed provider rather than self-serve attribution software. For consumer brands running activations, that framing maps cleanly. A platform that requires internal expertise to configure and interpret differs from a platform delivered with the expertise already attached.

AnyRoad is delivered as technology plus white-glove service. Spirits industry experts, people who have built and run large-scale spirits clubs and brand home programs, coach on-site staff and set up the enrollment experience. They also handle the operational lift that brands would otherwise have to staff internally. Enrollment happens because a coached tour guide makes the pitch at the end of a tasting, not simply because a page exists. A team of roughly ten people supports fulfillment and best-practice strategy across accounts.

This service layer differentiates AnyRoad from the other alternatives on this list. Captello and Bizzabo both deliver software with hardware or integration add-ons. AnyRoad delivers software with something different: the people who know how to make a distillery visitor say yes to a bottle club. For brands without a dedicated lifecycle marketer or an in-house email team, that managed execution layer often determines whether a program runs or a license sits unused.

Analytic Partners argues that the vendor-selection question is whether a brand wants a software product, a service engagement, or a hybrid model that combines platform with embedded expert guidance. AnyRoad represents the hybrid model built specifically for alcohol and CPG experiential programs.

Why Event-Registration Metrics Are Necessary but Insufficient

Attendance, registrations, and NPS provide useful context, yet they stop short of full ROI. PheedLoop's Event Data Lab analysis of check-in data across 1,070+ live events found a median no-show rate of about 20%. Registration counts therefore overstate actual attendance by roughly one in five registrants, and every per-attendee metric calculated from registration counts inherits that error.

More fundamentally, a CFO asking whether an activation drove sales wants a revenue answer, not an attendance report. Surveys consistently put proving ROI at the top of the experiential challenge list, with roughly four in ten marketers naming it their single biggest hurdle. A brand can spend over six figures per activation with an agency without any clear ROI measurement. Event-registration tools produce attendance reports. Experiential ROI platforms produce a number that connects an activation to a purchase. Splash sits in the first category. AnyRoad operates in the second.

What to Ask a Vendor in a Demo

Vendor conversations work best when framed around attribution capability rather than feature count. The questions that separate registration platforms from ROI platforms are:

1. Can you capture data from every attendee, not just the booker?
2. Can you connect an attendee to a purchase that happens at a third-party retailer?
3. Does your approach require POS integration?
4. How do you handle alcohol compliance?
5. What does the managed service layer include?

A platform that cannot answer question 2 without requiring POS integration functions as a registration platform with analytics. A platform that answers all five operates as an experiential ROI platform.

FAQ

What Is Cvent Splash?

Splash is an event registration and ticketing platform that Cvent acquired. It helps marketing teams build branded event landing pages and manage invitations, guest lists, ticketing, and reporting. As of Cvent's July 24, 2026 product release, Splash operates as an active product within Cvent's ecosystem, with its OnArrival integration updated to support full bi-directional sync for key attendee fields. Splash's measurement capability covers registration, attendance, and on-site engagement. It does not connect an attendee to a consumer purchase at a third-party retailer.

What Are the Best Event Marketing Platforms for Experiential ROI?

The answer depends on how your team defines ROI. For B2B pipeline attribution from trade shows and conferences, Captello and Bizzabo are purpose-built. For virtual event engagement measurement, Goldcast is the relevant platform. For consumer-brand experiential programs such as tastings, tours, ambassador activations, and field marketing, the goal often involves connecting an activation to a retail purchase. AnyRoad closes that loop through first-party data capture, post-experience incentives, and receipt-verified purchase attribution without requiring POS integration.

How Is Experiential Marketing ROI Actually Measured?

As outlined earlier, credible measurement requires three layers working together. These layers include first-party data capture from every attendee, post-experience incentives that drive a trackable purchase, and receipt-verified attribution. The key point is that attendance reports and NPS scores act as inputs to that chain rather than substitutes for it.

Do You Need POS Integration to Track Experiential Purchase Attribution?

Most brands do not need POS integration for experiential purchase attribution. Asking a retailer or bar to integrate a point-of-sale system creates overhead that limits deployment to a handful of accounts. AnyRoad's receipt-verification mechanic runs entirely on the consumer's photographed receipt, which means it works in any account, including national chains, independent retailers, and on-premise bars. The consumer texts the receipt, AnyRoad's AI reads it, confirms the SKU, and pays the rebate via Venmo or PayPal. That approach makes on-premise conversion tracking workable at scale.

How Does Splash Compare to Dedicated Experiential ROI Platforms?

Splash is optimized for event registration, branded landing pages, guest list management, and CRM connectivity. These capabilities serve corporate event marketing teams that manage invitations and pipeline reporting. Dedicated experiential ROI platforms such as AnyRoad focus on a different problem. They capture first-party consumer data from every attendee at an activation, connect that attendee to a verified retail purchase, and attribute revenue back to the experience. The two categories share surface-level vocabulary, since both involve events and data, yet their measurement mechanisms differ. A brand that needs to walk into a QBR with a number connecting an activation to bottles sold needs the experiential ROI category.

Conclusion: Connecting Activations to Verified Sales

Registration metrics, attendance reports, and NPS scores all fail to answer the CFO's real question: did this activation sell product? A credible answer requires a platform that captures first-party data from every attendee, sends a post-experience incentive that drives a trackable purchase, and verifies that purchase through a receipt without asking a retailer to integrate anything.

AnyRoad connects activations to first-party data, purchase conversion, and revenue attribution. It is delivered as technology plus white-glove service from spirits industry operators who coach the people making the pitch, run the enrollment experience, and keep the program running quarter to quarter. That combination turns experiential programs into measurable, repeatable revenue.

Know which bottles your activation actually sold. Schedule a demo.