Why Your Sponsorship Package Needs an Executive Summary [+Template to Get You Started]

If you're looking to gain sponsors for your next event, but you're not sure how to improve outcomes for your next event, an executive summary can often be a good strategy to implement.

In this article, we'll cover the importance of an executive summary, explore ways to structure yours, and provide a template to get you started.

The Importance of Including an Executive Summary in Your Event Sponsorship Package

An executive summary is a key component of a successful event sponsorship package. Let's take a look at some of the benefits of including an executive summary.

Enhances Understanding of the Event

Your executive summary provides a concise overview of the event's purpose and benefits. It outlines the key things your prospects should know about the event, including the location, date, and summary. It also helps your prospects understand why they should attend and who else will be there.

The key here is that it's just a short overview that potential sponsors can consume quickly.

Captures Attention and Interest

Much like a movie trailer, your executive summary is meant to garner interest in your event. In one page, you should be able to craft a compelling narrative and use impactful visuals to encourage your prospects to sponsor (or at the very least, look at the rest of the sponsorship package).

Helps Sell Your Event

The people reviewing your event sponsorship packages are often not the final decision-makers. It's likely that they'll need to show their managers or even higher-level management why they should sponsor your event.

Why not make their lives easier? Providing an executive summary with key benefits and highlights of your event saves your prospects time and allows you to control what information is shown to the decision-makers.

How to Write an Effective Executive Summary for Your Event Sponsorship Package

Writing an effective executive summary requires careful planning and execution. Here are some of our suggestions.

Understand Your Audience and Goals

Before embarking on your executive sponsorship summary, it's vital to understand who your audience is.

Will you be mainly speaking to finance people? Maybe you should lean more into the numbers of the conference.

Or are your sponsors mainly marketing or sales people? Then it should be all about ROI and FOMO.

Setting clear objectives for your event should also be paramount. If you're looking to entice new sponsors, then your summary should be tailored to them. If you're looking to grow past sponsors, your summary should be tailored to that goal.

Maybe this even requires you to create a few different versions of your summary to provide different types of sponsors.

Structure and Content Tips

Your executive summary should ideally be one page that is visually pleasing and easy to scan. Consider design elements such as heading sizes, location of visuals, and scannability. Look at examples to get some inspiration, or use tools like Canva to help you get started.

When it comes to producing the content for the page, think through how someone might ingest the content you're sharing and what questions they may be asking throughout. Don't worry about including every bit of information on this page; try to get just the most relevant pieces of information on there.

We recommend focusing your content more on the benefits of the sponsorship rather than the tactical details (e.g. you don't need booth sizes on this page).

Key Elements to Include in Your Event Sponsorship Executive Summary

To make your event sponsorship executive summary stand out, be sure to include these key elements:

Event Overview and Purpose

Providing a brief description of the event's purpose, theme, and target audience. Highlight the date, time, location, and other relevant information quickly.

You can also include a quick summary here of things like the number of sponsorship opportunities, event size, etc. 

Sponsorship Opportunities and Benefits

A large portion of your space should be dedicated to outlining the benefits of sponsorship. This includes things like gaining leads, expanding brand exposure, or connecting with other vendors.

Try to be specific here. You're trying to differentiate your event from all of the other ones your prospects could be sponsoring. What makes YOU different?

• Maybe you have exclusive access to a specific portion of the market.
• Or maybe you have a very engaged audience that is looking for vendor solutions.
• Or maybe you offer the most robust sponsorship opportunities in the market.

You should also aim to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) and the value sponsors can expect to receive. Maybe you can give specific numbers like "Gain 100 leads", but you can consider other ways to show ROI like, "access to a database of 4,000 prospects."

Logos or Company Names

Not only are logos an interesting visual break from paragraphs and bullet points, but they give your prospects a better idea of who will be at your event. There are two types of logos or company names you can consider adding to your executive summary:

1. Past sponsor logos: These are likely competitors of your prospects, which means that they'll feel that FOMO to attend your event. This can be highly effective at convincing prospects to sponsor, since they'll feel, "well, if XYZ is there, we HAVE to be there!"
2. Attendee logos: Include some of the names of past attendee companies to help your prospects better understand what types of leads might be there. If they're looking to sell to the insurance market but you only have tech companies at your event, they probably aren't the right fit. But if your attendees align with their target market, they'll be more likely to want to attend (plus, your attendees will get better value out of sponsors that align with them).

Attendee Overview

You can also consider adding a demographic overview of your attendees. This can include things like their titles, seniority, locations, and more. We often like to include these things in charts or graphs to help your prospects digest the information quickly.

Contact Information

Don't forget to include ways your prospects can contact you to sign up or learn more. Email address, registration website, and phone number are standard.

Tips to Make Your Event Sponsorship Executive Summary Stand Out

To ensure your event sponsorship executive summary stands out from the competition, consider these tips:

Use Compelling Language and Visuals

Your prospects should be excited about the opportunity to sponsor your event after reading your executive summary. Leverage your language and visuals to create that sense of excitement and urgency to sponsor.

Keep It Concise and Easy to Read

This is key.

Your prospect should be able to consume this information in a minute or two, and be able to decide if the event is worth participating in.

Keep paragraphs to a minimum and avoid unnecessary jargon or technical terms that your prospects may not understand. Try to keep them from zoning out halfway down the page.

We also recommend using bullet points, headers, and visuals to break up the text and improve scannability.

Your Event Sponsorship Executive Summary Template

Looking for inspiration for your executive summary? We've created an example template you can use for your next event to improve your sponsorship package.