Software as a service
For event software: do organizers come back for the next event, and where did they find you?
Event software is bought by organizers on a deadline: a conference, a meetup series, a webinar programme, sometimes one event and sometimes a year of them. Tally links every per-event purchase and annual plan to the visits behind it, and lifetime value tells you which channels bring organizers who return.
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01How they sell
- One-offA single event's plan bought weeks before the date, often by an organizer who runs one event a year.
- SubscriptionAnnual plans for teams that run events all year, from monthly meetups to a flagship conference.
- UsageCharges per registrant above an allowance, billed on an invoice once the event's numbers are known.
02Payments it reads
- StripeEvent plans and annual subscriptions through Checkout or invoices; per-registrant charges on invoices are read too.
What Tally can't read
- Ticket revenue your organizers collect from attendees goes to their own accounts, so it isn't read as yours.
- Visits to the event pages you host for organizers are their attendees, not your prospects; leave the tag off those pages or they will crowd out your buyers.
- Sponsorship and exhibitor fees your organizers invoice aren't read, and neither are association budgets paid by purchase order outside Stripe.
03Where buyers come from
- Attendee-facing pagesRegistration pages show your brand to attendees, some of whom run events too; a UTM on the footer link makes them a campaign.
- Event planning searchesOrganizers search for registration software, a check-in app or a run-of-show template once a date is already set.
- Association networksOrganizers of association conferences recommend tools to each other, often in member newsletters.
- Venue and AV partnersVenues and production companies suggest platforms to the organizers they work with; a partner link per venue keeps the credit.
- Comparison pagesOrganizers who outgrew a basic ticketing tool compare fees and features across a few rivals.
04What Tally answers
Do organizers come back for their next event?
Lifetime value by first source counts each organizer's payments over time and gives the repeat rate, so a channel whose organizers buy once a year for years is ranked by that, not by one event.
Lifetime valueHow far ahead of buying do organizers start looking?
Path to purchase measures the median time from a buyer's first visit to their payment and the pages they saw; an organizer who browses months before a conference and pays close to the date leaves a long, readable trail.
Path to purchaseDid the mention in the association newsletter bring buyers?
The sales after the newsletter each have a receipt with the visits behind them; the ones whose credited visit carries the newsletter's campaign are the ones it brought.
ReceiptsCan we follow sales during a promotion week?
Sale alerts by email, Slack, Discord, Telegram or webhook arrive as each payment links, and a spike alert flags an unusual jump while the promotion runs.
Alerts and digestsWhich venue partners send organizers who pay?
With a UTM per partner, each venue's row in the campaign breakdown shows its visitors and the revenue credited to them.
Sources with revenue
05Numbers worth watching
- Repeat rate
- The share of organizers who paid more than once, by first source: the plainest sign a channel brings repeat events.
- Revenue by source
- Revenue behind each partner, association and search page, set against the attendees-turned-organizers from your own pages.
- Median time to buy
- How long organizers take from first visit to paying, which tells you how early in the planning season to be found.
- Refunds and chargebacks
- Refunds and chargebacks by source, including plans refunded when an event is cancelled.
06An example
Lifetime value by first source
All time: every payment since 1 Nov 2025. The period above doesn't apply.
| First source | Customers | Lifetime revenue | Average value | Renewals | Repeat rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GoogleOrganic Search | 325 | $40,560 | $125 | 845 | 52% |
| ChatGPTAI Assistants | 126 | $21,071 | $167 | 391 | 61% |
| Direct | 178 | $18,216 | $102 | 374 | 44% |
| NewsletterEmail | 94 | $17,362 | $185 | 357 | 69% |
| Hacker NewsOrganic Social | 84 | $11,741 | $140 | 227 | 55% |
| x.comOrganic Social | 115 | $10,190 | $89 | 161 | 33% |
| RedditOrganic Social | 84 | $9,016 | $107 | 160 | 40% |
| PerplexityAI Assistants | 42 | $6,342 | $151 | 101 | 57% |
| Every source | 1,048 | $134,498 | $128 | 2,616 | 51% |
A customer is a visitor linked to a sale, counted under the source of their first visit. Lifetime revenue is net of refunds and chargebacks; repeat rate is the share who paid more than once (a renewal, an upgrade or another purchase). $13,167 from 426 payments not linked to a visitor is in no row.
07Setting up
- Any HTML sitePut the tag on your marketing site and pricing pages, and keep it off the event and registration pages you host for organizers.
- StripeSet tally_visitor_id in the metadata of the Checkout Session an organizer pays through, and in subscription_data for annual plans.
- Give each venue and production partner a UTM-tagged link, so their organizers count as one campaign.
08Questions
Ticket sales run through our platform. Are they counted?
Not as your revenue when they settle into the organizer's own account. Tally reads the payments organizers make to you, for plans and per-registrant charges.
An organizer buys one event, then an annual plan a year later. How does that show?
As two sales by the same customer. Each is credited to the last visit that didn't come direct before it, and both count towards the first source's lifetime value and repeat rate.
We run webinars to sell the platform itself. Can we tell what they brought?
Call identify with each registrant's email at sign-up; a later payment with that email links with medium confidence, and a UTM on the follow-up email's link shows the webinar's visits.