Virtual Event Follow-Up: 4 Things You
Need to Do

Amy Barone, Sr. Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau Software, shares her event marketing secrets in our A New Era in Event Marketing webinar with Harvard Business Review and AdAge. Below, she gives an inside look at how Tableau  grew and scaled a high-performance event program.

If someone asked me three months ago to write this blog post, I would have responded with an obligatory “y tho?” meme.

Fast-forward to today, and the only thing event marketers are thinking and talking about is virtual event strategy. By now, you’ve probably hosted a

handful of virtual events and have likely compiled a list of what went right and what could use fine-tuning. Do those notes involve your virtual event follow-up strategy? 

When we host live events, the pre-event hype gets the most attention. We put most of our eggs in the promotional basket and often don’t focus a lot of our energy on the follow-up strategy. Why? Because we made connections with the people at the live event and formed many one-off follow-up plans to re-engage them later. We don’t have that luxury with virtual events, so our follow-up strategy has to be thorough. 

But first things first. When you’re hosting a webinar or live stream, use a Virtual Branded Theme (it’s free). It’s ready to go with a registration page, customized emails, and a post-event experience. Tips, tricks, and best practices are included to make setup really easy, and using a theme will make the next four steps a breeze.

• Quick Start: Splash Host App for iOS
• Splash Host App for iOS

• Splash Host App for Android

person next to them?

Ten years later, our annual conference attracts nearly 20,000 customers and partners, our company has grown to 4,000 people, and we have a first-class marketing team with dedicated event professionals who are the best in the biz. Events have been a crucial part of our brand and help us better connect with our community, evangelize our customers, and ultimately grow our company.

Here’s how we did it:

When your virtual event concludes and if you plan to offer an on-demand version, switch your event page to the post-event stage and add the link to the recording. This ensures all of the content you worked so hard to compile doesn’t vanish as soon as the event ends.

If you don’t plan on offering an on-demand version of your event page, you should still switch your event page to the post-event stage. This lets your audience know the event has ended, and they can be redirected to an upcoming event or links to digital resources instead.

Pro Tip
If your virtual event is part of a series, add a call to action on your post-event page that links to the next event’s registration page.

Just like we would after a live event, it’s a best practice to send an email to your virtual event attendees and no-shows. However, there should be key differences for the virtual event follow-up email. 

Since virtual events aren’t as immersive as live events, you’ll need to provide resources that your audience can take advantage of to stay connected. That means sending links to your resources, upcoming events or webinars, a prompt to provide feedback, and a recording of the virtual event (if applicable).  

The goal of your virtual event follow-up email is to take another action. Fortunately, we have the upper hand right now. With most people in quarantine, they’re looking for outlets to find community and stay busy. The more pathways you can provide in your communications will ensure future program success and higher engagement. 

Image: Penguin Random House

Image: Conference Matters

I cannot stress this enough: Always — I mean always — send your virtual event attendees a survey following the event. We are all learning a brand new skill when it comes to hosting meaningful virtual events, so there is always room for improvement. 

Whether you’re collecting the survey data in your event marketing platform, a survey provider, or a simple Google Form, make sure it’s the first thing you mention in your follow-up communications. I usually try to mention the survey at the end of the virtual event while I still have attendees’ attention so I can let them know what to expect and stress how valuable we find their feedback.

It’s one thing to blindly upload an attendee list from a large industry event and blast everyone (you know who you are), but it’s another to know exactly who visited your booth, who met with your sales team, attended your event — they’re the ones that are the most engaged with you and they’re the ones you should focus on the most.

Though brief, that simple interaction with with the chef took the night beyond just an excellent meal.

Image: Google Books

When it comes down to it, the goal of any event is to grow and nurture the relationship between your guests and your brand — whether you’re promoting a product, building community, or looking to increase brand awareness.

This one is my favorite because it is something we’ve never done before in the world of live events. As event marketers, we’re responsible for creating experiences that create human connection. However, we’re not actually creating those connections ourselves — we’re relying on the fact that our guests are excited to grow their networks and will come to the event ready to swap business cards. 

This is not something we can replicate in a virtual setting. Sure, you can leverage Zoom breakout rooms and a slew of other virtual tools to drive peer-to-peer chatter, but nothing compares to the serendipitous, “meet-cute” moments live events create. 

So, we have to be the facilitators of the meet-cute. Disclaimer: This requires some serious homework and a deep understanding of your audience. 

People attend events to learn something new. That doesn’t just mean learning from the speakers and programmed content. It means finding like-minded individuals with whom they can create lasting professional relationships. 

Following the event, take a hard look at your attendee list. Think back to who raised the most questions, expressed the most excitement, or even reached out and asked for more ways to get involved. Look for similarities between those guests like company size, industry, and job role (you wouldn’t want to pair a specialist with an executive). Once you identify a couple, reach out to both in a simple, concise way. Feel free to copy and paste this:

Hey [first name] and [first name], I noticed you both attended yesterday’s virtual event. It sounds like you’re both trying to solve similar challenges, so I wanted to introduce you to each other. Let me know if I can be any help, but I’ll let you two take it from here.

There’s no doubt this tactic is a manual lift, and it might not be feasible for every virtual event. But if you can create one relationship between your guests that might not have existed before, it’s a win.

There’s no arguing that the temporary absence of live events has left us feeling a bit unfulfilled, and there is only so much a virtual event can do to imitate in-person human connection. But I truly believe that half the battle of creating a meaningful virtual experience for your attendees is what you do after the event is over. 

P.S. Coming soon to a Splash near you: an all-new Virtual Event Page touchpoint that streamlines the setup of your dynamic event page (one URL, multiple guest experiences based on the proximity to your live event). Plus, this automates guest check-in and data capture. Learn more by watching our on-demand webinar. Keep your eyes peeled for the announcement email!

Learn how Splash can support every step of the virtual event process here.

This is when having accurate event data readily available and synced between sales and marketing systems becomes crucial, so that executives, sales teams, and the marketing team are all on the same page. Event data is shared weekly or even every other day, so everyone has a clear understanding of things like RSVPs and check-ins, and can adjust their communications or follow-ups accordingly.

^{Post-event page made with Splash}

This way, guests didn’t have to worry about memorizing each other’s names or drawing a blank when they turned to chat with the person next to them, and we also got to show off  our product in a natural way.

When the MediaMath team goes to determine the ROI of an event, they’re able to track and attribute opportunities and future deals to a prospect attending the event.

And from a budget perspective, they’re also able to look at data from all events over the course of a year and see which opportunities and deals are associated with people who attended. This helps them determine which events are working or what they should adjust, and where they should continue investing their marketing dollars.

Even if your event doesn’t require a full seating chart with assigned seats, think about how you want the flow of your event to go, and how you can create natural opportunities for meaningful connections.

Image: designworkplan

•   A sense of privacy: a completely private and closed off room for dinner proved to be an extremely crucial element. At one of the venues, an open section in the room allowed noise to disrupt the flow of conversation — making it feel less private and less special of a night compared to dinners that were completely closed off to the public.

At the end of the day, throwing events mean nothing if you’re not providing value to your customers.

At our conferences, we provide “Tableau Doctors” on-site that help customers or prospects with any questions about our product. Not only do these one-on-one appointments empower customers to engage with us in a meaningful way, they’ve also been the critical to driving event ROI.