First off, take a deep breath. You made it! The hard(est) part is over.
But the post-event is (arguably) THE most important part of your event program. You get to build off the buzz of your event, and have the opportunity to really nurture your guests down the funnel. Sounds fun, right?
The best part? Throughout your follow-ups, you’ll start to see who’s the most engaged, and who you should prioritize your time for that next step – whether it’s to book a meeting or invite them to a future VIP event.
Friendly reminder: don’t save your post-event strategy for the last minute. Start thinking about it early on (will your designer need to create a post-event page, or another email? Does your Sales team know they’ll need to follow-up with their prospects?) so that after your event, you can jump right into executing your strategy.
Every post-event strategy will look different from the next (first and foremost, depending on what the goal of your event is), but we believe that there are certain elements every successful post-event strategy should include. These can be mix and matched, or supplemented with anything else your company does after your events.
Here are some ways you can follow-up with your guests:
Your guests took time out of their busy schedules to come to your event, so the least you can do is take the time to say thank you (it’s also a great excuse to connect with them again). Send a simple follow-up email right after the event — you’ll be surprised how far this small gesture goes.
Don’t limit your follow-ups to just the people who attended your event. Reach out the people who planned to be there but didn’t end up making it, let them know you missed them, and then show them everything they missed 😉. Send them the post-event page, and any other relevant content from the event.
Let your guests relive the entire experience (or see what they missed) with a post-event page — simply edit and add to the event landing page you already created. Make sure you showcase every part: the speakers, the food and drinks, the entertainment, the award winners, etc. Here are some different things you can include:
See this live post-event example from our Cloud Wine event in 2018
Send a post-event survey to your guests and ask for feedback on the event: what worked, what didn’t, what their favorite part was, etc. That way, you can make your next event even better.
If your event’s goal was to drive sales or customer engagement, get your Sales or Customer teams to reach out (over the phone or via email) personally to guests after the event — whether it’s with a relevant piece of content or a “what did you think of the event?”
While it may feel very against a salesperson’s DNA, remind them that depending on how far along the prospect is in the buyer’s journey, it’s always better to provide helpful, non-salesy information.
If you’re nurturing leads after a trade show or partner event, make sure to keep in the mind that they might’ve forgotten they stopped by your booth (so, make sure your team doesn't go straight into the sales pitch).
An effective way to engage with your guests is to send any content that aligns with the event. Even if you don’t have anything on hand, you should plan to create content (before or after the event), that you can eventually use as a nice touchpoint down the road.
Additionally: if there was any content presented or mentioned during the event (decks, videos, etc.), your guests might appreciate having that in their inbox, too.
Got another event coming up that’s similar to the one they already attended? This is a great opportunity to build off of the momentum from this latest event, and get people excited for your next one.
It’s important to understand what works and what doesn’t, especially when you’re blasting your audience with a lot of emails. Make sure to look into your historical email data to see what has worked in the past and what hasn’t.
Depending on your business, and how long your sales cycle is, nurturing your leads after an event is crucial (sometimes it takes 20+ touchpoints for your prospect to buy). While this is not a comprehensive nurture strategy, we've put together things to think about when building a longer term strategy.
Consider the buyer’s journey. Remember the sales and marketing funnel we talked about in Chapter 1? Make sure that every communication you send aligns directly to each stage.
Have the technology in place to automate it. Ideally, when someone checks in to your event, or their badge is scanned, they are automatically placed on a list and put into a nurture. Make sure your event technology is integrated with your Marketing Automation Platform.
Need a refresher on how to send emails in Splash? Check out our interactive course of our Email Sender feature*.
For every day you don’t follow-up after an event, you’ll see about a 20% drop off in engagement. Eek. Our CEO has got you covered with his 6-step “Pulse” follow-up plan to help drive engagement post-event.
Want to create a post-event page as awesome as this one ☞ ? Here's how to create a post-event page in Splash.