The Universe of Events

Chapter 008

Chapter 008

It's not over... yet.

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.

• Why are you throwing an event?
• Who is your audience?
• What do you need to meet your goals?
• How will you measure your success?

We’ll be answering all of these questions later on, but let’s start with your event goal.

Post-Event Communications

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:

1. Send a thank you email

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.

2. Send a “sorry we missed you” email to no-shows

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.

3. Create a post-event page

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

Promote it on your social channels, and share it with anyone who attended (or anyone who didn’t).

4. Ask them to fill out a post-event survey

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.

5. Have your sales or customer teams personally follow-up

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 threw a larger event and need to prioritize who to reach out to, start with those who:

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).

6. Share relevant content

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.

7. Send them an invitation to another event

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.

Test everything, track everything 

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.

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.

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 execute 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

While events are considered best at accelerating sales cycles and fostering customer engagement, events can touch every single stage of the marketing funnel.

Before you can choose what kind of event you should throw and for whom, it’s helpful to understand the marketing funnel and where events fit in.

The basic stages of the marketing funnel (these stages can change depending on your business type):

Awareness:

This is a pretty simplistic view of the funnel. In reality, and depending on your business, sales cycle, and industry, a buyer can go through several stages and touchpoints that aren’t necessarily linear. Nonetheless, this should help you understand that (1) events can be effective at every stage of the buyer’s journey, and (2) you need to be smart about how to use them.

Friendly reminder: your events shouldn’t be the ONLY thing your guests are interacting with. Make sure you’re working with your greater marketing team or organization to understand where you come in.

Common Goals of Events

We like to believe that events have a lot of benefits (we’re biased!). But here are some of the more common reasons companies throw events (plus common event types for each).

• Awareness: the buyer becomes aware of the problem or pain points. 

E.g. events, like tradeshows or sponsored events, that focus on lead generation or brand awareness
• Interest: the buyer starts looking for the solution.

E.g. educational seminars or product workshops
• What do you need to meet your goals?
• How will you measure your success?

Once you’ve solidified your goal, you’ll be able to choose the event type that’s best for your business, your audience, and your goals.

How to Build a Great Mission Statement

If determining your event’s goal is step #1, think of developing your event value proposition a very crucial step #2. This is essentially your mission statement — aka what your guests are going to get out of your event.

By building a clear value proposition you’ll not only have a better understanding of your event’s purpose, but you’ll also be better able to express this value in your pre-event promotions, which helps drive more registrations.

Want to learn how to create a great one? Check out this video from our CEO Ben, who breaks down his go-to strategy for building an event value proposition here.