Follow-up
No amount of pre-event planning or success will help if you fail to end your event properly and in a timely manner, destroying all of your hard work. Complete a few simple steps and your attendees, team, speakers, and most importantly, your management will leave with a powerful impression of your virtual event.
To make the most of your event, you need to make sure you complete everything that was promised and document what happened. Below are items for a good event wrap-up:
Attendees
Be sure to follow up with attendees within a week of the event. If you are not as prepared as you had hoped to be, let them know the items you promised them will be coming soon. Don’t let them feel like they’ve been forgotten. Below are items you need to make sure you do not forget:
- A thank you for attending e-mail – Ideally with the archive notification included
- An incentive fulfillment – Send out any white papers or items you offered to entice them to attend.
- Drawings – Let the winner and everyone else know who won. This builds credibility and gives you one more reason to communicate with your attendees.
Leads
Within a few days of the event, hold a sales or lead meeting. Include as many representatives from the sales team as possible. During the meeting, sort the leads into the following categories and assign each lead to someone (document this and follow-up with them a week later.
- Hot – Probably should be assigned to a sales rep.
- Warm – Possibly send a note or assign to an inside sales rep for further qualification.
- Cold – Add to your database and any newsletter or occasional communication lists.
Post-Event Audit
It is important that you create a post-event audit to document the event and provide you a tool to justify the next seminar. Below are some items you could outline in the document, but most importantly, you need to evaluate if you met your objectives. If you did, make sure everyone knows—especially management.
- # of Impressions
- # of Clicks
- # of Registrations
- # of Attendees
- # of Leads
- Budget vs. Actual
Nurture Your Leads
Put a plan in pace to nurture leads generated. Decide frequency of contact and how long that contact will take place.
