[This third in a series of articles on the art of event marketing is a guide that focuses on all the main event. Reference post #1 post, Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail, to discover proactive tactics to complete first, followed by #2: It’s Showtime, to grab quick lessons on game-time decisions at the event.]

Don’t Stop Now

You’ve planned for the conference. You’ve attended the conference, and you hit it out of the park. The booth garnered oohs and ahhs. Attendees came from far and wide to learn more about the brand with the coolest setup on the floor. It would be easy at this stage to deem the event a success and call it a day.

Not so fast. A successful event program depends on post-event activities as much as it does on the event itself. As you wind down one event, you’re already preparing for the next by reflecting on how the event unfolded. What worked? What didn’t? Did we meet our goals? Can we do better?

Check out our all-in-one Conference Marketing 101 [LINK TO LEAD MAGNET] guide covering the ins and outs of a successful event, from the planning stage, through the event itself, and post-event follow-up. Download it to your phone for easy access throughout the conference season. Think of it as your personal booth boss assistant!

But first, take a look at these post-event tips to ensure you maximize your team’s performance at the event and apply lessons learned to the next big event on your calendar.

1. Logistics

• Shipping: Know the shipping requirements inside and out. Collect and organize all event materials and equipment. Package it up and ship it out. Even though you can’t do this until the event is over, simply knowing what to do is half the battle. There’s nothing worse than trying to print a return label from the event floor as the cleaning crew sweeps around you, ready to turn out the lights and lock up.
• Finances: Within a day or two, process and reconcile final event expenses. Have you paid your vendors? Settle those invoices. Have you paid yourself? Collect and file all receipts and financial documentation for reimbursement or if you used a company credit card, for recordkeeping requirements.

2. Lead Management

• Lead Capture: If your lead capture tools are integrated with your CRM, that’s great!. Most of your lead management is automatic. However, it’s always important to periodically review the hygiene of your CRM data. Robots make mistakes too. (But let’s be honest, it’s usually user error.) If you don’t have an integrated tool, you can still manually qualify leads and ensure they are placed in the correct nurture streams. It’s a bit more labor, but think of it as “bespoke craft lead management.”
• Qualify the Leads: Again, if your lead capture strategy syncs with your CRM you can configure it to indicate that all leads derived from a conference are MQLs by default, for example. If a team member feels that based on engagement the lead should have a different qualification, she can override the default manually. Of course, check with your CRM tool for the details. If you’re using a self-service lead capture app, include questions in the signup form that help your SDRs learn as much as possible as they bridge the leads from marketing to sales.
• Nurture Those Infant Leads: As your leads are synced with your CRM they will automatically be directed into a nurture flow based on their lead score. You’ll want to create an event-specific nurture stream that branches into the default stream after a fixed period. Calling back to the shared event experience encourages the prospect to engage. It reminds the lead of your brand and fond memories of free candy and branded totes. But seriously, they love the totes. Who doesn’t? (Also see 3 and 4 below.)

3. Personalize Your Follow-Up

• First, Be Prompt: Reach out to leads within 48-72 hours while your interaction is still fresh in their minds. Don’t let your brand fade into the background with the hundreds of others vying for attention.
• Then, Segment Your Audience: Group attendees based on their interactions, interests, or engagement during the event, or in other words, their lead score, but also include classifications like, VIP attendees, session attendees, or engaged super fan. You’ll want to create personalized follow up for each of your priority segments.
• Finally, Personalize Those Emails: Send tailored emails to your VIPs referencing specific conversations or details from the event. Show them just how unforgettably special they are! Flattery will get you everywhere.

4. You Can’t Do Marketing Without Content

• Content is central to all of your post-event follow-up. When you reach out to conference attendees you want the communication to be engaging, complete with punchy recaps, testimonials, amazing video clips, and great photos. The following are only a few ways to use content to engage with prospects after the event:
  • Create a highlight video or photo montage for your website, emails, and social.
  • Publish a blog post with an event recap. Include pics!
  • Turn a customer interview into a case study to add to your content library.
  • Document customer testimonial quotes you elicited at the event and reach out for permission to use them publicly.
  • Send personalized thank-you emails (or even elegant IRL thank-you notes) to VIP attendees and key accounts.
  • Use images you capture from the event for retargeting campaigns aimed at event attendees.

5. Reporting and Analysis

• Team Debrief: First, Conduct a comprehensive event debrief with your internal team. Compile event-specific engagement metrics. Gather all of your data to prepare to create a final post-mortem presentation.
• Assess KPIs:  Compare actual results against initial objectives, including booth traffic, engagement, social media engagement, and lead generation
• Did You Learn Anything? Identify strengths and areas for improvement and create a lessons-learned document to inform strategic planning for following conference attendance.
• Was it All Worth It? Conduct an ROI analysis. You can’t calculate ROI down to the penny, but you can forecast the revenue the company generates per 100 leads based on average historical performance, for example, and divide the number by the original cost outlay. There may other outcomes deemed valuable like brand awareness and relationship building that are unquantifiable but still need to be considered.
• The Post-Mortem: Using the metrics and analysis above, generate a comprehensive event performance report and presentation for the leadership team. Elaborate on what worked well and what didn’t, and present your recommendations based on your data. Be positive, but be realistic.  Don’t sugar coat the areas you and your team didn’t meet goals. And present challenges as opportunities to improve on.

And Do It All Over Again

Was it Socrates who said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”? Wow. A little intense, huh? Sounds like Socrates could’ve laid off the wine. But the sentiment can be applied to event marketing. Without tracking critical metrics and analyzing the outcomes of your efforts you won’t have the information available to make the next event even more successful.

Parting tip: After your impressive presentation to leadership, reconvene your small team to begin strategic planning while the event is still fresh on your mind. Begin to brainstorm about implementing some of your recommendations and the feedback from the larger team. Explore new tools (lead capture, CRMs, etc.), compare notes with the rest of your team. Identify each team members’ favorite booth and the most innovative swag. Plug all the insights into your planning doc and know that you’re ready to rock for the next event. And lastly, finally …. It’s time to celebrate.