Post-Conference Activities That You Can’t Ignore

A successful conference management strategy aligns with the attendees’ journey from beginning to ending. It is important to not overlook post-event activities. They are an integral part of the conference’s journey and life cycle.

Conference planning may include follow-up activities such as

All those leads should be entered your CRM. Obvious, right? It takes time and you are too busy. You don’t know how well they turned out, and you can’t let someone else do it. What does it matter if all your other work is under control?

You’ve made many new friends, and now it is time to build those relationships. You won’t include them in your next newsletter, nor will you be following up with them, nor will you be including them in the sales process.

It’s easy to add them to your CRM. Download a business card reader app, then use Zapier to push the records to your CRM. It’s easy, quick, and inexpensive.

After the event, there are opportunities for building community among attendees.

Surveys: Speakers and attendees are invited to contribute by creating blog posts that detail their experiences at the event, or highlight highlights from the conference.

Conference management software reporting and analytics tools can be used to assess event data. It is important to analyze the key aspects such as which channels drove registrations, what tech tools worked well, and what questions were raised that could be used to plan future conferences.

Using momentum immediately after the conference to create referral incentives for future events.

To anyone you have met, send personal emails. You should thank them for their time and reiterate the business goals. Then, continue the conversation. It is common to meet people at conferences, and have only 30 seconds to chat. Follow up with them and arrange a coffee while you remember each other!

In your next newsletter, include a summary of the conference (which will now contain all your new contacts since you’ve loaded them to your CRM. ...) Everyone loves hearing about new ideas, new books, and new people to follow on Twitter. Your newsletter will add value to your contacts by doing this. If you really want to be creative, you can split your contacts into different groups and create two newsletters. This is a little more work but yields better results.

Here’s another tip for newsletters. After you have sent your newsletter out, send it again to anyone who hasn’t opened it. You’ll often get half the open rates if you use a different headline. This is often because people are busy and don’t have the time to read the first email. Let’s say that you send your newsletter out to 1,000 people, and 250 of them open it. That’s a 25% open rate. Send it again a week later to the 750 people who didn’t open it. You could expect 94 people opening the second version with half of your original open rate (12.5%). This is an additional 94 people opening your newsletter for just 15 minutes more work. It’s a solid return on investment.

Sort out any flyers, pens, and other giveaways left behind if you had a booth. Make sure that all banners are still in good shape and have them repaired if necessary. Nothing is worse than bringing them out to your next event only to find them damaged! You should give away the giveaways at upcoming conferences or use them in another way. Leave nothing behind for later. It is painful to go through those boxes three years down the line. Ask me how I know...