How To Follow-up After An Event To Ensure Post Event Success
“Diligent follow-up and follow-through will set you apart from the crowd and communicate excellence.” – John C. Maxwell, best selling author of “The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership.”
Why do you exhibit at a conference or hold an event in the first place? What are you setting out to achieve? In most cases, it’s your opportunity to meet with, connect and win new outsourced business.
You invest time and thousands of dollars to be there, you have great conversations, then you get back to the office and realise that you’ve got so much to catch up on, regardless of all the new relationships you’ve started.
You physically don’t have the time to make 30 or even 100 calls, (sometimes 500!) you simply just send out an email and hope the people that like you, will respond and buy your product or service.
Except after an event, every attendee will get an email from from a sponsor/exhibitor that they visited and they will also have their own busy lives to get back into.
The question is, what is your follow up plan and how can you ensure success and fantastic return on investment?
How To Follow-up After An Event To Ensure Post Event Success
Surprisingly, post-event follow-up is often overlooked, but the reality is that the post event follow up just as important as the event itself.
Events are a fantastic way to reach your target audience directly and have some great conversations with people about your service/product. Events done well can be a great success (the business success team) but what some people struggle with is the post event follow up. This could be for many reasons; time, not enough sales team to complete the post event follow up or your post event strategy relies on being automated & there is little success.
The danger of this last point is that while at the event your team have had some amazing in depth conversations by then having a post event follow up strategy that is digitally based you are removing the human touch element with the lead and losing the connection that was made.
Research shows that 91% of event marketers find post event engagement challenging.
When planning an event most businesses put all of their efforts into the event experience but fail to try and keep this experience going once the event is over – which is where role of the post event follow up lays. Keeping these conversations going after the event can allow for more in depth conversations and help build the foundations of a loyal customer to be built.
This is where having an agency such as Gen Leads who you can outsource your post-event follow up to can really ensure that your post event follow up is just as successful as the event itself
1. Make contact with your leads
For post event success (the business success team) we highly recommend calling your event leads within 24-48 hours after the event, especially if you have had great conversations with these leads as you do not want to loose the momentum, which is why getting them on the phone and continuing that conversation is important.
Research has shown that while 98% of companies that collect sales leads during their events, only 69% have a formalised lead follow-up plan in place.
While creating your event strategy you should also create a post event strategy. You need to decide who on your team will call the leads post event or if you will outsource this to a company such as Gen Leads.
You will also need to decide what the result is that you want from the follow up calls. Is it to book the lead into an upcoming webinar? A sales demo? Even a free trial of your product.
These things are important to have defined before post event follow up starts so that the people making the calls can have structured and guided conversations with your event leads.
2. Encourage an ongoing conversation
Continuing your discussion with the event attendees post event is a great way to keep your service/product on their minds. The most effective way to do this? Via the telephone. You started the conversation with the face to face so why would want to lose that human element and engage with people electronically?
By making your post event follow up a digitally focussed strategy you are running the risk of losing the relationships with your sales team started to build at the event.
The most effective way to keep your over the phone as you are able to answer questions straight away, and get instant results! Following up over the phone encourages a more personal interaction and allows for things to happen quickly.
How many emails do you need to send before a demo is booked? How long does the conversation continue to go back and forth before a decision is made?
3. Nurturing your leads post event
While some people will be ready to engage with your brand either by attending a webinar, booking a demo others may not be ready just yet! These leads will then go into your sales funnel and be followed up based on the conversation your sales team has had with them. It may be one month it may be three, but in the mean time you can add these leads t your database and keep them updated with your brand through email marketing until it comes time to pick up the phone and to touch base with them as per their time request.
Ensure you take as many notes as you possibly can during these conversations as they are not only of use to the sales team but also if you need to call back. Having conversation notes available allows you to enter the conversation, remind the lead of the last time you spoke and the conversation that was had.
Event feedback
4. Don’t exclude current clients
If you exhibit/present at an event and have people who were already customers attend, don’t exclude them from your post event follow up, in fact calling them to get feedback is a great way to reengage with your clients and get their opinion on the event and to thank them for their continued support. If you plan to have/attend events in the future, the feedback you get can help you with future event and strategy planning.
These four tips aren’t the only post-event strategy you can have in place but they are what we have found to be most successful for our clients. Post event follow up does not need an over thought strategy, as the leads are warm and ready they just need a bit more engagement from you before they travel down your sales funnel and becoming clients.
Successful follow up is simply having the right time and the right people picking up the phone to help continue that human relationship you worked so hard to build in the first place.
Still feel overwhelmed by the thought of post-event follow up or are wanting to discuss outsourcing (outsourced business) this function to an agency, please be sure to get in contact with us.
If time is not your friend, you can still keep the conversations going by having the team at Gen Leads work on your behalf. Get in touch today.
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