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Follow-up Special Offers for Event Attendees

Follow-up Special Offers for Event Attendees

A successful event plan is the one in which the event isn’t actually the star of the show. You may call it a paradox, but leading event gurus perceive events as causes for building strong relationships with the target audience. In this context, the value of follow-up communications with both those who attended the event and those who didn’t is huge.

The main idea and importance of follow-up offers for attendees after event

Events are built around versatile ideas from a product launch to an award campaign. By closing the door behind these ideas once the dust settles, you risk being forgotten. The essence of providing an effective follow-up after an event involves keeping the valuable connections made with the audience.

In the Hubspot Infographic on the do’s and don’ts of following-up, you discover that 80% of post-event purchases are made on the 5th-12th contact. Whether your event is sales-focused or not, you can leverage this data to maximize the engagement of the event attendees.

Hubspot infographic

By repurposing the event contents and reminding people about your existence, you incentivize them to make a purchase, attend your next events, or share their impressions with friends – the goals that every future-oriented event planner should keep their eyes on.

The ways to follow-up with attendees after an event

How do you follow-up after an event to win the desired attention? The first step is to choose the follow-up medium which appeals to your audience the most. To figure it out, start collecting valuable data through event surveys onsite and construct your post-event communication tactics based on the gained info.

Here are the ideas for your event follow-up medium:

Email

From a lucrative promo code offer to a video featuring the best event moments, follow-up emails make great platforms for post-event communication. The three ingredients of a strategic follow-up email include the time of blasting, the level of personalization, and the content. The golden rule: Connect not only to those who came, but also to registrants who didn’t make it (they are still your target audience). Here’s an example of a follow-up email sent to event participants who missed out:

Email

Keep in mind that timing, contents, and the number of follow-up touches can either elevate or completely destroy your connection with an event attendee. Based on The Muse research, it’s a great rule to follow-up not earlier than a week after an event. The Close.io philosophy says that the number of follow-ups should depend on the relationships: for those you’ve previously interacted with, and; unlimited; for new prospects, -a maximum two. If relevant, think of communicating your idea in a post-event, thank you email. In other words, explore trends while planning an event to build a fruitful follow-up email strategy.

Social media

Recently, I’ve had a chat with my friend about the preparation for Web Summit, the large tech conference organized annually in Lisbon. Since we were both attending, it was interesting to find out how each of us had entered the game. “I found the Facebook group and posted a short message about my networking and professional goals. I thought it would be good to connect to those who have similar interests,” my friend said.

If we view this position from an event manager’s perspective, such attendees’ behavior might be very useful. Indeed, the advantage of social media is that it can be used both as a medium for follow-up communication and the source of information about the target audience.

Explore the posts made by event attendees, build personalized messages, highlight the key event moments, and use social media communities to promote special offers. Here’s how Content Marketing World reaches their goal by making a great video showcase of the past meeting and advertising tickets for the next event:

Content Marketing World

Here you can find more Facebook promotion ideas that can be embedded in a successful follow-up strategy.

Meetings

Sometimes the opportunity to recap, repurpose, and reconnect after the event is extremely valuable. Set up an online meeting or an in-house event which is either related to the most popular event theme (again, use event surveys to find out who’s the king) or to the post-event networking. As an example, the Burning Man 2017 conference is long behind, but the events discussing it are still spanning the world:

Meetings

Thus, post-event meetings maximize the longevity of your event impacts, keep the community tuned in, and create increased buzz for the upcoming show.

The tips on how to successfully follow-up after the event

Regardless of the event themes, the number of attendees, and social media presence, event managers can always shape follow-up tactics to produce a maximum impact. Check out the core tips for turning your post-event communication strategy into a blockbuster:

  • Have a follow-up schedule. The major mistake that many event planners make is thinking about the follow-up after the door is closed. The right way to build meaningful connections is to create a schedule that covers all bases for different types of event personas.
  • Use recap contents. Based on event highlights, you can create impactful videos, slideshares, infographic, and more. Use such recap materials in your follow-up communication with both those who attended and those who missed out. This will help you demonstrate the practical value of the meeting.
  • Repurpose and customize. To benefit from personalization, pay attention to content repurposing. For instance, you can track which sessions the event guest visited and send him/her a blog post discussing one of these sessions. Those who didn’t manage to attend can be treated to a video featuring the brightest event moments.
  • Provide a strong offer. The best way to build event engagement after the event is to provide follow-up special offers for event attendees.

Here’s what people attending your events can benefit from:

  • a promo code for a discount on the next purchase;
  • a free product trial;
  • an extended product use offer;
  • an opportunity to win a special prize;
  • an access to a free meeting/webinar/networking event.

The best post event follow up email samples

Lastly, we’ve collected some successful event follow up email examples and social media promotions that can encourage powerful post-event engagement:

International Growth Marketing Summit

Email

2X

Email

Web Summit 2017

Email

Conclusion

Event communication is just the start of the play that your target audience is invited to join. To maximize revenue, increase recognition, and incentivize engagement, successful event planners have to create a detailed follow-up communication plan.

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