Event Feedback
Your event comes to an end and your attendees leave the event space (whether it’s in-person or online) with their minds full of new knowledge and fresh visions.
You made it! Your event is done, the journey is over.
But is it really? If you care about success, the answer is clearly no. Results are created after your event.
Now is the time to ensure that your attendees don’t just leave the space and forget about you.
Keep them actively engaged and stay in touch with them. In fact, fully embrace the AFTER of your event by using post-event audience engagement.
Use your event as a stepping stone to drive results and to establish long-term business relationships.
What is post-event engagement? And how do you implement it?
Give your attendees a voice and hear them out
Event feedback – It’s probably the most widely used post-event engagement technique.
However, it can be extremely valuable for you as the event organizer to learn about your attendees’ retrospective thoughts regarding their event experience, their fulfilled expectations, and their unaddressed desires.
You want to make sure to keep learning and improving and these direct insights will help you to become (even) better at delivering a unique experience at your next event.
If you have showcased a new product or service at your event, you can also use this post-event technique to receive feedback on your attendees’ first impression, usage experience, or satisfaction. Use this knowledge for improving your offering, for new product development or innovation.
For this purpose, you could send out an email with your feedback survey to your attendees.
Further, if an attendee expresses high satisfaction or excitement about what you have shown them during your event, why not use this (business) opportunity and follow up with them personally?
Follow up 1:1 with promising leads and customers to drive value
After your event you have most likely identified and engaged in first conversations with the most promising leads for your business. Following the post-event feedback, you will probably add some contacts to this group of interesting leads. Now keep the conversation going and most importantly: make it personal!
Have your sales team follow up individually with your leads, sending them an invitation to a 1:1 meeting or webinar in which you offer to discuss how your lead with their individual needs and challenges can benefit from the solution that you provide. Make it all about them.
This is how you nurture them down the funnel, convert them into customers, and establish meaningful business relationships.
But don’t forget about your other attendees either. For whatever reason they may not have turned out as the most promising leads just yet but maybe they need a bit more time? Don’t force them into business with you now, ultimately scaring them away.
But make sure to invite them to your next event again. Maybe next time they will be ready to continue the conversation with you?
In case you run an event for your existing customer base, where your goal is to maintain and strengthen the relationship, following up 1:1 with all of them is a must. Make them feel appreciated for taking their time to attend your event, ask them for feedback and any open questions they may have.
And most importantly, ask them about their current challenges and opportunities. Show continuously that you care about them. Are their needs still the same as when you first acquired them? Or have they changed?
Maybe there is an opportunity to extend your business with them? Figure all of this out by inviting your customers for a post-event 1:1 meeting and increase the business value of your relationship.
Establish yourself as thought leader of your industry
Make sure to leverage your event website – your event hub – even further by providing recorded content and additional valuable material after the event has ended.
This way, you stay relevant to your audience and your attendees will keep coming back to you to benefit from this additional content and knowledge. They will use it for their own business purposes and consciously or unconsciously they will start to consider you a thought leader of your industry.
Having this position in people’s minds is extremely valuable not only to establish but also to maintain and strengthen business relationships because it is strongly connected to a sense of trust and credibility.
It’s a wrap! Now you know how to enhance the value and success of your event AFTER it took place with event feedback.
Read more
Looking for examples or templates to start gathering event feedback?
Check out Template.net here:
https://www.template.net/event/event-evaluation/
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Together we can make events easier.
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