Why Does Everyone Look Only at First Impressions? The Finish Matters Too (Event Follow-Up Edition)
Why Does Everyone Look Only at First Impressions? The Finish Matters Too (Event Follow-Up Edition)
Hello, this is Chris & Partners.😊 After the With-Corona declaration, as phased recovery of daily life is pushed forward, various events are expected to be held. You all know, of course, that a successful event needs meticulous planning and contingency measures prepared for various situations. But did you know that, as much as holding the event, post-event follow-up is also extremely important? Today we'll look into the importance of event follow-up.
What exactly is ‘event follow-up’?
A successful event requires not only a long preparation period and the toil and effort of many stakeholders, but also post-event follow-up. The time when the preparatory committee or preparatory secretariat is officially disbanded can be called the true end of the event. Post-event follow-up is the wrap-up work—starting with venue teardown, through thank-you greetings, closing the website, issuing the event results report, and so on. Even if the event ran smoothly, follow-up is an indispensable process for making up for shortcomings or for a more advanced next event.
Once the event ends..
Even after the main event wraps up, the event operating members go into follow-up work to induce continued participation, receive feedback on the user experience, and lay a foothold for a new leap. For systematic follow-up, you must go through the processes below. 1. Handling logistics and financial details Once the event ends, you must handle all the logistics and financial details to wrap it up. This can include packing and shipping items, settlement, and post-invoicing work. 📍 Collect unused meeting materials and transport them to the office for proper storage or disposal 📍 Pack and transport all goods and materials 📍 Settle accounts with the venues that provided services and support 📍 Budget-spending breakdown and cost analysis 2. Staying in touch with attendees One of the most effective ways to follow up from an event is to reconnect attendees to the event and provide them with relevant content. A few examples are as follows. There are various methods—social media, email, phone calls, direct mail, and more—and these should be based on your company's goals, manpower, and budget. What helps through this process is being able to make a follow-up plan as part of the event-planning process. 📍 Attendance thank-you greeting This is conveying thanks to attendees. Timing matters for the thank-you email, so it's important to send it right after the event. Conveying thanks to attending companies and attendees lets you not only build the relationship further but also naturally announce the next scheduled event, inducing participation. 📍 Feedback survey Even if you ended the event successfully, there are bound to be parts to fix and parts that fell short. Running a survey of attendees lets you get more accurate and honest feedback. You can ask about satisfaction with the event's key elements numerically, receive shared opinions, and ask which topics they'd like covered at future events.
Here's just how important follow-up is!
If you carry out the follow-up process systematically, then 💡 with attendees you get relationship-building, introducing the next event's schedule, promotion, and inducing participation 💡 attending companies and attendees get higher satisfaction, and for future events, the possibility of maximizing investment 💡 through feedback you can check at a glance the satisfaction with the venue, the online-system build-up, points to supplement, and more. Like this, you can not only secure a next event but also build relationships with the attending companies that ran the event together, exerting a positive synergy effect. Also, the more neatly arranged the finish, the more likely the next event proceeds in a more advanced form, right? Today we looked into the importance of event follow-up. Did you know that even after an event ends, you must go through such meticulous processes? In the event industry, the visible parts take up weight, but you could see that the effort and toil performed in unseen places are essential. ‘Crowning the end well.’ As the saying goes, we hope those of you planning events refer to today's post and bear good fruit.👍
Are you planning a hybrid event? Chris & Partners—partner with us! As a proven PCO that responds flexibly and aptly to clients' needs, we provide tailored services to deliver the best results from the planning stage to the finish—program and content planning, consulting, speaker booking, follow-up, and more.