Your Complete Post-Event Playbook

If you’re wrapping up events after the final session, you’re wasting reach, leads, and deals. Great event pros keep events going for weeks or even months. As a part of their post-event strategy, they reuse content, gather feedback with post-event surveys, nurture and engage prospects, and turn insights into action.

We’ve collected the best ideas, tactics, and frameworks to create the ultimate post-event strategy. Read on to discover how to nail it!

• Post-event surveys and feedback

• • • post-event survey questions
    • Post-event survey email template

• Post-event engagement

• • • Nurture leads and prospects
    • Engage no-shows
    • Plan your next event or invite

• Content repurposing

• • • Reduce, repackage, and reposition existing content
    • Go deeper into topics
    • Execute a post-event social media strategy

• Measuring post-event success

• • Measuring post-event success and debriefing
  • Running event retrospectives

Let’s get started.

Post-event survey and questions

Great marketing teams use a customer feedback flywheel to get better and better and better. They execute, listen, improve, and execute again. 

What is a post-event survey?

A post event survey is an extremely valuable tool to help you get a clear idea of what people liked, and didn’t like at your event. The survey results can be used to enhance your events, and measure success. It typically consists of MCQs, rating scales, and open-ended questions. 

Tips to conduct a post-event survey

1. Collect contacts and emails from event data 
2. Evaluate the answer you need to measure event success
3. Include questions to take feedback for next event
4. Figure out when to send a post event survey
5. Include different type of questions to get a broader picture of the

27 post-event survey questions to ask 

Ask some quantitative questions 

Start with a quantitative customer loyalty metric. The two most popular options are Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction Score.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [event title] to a friend or peer?
• On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate the overall quality of the event?
• How satisfied were you with the venue/virtual event technology and facilities? (scale of 1 to 5)
• How well did the event meet your expectations? (scale of 1 to 5)
• How many sessions or activities did you attend during the event?
• How much time did you spend networking with other attendees?
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your overall satisfaction with [event title]?” 

These let you track attendee/customer satisfaction or loyalty. If you’re running events regularly, you’ll be able to spot trends in your post-event follow-ups.

Drill down into the attendee experience with these survey questions 

• What did you like most about [event title]?
• What, if anything, did you dislike about this event?
• Would you want to attend this event again in the future?

Get specific, too. Ask attendees about sessions, speakers, and themes

• Why did you choose to attend our event?
• Did our event meet your expectations?
• What sessions did you most enjoy?
• What topics would you like to see more of at our next event?
• Did you find the speakers knowledgeable?

Try to find out what attendees loved (so you can do more of it) and what they disliked (so you can nix it next time).

• Have you attended this event before?
• How did you hear about this event?
• What convinced you to attend this event?

Don’t use a one-size-fits-all survey, either. Add in format-specific questions, too. Here are a few post-event follow-ups for specific event types.

• Were you happy with the time for discussion during sessions? (Conferences, networking, roundtables.)
• How likely are you to contact someone you met at the event? (Networking.)
• Did you learn what you came here to learn? (Workshops.)
• What are the most useful learnings from the event?

Most event platforms will have surveys. You can design, send, and track post-event survey emails all from your management HQ. However, if your tech doesn’t include surveys, you can send a basic survey with JotForm or SurveyMonkey.

Don’t leave the speaker behind. Here are some post event survey questions for speakers:

Post event survey questions for speakers  

• Was the technology provided for your talk (e.g. AV equipment, microphone) adequate and reliable? (yes/no)
• Would you be interested in speaking at a future event organized by the same group? (yes/no)
• Was the schedule for your talk and the event overall well-organized and efficient? (yes/no)
• How well was your talk received by the audience? (scale of 1 to 5)

Here’s a simple example of a post event survey email

Subject line: Let us know what you think!

Hey [name],

We hope you had a great time at [event]!

The good news is that we’re gonna be having more of these. 

We’re constantly striving to improve our events for you, and we’d love your feedback. 

If you have five minutes to make our future events even better, you can share your thoughts here.

As a token of appreciation for your time, we will be entering all participants into a drawing for a chance to win a [prize, e.g. $50 gift card].

Your feedback is important because it’s how we improve and adapt [event].

Post-event engagement

It’s time to turn our attention to post-event engagement. This crucial step can help you build relationships with attendees and continue the conversation long after the event has ended. 

So, let’s dive in and explore the best ways to keep the momentum going.”

Nurture leads and prospects

Deals rarely close during events. Attendees are busy watching sessions and participating in workshops. They don’t have a lot of free time to talk to sales reps.

That’s where your post-event strategy comes in. You plan how and when to follow up with hot, warm, and cool leads. You only need a few basic post-event engagement workflows to get started.

Lead scoring: Events generate a ton of leads — registrations, gated content, demo and contact requests, the list goes on. You can’t ask sales to work every lead at the same time. Instead, alot a score to the leads. (X points for registering, Y points for attending, Z points for matching your ICP.) Set a threshold for marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and route all leads above the threshold to sales.

Marketing-collected leads (MCLs): Most of your leads will fall below the MQL threshold. While they’re not ready for sales right now, they’re still valuable. Design post-event engagement campaigns based on your event content. Share snippets from popular talks, follow-up blogs, and behind-the-scenes content.

Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs): High-quality (or nurtured) leads go to sales, where SDRs manage post-event engagement. They’ll start the conversation, build a relationship, and book meetings. Most sales teams will have their own outreach sequences, but make yourself a post-event promotion resource. Help them tie their outreach into your wider post-event marketing strategy.

Engage no-shows

All events have a ton of no-shows, especially free and virtual events. (Only 39% of registered attendees check in at free events.) Don’t ignore those registrants. Sure, they didn’t turn up, but you don’t know why. Maybe something came up at home. Perhaps they always intended to watch sessions later.

After the event, acknowledge them with a simple “miss you” email like this one from Campaign Monitor:

Use your no-show emails to re-engage prospects and share the best bits of your event.

After sending them a no-show email, add them to a nurture campaign to keep them engaged.

Create a photo album 

Inspire your attendees to share their photos from the event on social media using a unique event hashtag. You can also create an album with all the pictures and share it with everyone who signed up for the event. 

Reunion event

Give your attendees an opportunity to reminisce and reconnect by planning a reunion party or an event in the coming months.

Execute a post-event social media strategy

Planners spend a ton of time on their pre-event social media strategy — research, promotion, engagement, and so on. But what about your post-event social media strategy? Here’s an opportunity to amplify your impact and take content to a brand-new audience.

Here are some great post-event promotion ideas:

• User-generated content: Search for hashtags and check-ins to find attendee content. With their permission, reshare it on your company’s or event’s social media. Not only do you get extra content for free, but you also build trust via social proof.
• Develop zero-click content: Turn your content confetti into native zero-click content. (Think native Facebook videos instead of a link to YouTube. Or a LinkedIn article rather than a link to a blog.) Let people relive your event wherever and whenever they want.
• Empower your speakers, sponsors, and partners: Effective events thrive because they turn their partners into promoters. After your event, thank all your external partners and give them ready-to-go content (pre-edited videos, audiograms, blogs, and so on) for their social media.

Plan your next event or invite

Old school events were big one-off splashes. Most event calendars had one huge conference or roadshow with a couple of webinars dotted around them. But times have changed. A modern event strategy — what we’re calling event-led growth — uses immersive and integrated events across the entire customer journey.

“An event is any moment when you bring people together,” explained Airmeet CMO Mark Kilens. “They’re thought leadership webinars and VIP events. They’re product workshops and annual conferences. They’re product training sessions and self-directed user groups.”

The question is: What event comes after your last one?

If your most recent event was a discovery-focused thought leadership webinar, can you engage hot prospects with a product use case workshop? Could you invite the most engaged attendees to an exclusive launch event?

Measure event success

If 2022 and 2023 have taught marketers anything, it’s that we need to prove impact. Problem is, impact can mean a lot of different things. A product training workshop for existing customers has a different goal than a thought leadership conference. In other words, post-event evaluation is tricky.

The first step to calculating ROI after the event is to run your event through this planning matrix. It’ll guide you toward the most suitable goal.

• What type of virtual event is it?
• What is the desired outcome?
• What’s the funnel stage?
• What’s your audience definition?

By defining your event goals, you can track metrics that matter. Metrics fall into two categories:

Brand awareness and engagement

• Registrations: Number of repeat registrations.
• Attendees: Turnout ratio from registrations, profile, demographics, geography, attendee per session data.
• Pre-event performance: Social media mentions, email click and open rates, organic mentions, uptick in direct traffic
• In-event performance: Average time spent in events, engagement, networking, NPS participation to rate.
• Post-event performance: Replays, content, product adoption

Pipeline and revenue

• Sourced pipeline: It is the number of net new accounts, MQLs, SQLs, and Average deal value.
• Influenced pipeline: This is the pipeline that is touched by events, giving high-value prospects engaged or closed, impacting the number of accounts
• Accelerated pipeline: Dormant leads resuscitated by events that impact the number of accounts.
• Retention/expansion pipeline: Track the total ACV, retention revenue, and a number of high-value paying accounts engaged with the event.
• Sponsorship revenue: Track the numbers

Run event retrospectives

After gathering performance data, it’s helpful to have a dedicated retrospective meeting. This gives your event team an opportunity to come together, discuss your performance, and work out how to improve going forward.

Retrospectives follow a simple structure with three questions:

• What went well? Celebrate your wins and dig down into why elements succeeded. Maybe you spent a ton of time on audience research, or perhaps you got a superstar speaker.
• What went badly? Don’t take your mistakes personally. All ambitious events strike out occasionally. Work out where your event fell flat and what caused the hiccup.
• What can we improve next time? This section is probably the most important bit. Turn your discussion into concrete action items for your next event. Did attendees complain there wasn’t a way to network? Start researching event tech with in-built networking. Did popular sessions clash with one another? Review your running order and investigate on-demand options. You get the idea.

Repurpose your content

Reduce, repackage, and reposition existing content

Events create a ton of content — everything from official session transcripts to informal conversations in breakout rooms. Start thinking about how to reuse that content elsewhere. Your goal is to create a post-event promotion strategy. “content confetti.”

Here are some ideas based on the three Rs of content recycling: reduce, repackage, and reposition.

Reduce: Turn big assets into lots of small ones

• Transform attendee comments into short-form social media posts
• Design an infographic from the best speaker quotes
• Share the best speaker snippets as audiograms

Repackage: Combine multiple assets into something new

• Find sessions with the most engagement and turn them into blog posts
• Combine videos from speakers into a curated playlist
• Produce a “roundup” podcast episode packed with the best clips
• Build a mini-email course with different micro-lessons from each session

Reposition: Update a piece of content to bring it to a new context

• Create a video montage of the event and use it to promote your next event
• Use speaker quotes and slides to enrich existing blogs and articles

Go deeper into topics

All content should have a next step. After your event finishes, you can plot out those post-event follow-up assets, experiences, and events. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Educational content: Help attendees apply high-level concepts they learned about during your event. Create checklists, how-to guides, and step-by-step instructions. If a concept is super tricky, spin up a new training event.
• Matchmaker networking: A lot of networking relies on chance, but after your event, you can be more strategic. Organize prospects into peer groups and arrange intimate networking events.
• Send gifts to VIPs: Reinforce high-value relationships with gifts and exclusive event invites.
• Early bird tickets: With event-led growth, every event leads to another event. Maintain your momentum by offering early bird tickets to previous attendees.

Same event. More impact

Marketing teams are tightening their budgets. Leaders expect teams to do more with less. Often, that’s an impossible challenge, but not with events. Most conferences, roadshows, and tradeshows are one-off splashes. Few teams run effective post-event strategies. But you’re going to change that.

You’ve learned how to drive ongoing engagement, nurturing no-shows, leads, and prospects toward conversion. You’ve seen how to collect and process valuable attendee feedback. And you’ve discovered how to reuse content over and over again, multiplying its impact.

When you’re ready to take your events to the next level, we’re waiting to help you. Boost engagement, enhance creativity, and maximize impact ideas with Airmeet’s virtual and hybrid event platform.