Post-Event Follow-Up: 5 Tips for Maintaining Engagement
Whether you’re planning a conference, auction, gala, walkathon, or anything in between, your nonprofit likely focuses on creating the best experience possible for the day of the event, building up to the pinnacle of your efforts.
However, once your event is over, there are still valuable opportunities for engaging attendees and keeping the spirit of your event alive. With careful post-event follow-up, you can keep your organization top of mind for your supporters and encourage them to continue engaging with your nonprofit. Let’s explore five tips to help you do just that.
1. Thank attendees for coming.
Immediately following your event, you should thank attendees for showing up and participating. Celebrate the fact that your supporters took time out of their busy schedules to gather in support of your cause.
To properly and effectively thank your supporters for coming, eCardWidget’s thank-you email guide recommends:
Thanking supporters promptly. The sooner you thank attendees, the sooner they’ll feel appreciated and reminded of your event. Consider automating your initial thank-you messages to send within 48 hours of your event and following up with more detailed outreach later.
Personalizing your thank-you messages. Customizing your thank-you messages to each attendee shows that you care about them as individuals and helps build stronger supporter relationships. Using information from your event registration software, personalize your thank-you notes with each attendee’s name, their donation amount (if applicable), and their past involvement with your organization.
Emphasizing supporter impact. When sending thank-you messages, your attendees should be the star. Use language that showcases the difference they made by attending, such as, “Thanks to your contribution at our walkathon, we were able to raise $50,000 in total to support children in need!” or “Your participation in our conference helped build a positive environment and transformative experience for 2,500 hard-working healthcare professionals, including you.”
To encourage further communication between attendees and your nonprofit, include your contact information in your thank-you messages. You may add the appropriate staff member’s name and email address, a link to your “Contact Us” page, or your social media handles.
2. Share key takeaways.
For events that involve building industry-relevant knowledge or exploring mission-related trends—such as conferences, workshops, or seminars—reinforce key concepts with a post-event newsletter. You may share several installments that include elements like:
Post-event reports that detail the event’s impact
Infographics used in speaker sessions
Event speaker notes or slideshows that summarize important discussions
Success stories and testimonials from attendees, speakers, and sponsors
You may also create a short blog post summarizing what attendees learned at the event and any insights your nonprofit gained. This type of article will help attendees remember their experience, reflect upon it, and give them a reference they can always return to if they want to refresh their knowledge.
3. Solicit feedback.
Use surveys, polls, or feedback forms to gather feedback on attendees’ experiences at your event. Collecting this data will help you understand what went well and what you could improve for future events.
Ask your attendees questions relating to the following areas:
Overall satisfaction. Gauge attendees’ general satisfaction by asking them to rate your event on a scale of 1-10, note what they enjoyed about your event, and explain what your nonprofit could have done differently to provide a better experience.
Event programming. Next, ask more specific questions about the event content itself. For a conference, you may ask whether the topics covered or speaker sessions were engaging and relevant to attendees’ interests. If you hosted an auction, you may inquire whether the auction items were enticing enough and which items attendees would like to see offered in the future.
Logistics and organization. Lastly, cover event logistics by asking questions about registration, the check-in process, and the venue. You may also ask attendees about the convenience of the event’s timing and schedule.
When sending these surveys, consider attendees’ preferred communication channels, such as email, text, or direct mail, to encourage as many responses as possible. Once you’ve collected all feedback, store important attendee insights in your database for future reference.
4. Recap the event online.
Don’t limit post-event follow-up to attendees. Showcase your event’s success to your full audience by leveraging channels like social media and your website.
Post photo and video highlights of your event, and encourage attendees to interact with your content. You may even incentivize attendees to post their own event content on social media by holding a contest. Have attendees post their event memories using your unique event hashtag, and give a prize like branded merchandise to a winner chosen by random draw or based on the best content.
Sharing event content on social media not only allows attendees to reminisce on their event experience but also shows people who didn’t attend what they missed out on. Use these posts as an opportunity to tease upcoming events and engagement opportunities to get those who didn’t attend excited about the prospect of joining next time.
5. Develop an online community.
Keep the camaraderie of your event alive with an online event community. Here, attendees can discuss your event and what they learned in an online forum, network with each other, and continue engaging with your nonprofit.
As EventMobi’s conference app guide explains, you can use your event app or platform as the central hub for your event community, keeping all event-related information and communications in one place and allowing you to “offer extended post-event access” to event content.
This way, attendees can go back to their favorite speaker sessions to brush up on their knowledge, share insights they’ve gained with other attendees, ask or answer event-related questions, or catch up on event activities or sessions they may have missed—all from the same platform you used throughout your event.
Driving event value—both for attendees and your organization—doesn’t have to end after your event day. Continue the momentum from your event to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and build strong, lasting relationships with your supporter base.