Post-event follow-up: How VAs can maximise your ROI

Hosting an event takes time, effort, and resources, so you should do everything in your power to capitalise on the opportunity it brings. One thing that’s not to be overlooked is having a solid post-event follow-up strategy. When done right, it will make a huge difference in maximising your event’s potential return on investment (ROI). 

As a team of skilled virtual assistants, we support businesses to plan and manage hosting events at every step of the process – both online and in-person. But we’ve witnessed many businesses go all guns blazing into hosting an event, only to lose steam and miss a vital chance to further reach their goals simply because they don’t follow up effectively with attendees. 

To avoid this happening to you, we’re sharing some important post-event follow-up strategies your business should implement, and how a VA can help you to do that. 

Why post-event communication is essential

A timely, effective follow-up ensures the momentum from the event leads to measurable success. Without it, valuable opportunities are lost, and your investment in both time and energy to host the event risks going to waste. 

Your reason for hosting the event will impact the way you approach your post-event follow-up. For example:

• If your goal is brand awareness, post-event follow-up should be focused on nurturing leads and eventually converting them into clients.
• If your goal is building a sense of community, post-event follow-up should strengthen relationships with attendees, sponsors, and partners.

Regardless of your goal, you should also follow up with attendees (and non-attendees) to measure event success and gather feedback for improvement.

Where most businesses go wrong with post-event follow-up 

One of the biggest mistakes with post-event follow-up is not following up at all! But another big (and all too common) mistake is businesses also only send out 1 quick event follow-up email and leave it there. 

This is usually due to:

• Lack of time or resources to manage event follow-ups effectively
• Disorganised attendee data, meaning they’re unsure who turned up vs. who didn’t 
• Unclear processes due to not having a post-event follow-up strategy in advance

As you can imagine, this leads to lost opportunities – and often, lost revenue. 

How virtual assistants can support your post-event follow-up process

Partnering with a VA to plan and organise events is highly beneficial, as they can work with you on a project-based arrangement. VAs can also integrate within your existing team, offering the specific support you need to help reach your goals. 

Ideally, you’d have a VA on board from the event planning stage, so they can provide input on the best way to maximise your event ROI from the beginning and ensure you have the right tools and systems in place. 

Here are the most common ways a VA can support your post-event communication strategy: 

1. Organising attendee data

When you’re hosting an event, you need to organise your attendee data so it’s useful to you both on the day and after the event is over. For example, when you have customer data in a clear format that’s kept up to date, it’s easy to know who signed up but didn’t attend, which can be hugely beneficial for future marketing.

VAs can compile and categorise attendee information from event sign-ups, feedback forms, and networking interactions. They can set up a CRM system, if you don’t have one already, to support the process. By ensuring all data is clean, up-to-date, and accessible, you’re able to effectively follow up after the event.

2. Personalised post-event communication

Personalised marketing performs better than blanket one-size-fits-all marketing for a reason—people feel seen and understood. The same goes for people who have signed up for and attended your event. The more personalised your follow-up communication can be, the better the results. 

A VA can help you draft and send thank-you emails or messages tailored to different attendee types (for example leads, clients, sponsors), using any available data they have. They can also schedule follow-up calls or meetings, if appropriate.

3. Managing feedback collection

Gathering feedback from an event is important, as you can gauge what attendees enjoyed, where they got the most value, and what should be improved. This means you can run all future events with more confidence and focus. You can also use feedback forms as an opportunity to gather reviews to use in your marketing.

VAs can create and distribute post-event surveys, analysing the data for you into a post-event report. This means you have clear insights and a summary of actionable feedback for future improvements.

4. Social media engagement

Once the event is over, creating a buzz on social media can lead to plenty of additional opportunities to maximise your ROI. When done effectively, you’re getting in front of new audiences and increasing brand awareness for free. 

This is especially important if you plan on hosting the event again, as that ‘FOMO’ has weight and will encourage people to subscribe to a waiting list to find out more about the next event or secure their ticket at an early bird rate. 

When you hire a VA to support you in post-event follow-up, they can handle your social media activity – creating content, tagging attendees and sponsors, responding to event-related mentions or messages, and keeping the conversation going. 

5. Tracking and reporting results

Finally, another important step in your post-event strategy is monitoring what’s worked well vs. what could be improved. This includes monitoring the effectiveness of follow-up campaigns, looking at email open rates, lead conversions, and any other metric you measure.

A VA can analyse your event data and provide reports, so you can evaluate the overall ROI and performance. 

Ace your post-event communication with Virtually Priceless 

If you want to boost your event’s ROI, partner with Virtually Priceless. We’ll provide hands-on support for the whole process – from planning the perfect event to hosting on the day and implementing an effective post-event follow-up strategy. 

Contact us to get started on maximising your event’s potential.