Experience issues #3: the one about the follow-ups
I constantly sign up for a ton of webinars and conferences. Simply to learn more, pick up my peers’ brains and get new ideas.
Sometimes I can have up to 5 different events a week on my calendar. I never make time to attend them all (if any). But I always keep an eye on the comms they send out.
And let me tell you, this is quite a show in my inbox!
Especially with the emails saying “Thank you for joining our webinar, do you want to buy our product?”
When in fact:
not only I don’t want to buy the product
I never made it to the event at all!
Key takeaway
Don't
Me
Saying "Thank you for stopping by our virtual booth"
When I actually never showed up to the event!
Just kidding…the real takeaway here is:
Event follow up can be fun. It can be effective. But only if you make an effort to recognize a person behind the email address on your lead list.
Secret to success
Without doubt I would say that follow up and handover of contacts is one of the toughest parts of event marketing in-house. This is where conflicts of interest, pressure of the pipeline and foundational misalignments start blossoming.
Everyone wants to do the right thing. In their own unique way.
But the only right way to approach the follow up process with event leads is understanding the WHY behind people actually signing up to attend in the first place.
I absolutely loved what Mark Huber, Head of Brand & Product Marketing at Metadata said about their approach to event attendees in their recent podcast episode: “We even told the sales "you don't get to follow up with these people...sorry these are not leads!"”
We all want the results to show up fast on our dashboards (moreover, we are pressured to show these results). But it’s not how life works.
The reason people go to an industry event is to learn, to get inspired, to get a creative spark. The reason they go to your live product demo is because they are considering buying.
Don’t blend these two segments in one follow up bucket!
Moreover, with the amount of data available on our fingertips it’s unacceptable to hit actual attendees and just registrants with one generic message.
Make an effort to segment and tailor outreach even if it costs you a couple extra hours.
Any tips?
I won’t lie to you. Not always I myself manage to stick to all of my best practices. Because life happens.
But every day we want to be a better version of ourselves, right? And with every follow up we want to be better at making it work.
So here is what has worked well for me personally:
Prepare follow up before the event starts. As simple as that! I had the full linkedin post on this if you’d like to check it out.
Inform, and then inform again all teams involved in the follow up process that “the winter is coming”.
Agree on the handover process from marketing to sales. When, how and where it happens.
Choose the sender name that will be recognizable and trusted by the recipients. Never send the follow up from a generic team@brandname.com!
Send the first touch point within 24 hours after the event, and ensure it delivers extra value to your attendees. Not just the recording.
Mention the follow up and what value it will bring DURING the event! It will increase your open rates significantly as people will be anticipating it.
Plan the next steps, add value and deliver extra insights to your audience with every touch point.
Use different formats for the content you share: videos, podcasts, blogs, long-form pdfs. Recognize the fact that people have different preferences!
Don’t be afraid to let people out of your ecosystem. Referencing external reliable sources will only boost your credibility. Have your CEO quoted in Forbes? Your data used in a TV news segment? Let people see it!
The times when I managed to tick all the boxes on the above list, the follow up worked like a bliss. Bringing in happy people, and exciting conversations.
BONUS: I turned the above into the checklist! You can download it here 😎
Experience Highlights
After the hands-on tips above, I wanted to get inspirational here.
Great post by Ross Simmonds (and Ross always has great posts, so follow him!) about the importance of following up in life.
There is a lot of wisdom in it that applies to everything we do. You never know who is on the other end of your email outreach, so simply be nice.
***
Thank you for reading this far. I really appreciate you spending this time with me.
I would love to hear back from you about your own follow up best practices! Just reply to this email, I would love to learn from you.
Stay happy, stay healthy. Keep up the good spirit, cause we all need it now more than ever.
See you in two weeks!
Best,
Aleksandra