Phew! Your event is over, and now you can breathe a sigh of relief… Or can you? Skipping the post-event phase can be a trap, and I’ll explain why.
While many organizers are completely focused on the duration of the event itself, the different phases of planning are interconnected precisely to guarantee its success.
That’s why, once everything is over, you still need to tie up loose ends: do the financial wrap-up, send certificates, gather feedback, send emails…
This will help you build loyalty among attendees, get them engaged with your event, and even increase your chances of selling more tickets for your next edition.
So, if you don’t want to miss out on opportunities, I’ll teach you everything you need to know about the post-event phase.
What are the phases of an event
As I mentioned, every stage of an event is interconnected to generate success.
So it’s essential that you understand how this division works and distribute tasks well across each phase, so you don’t get overwhelmed and can meet attendees’ expectations at every moment. They are:
Pre-event
This is the planning phase. Here the organizer structures the whole event and its goals, gets to know the audience, creates the financial and marketing plans, selects the team, venue, date, time, and more.
Event
The phase during the event tends to be the most well known. This is when you put everything you planned into practice, and also deal with check-in, coffee breaks, and monitoring activities.
Post-event
When your event ends, this is the stage called post-event. In this phase, you put into practice strategies that wrap up the attendee experience cycle while also delivering value for the next edition of the event, if there is one.
This way you stay in touch with these people while creating a new experience, without risking losing your previous audience.
It’s also worth remembering that an event’s success is also measured by its post-event!
That’s because delivering a great experience during the event and maintaining constant communication with your audience afterward builds a strong relationship with your attendees.
And that strong relationship results in high attendee retention, who will buy tickets again for a future edition and may promote your event to other people.
Now, let me show you which strategies can help you achieve these goals in the post-event phase.
7 strategies to keep attendees engaged post-event
1. Collect feedback
First, event evaluations are one of the most important points once it’s over.
That’s why this is the ideal time to collect feedback, which are basically satisfaction surveys.
It’s important to hear what your attendees have to say about their experience with your event.
That way, through objective questions, you can understand what worked and what didn’t, and what needs to improve for your next edition.
With a satisfaction survey, you can ask questions that help you understand what your audience thinks, wants, and needs.
But there are different types of satisfaction surveys. They can happen at the end of the event or after a specific activity.
For example, making surveys available at the end of an online broadcast helps you find out if everything went well.
So you need to think about the best format for distributing these surveys, in a way that makes it easy for attendees to fill them out without overwhelming them.
Post-event surveys are commonly distributed by email or even through the event platform. That way, it will also be easier for you to view response data.
If you think this part might be a lot of work, remember that on Even3, once the event ends, attendees automatically receive the satisfaction survey on the platform!
Plus, on Even3 you can link the satisfaction survey to certificates. That way, attendees feel more motivated to respond, since they receive the certificate as a reward.
2. Send out certificates
Speaking of certificates, the post-event phase is when you’ll release them.
This is one of the most valuable parts of an event. After all, your attendees rely on certificates to prove the experience they gained.
So don’t leave this step for later, or your inbox will fill up with desperate requests!
For your certificates to be reliable and accepted by educational institutions, they should ideally include the following information:
- Event location and date
- Attendee’s name
- Event and partner logos
- Hours completed
- Signature
If you want to save yourself the work and the risk of forgetting to issue them, you can rely on the security of an event platform like Even3.
That way, you’ll get the following benefits:
- Automatic filling of attendee data on certificates
- Certificates with an authenticity seal that verify the document
- Creation of certificates for different categories of event participants
- Batch sending with just one click
3. Create reports and analyze your event’s metrics
By the end of these steps, you’ll have at least some data to analyze. This is another essential moment once your event is over.
The results generated signal your performance, measuring progress, critical points, and opportunities. That’s why they’re so important! They can guide you toward improvements and strategic decisions.
Usually, reports are created to analyze these metrics, giving you an overview of your event.
For example, at the end of the event, it’s essential to create a financial report. That way, you can track metrics like the number of registrations sold, as well as monitor payment methods, revenue, expenses, and profits.
This will help you get to know your audience and their purchasing behavior better, as well as help you determine the budget for future editions and approximate prices for tickets and sponsorship packages.
Other common types of reports include attendance reports, event website traffic, and paper submissions and presentations. All these options can be generated automatically at the end of events held on Even3!
4. Use social media
Many organizers think social media is only a tool for promoting the event before it starts.
But promotion through social media can be much more powerful if it covers every phase of an event.
After all, this is a direct and constant communication channel with your audience.
So it’s worth investing in post-event posts. This can bring you a few benefits, such as:
- Preparing your audience for the next edition of the event
- Sparking feelings of nostalgia, creating connection, empathy, and anticipation
- Making attendees loyal to the event
- Creating an official channel to promote the content produced at the event, which can reach new audiences
- Establishing the event as a reference in its field
- Generating organic promotion of the event as posts get shared
Based on that, some post ideas for social media include thank-you posts, clips from the event footage and highlights, and of course, photos.
Show speakers, activities, and moments your audience took part in. People love being put in the spotlight! That way, they can share that photo with friends and talk about their experience.
And remember: try different formats within a social network, alternating between short videos, images, or medium-length videos.
Building communities
Pay attention: communities are one of the biggest upsides of using social media for the post-event phase and for recurring events.
That is, when you build relationships with your attendees on social media, you can form a group of people engaged with the interactions you generate.
They usually promote and connect with your content spontaneously, because they’re genuinely interested in it.
Sometimes this community grows beyond the event itself, establishing you as a reference in your field and attracting new registrants. Pretty great, right?
This is a way to keep your social media active after the event and bring even more people closer to your business or brand.
5. Make good use of email
As I mentioned, once your event ends, it’s still time to invest in communication!
Regardless of which of the strategies above you use, don’t overlook the power of email marketing.
Email marketing is a strategy based on direct communication and promotion through mass email sending.
So you can use the emails of your event’s registrants and keep sending interesting content, support materials, and industry news.
A good practical example happened at UFRJ’s Festival do Conhecimento, which used its attendees’ emails to build a community by sending newsletters, schedules, and curated livestream content during the pandemic.
However, remember: don’t overload your attendees! Flooding them with messages can push them away from you.
Also, at the time of registration, attendees must be informed about how their email data will be used and must have the option to unsubscribe from the list, as required by data protection law.
6. Publish event content
Whether your event was in-person, online, or hybrid, its content doesn’t have to be limited to the day it happened.
So, if possible, gather all the shareable content from your event and distribute it to attendees through emails or on social media.
And here’s a valuable tip: create a website for your event and make all the content available there, from recorded talks to event photos or even PDFs.
This will help promote your brand, drive traffic to your website, and reinforce the importance of your event, making it a great digital marketing strategy.
If you prefer, you can also sell your content later and turn it into another source of revenue. There are endless possibilities for your post-event!
7. Meet with event experts
Finally, you’ve probably already realized that your post-event phase is also the moment to check whether you hit the success milestones from your planning, right?
In other words, it’s time to analyze metrics and reports to see if your goals were achieved, what was missing to reach them, and how you could do better.
I know you already know all this, but can you actually analyze the data and identify what it’s telling you? At Even3, there are experts who can follow your event and show you all these success indicators.
They’ll pull data straight from the platform, run exclusive analyses, and closely monitor your event. They can also help you make the most of the platform to reach your goals.
Get support from a professional with experience in hundreds of events.
