After weeks or months of planning, the end of an event or conference can sometimes feel like a huge relief. In truth, this is where much of the real work begins if you want your next event to be even better or more effective.
The following checklist is a guide for making the most of your post-event moments, featuring VIBE’s Top 5 “must-do” activities and tasks.
#1 – Say Thank You.
At almost every event, a huge behind-the-scenes team is working tirelessly to ensure everything goes well.Venue staff, entertainers, food & beverage servers, decorations committees, registration personnel, valet parking, audio-video teams, the list goes on and on. All of these people deserve your thanks. Even if things didn’t go exactly as expected, begin with a thank you and then discuss what could go better next time.
Of course, also thank your guests and your host (especially if it’s your in-house team). Most likely, you’ll want them to return in the future and a simple thank you lets them know their presence was valued.
#2 Give Yourself a Performance Review
After every event VIBE organizes, we sit down as a team and share what worked and didn’t work for each of us. We also discuss what our clients and vendors had to say, because it always feels good to be recognized for a job well done, and because constructive criticism helps us do better at exceeding expectations next time.
Be honest with yourself and your team. It’s okay to say you were overwhelmed with one element or another – otherwise, how will you ever properly staff that in the future? It’s also encouraged to give a little praise to anyone who went above and beyond. Resist the urge to point fingers and lay blame, though. It’s rarely productive. Instead, concentrate on the outcome you’d rather see and make suggestions about how you and your team can get there.
#3 Dig Into Event Data
First things first, if you’re not collecting event data already… start now. The time, effort, and money spent on corporate events need to translate into actionable insights. From basic metrics like attendance and pre-registration involvement, to engagement activities that measure crowd response and individual interactions, to post-event satisfaction surveys, these are all powerful tools for finding out where you’re getting the most bang for your buck and where you need to explore different opportunities.
#4 Meet with Your Client (or Leadership)
Whether you’re an event planning specialist like VIBE or an in-house team that oversees such events for your own company, someone always needs and wants a report of how each event went. This is why #3 is crucial – how you can present facts, not just opinions, of event results, and ultimately whether it was a good use of valuable marketing dollars.
#5 Create a Highlight Reel or Case Study
Putting together a visual history of an event is a smart idea for several reasons. First, it lets you show others your team’s event-planning capabilities. Second, it’s a good reminder of the kind of product or quality you can expect from certain vendors. Lastly, when you keep a library of these events, you can quickly look back and see what you’ve done in the past and what’s new and unexplored for the future so you don’t risk becoming repetitive.
The quicker you do these 5 tasks after your corporate event, the faster you’ll be prepared to face the next one with more insight and refined tactics. At VIBE, even after thousands of events, we stick to these 5 must-dos because they’ve proven time and time again to enhance everything we do for our clients.
