It’s the last post in the Event Checklist series, and we’ll be talking about what to do as follow-up after your event. We’ve been able to cover what to do from 6months to event day. Now that the event is over, you have a enough time to conduct a thorough evaluation of the event and update your budget, most especially if it’s a recurring event. You can engage feedback from post-event publicity, fundraising methodology and member development platforms like our Event Planners Community on Telegram.
Some of the post-event activities you should consider includes but are not limited to:
- Check in with venue.
- Check financial status.
- Send thank you’s and acknowledgement letters.
- Post-event publicity.
- Conduct a post-event survey.
- Reach out to event participants.
- Conduct a team debrief to learn their thoughts.
- Conduct a thorough evaluation of the event.
Check-in with venue:
After your event because of the stress you might have forgotten a lot of things at the venue of the event. Make sure to check-in the next day or ask any of your team to check the place to ensure nothing was lost or left behind.
Check financial status:
Gather all receipts and documentation, final registration data, etc. and update budget. This will help you when next you have an event like that or if you’re hosting same event next time you can know how to bill and what to budget for each section.
Send thank-you’s and acknowledgement letters:
Send thank you’s and acknowledgement letters to everyone that was involved in making your event a success. Send to your;
- Sponsors
- Volunteers
- Speakers/presenters
- Donors
- The media
In your thank-you notes, be sure to remind the recipients of the event’s success – and how they contributed (e.g., money raised, awareness – number of participants, etc. This can be done easily on your event page on EventPrime. Our features gives you leverage to send emails to all registered participants at once. In fact a lot of communications and update can be done on EventPrime after the event.
Post-event publicity:
Your event publicity continues, even after the event. Some of what you can do as post-event publicities are;
- You can send out an email to your subscriber base with highlights from the event like;
- A link to a YouTube channel to watch videos of the event
- Pictures from the event
- Quotes from speakers
- Presentation from event
- Testimony from participants.
etc.
- You can make a publicity reel video to share how it went (and as a bonus, you can use it as publicity next year!)
- Share highlights on social media (Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and on your event page on EventPrime also. You can also use newly launched hash tag #MyEventRecord which is just a minute video of a recording of your event. DM any of our social handles and we’ll publish it for you. For free. Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
- Make sure to update website page to reflect that it’s a past event.
Conduct a post-event survey:
Learn what people enjoyed about your event and where you have room to improve by conducting post-event surveys. You can do this by sending emails to participants, SMS, or via social media.
Reach out to event participants:
Thank them for participating and promote your ongoing programs and how they can support you throughout the year by joining, volunteering or making a sustaining donation.
Conduct a team debrief to learn their thoughts:
Ask your team questions about the event, let them share their thoughts and contribute. Be objective, look into every thought and idea and how it can be beneficial. Some ideas may not be immediate while some have to be worked on immediately. Encourage your team to expose every fault in the event so you can improve in the next one.
Conduct a thorough evaluation of the event:
You can do this simply with your jotter or laptop. From the feedbacks you’ve gotten, list everything that worked well on one side, and everything that didn’t turn out well on or what you could you do better next time on the other side. This will go a long way to help in your evaluation.
I hope you found this Event checklist series helpful in getting started with event planning! Use this as a starting point to identify or assign activities to various volunteers or staff, also make sure to join the Event Planners Community on Telegram, to discuss, connect and network with other Event Planners. If you haven’t done so, just click here.