Top 8 Post-Event Engagement Strategies to Try in 2024

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While a rewarding event requires extensive planning and flawless execution, post-event engagement is critical to building a more connected community. Effective post-event engagement strategies are pivotal for gathering meaningful feedback and strategically leveraging successful events to build anticipation for future happenings. Keep reading to discover the top eight methods to boost engagement after your event.

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Time-Tested Engagement Tactics

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Organizers must develop post-event engagement strategies that cover follow-up care in order to sustain participant interest in subsequent events. This helps participants remember the event positively and promote it to others. Surveys, social content recycling, attendee matchmaking, and strategic planning for future event promotion keep the ecosystem alive all year. Introducing speed networking sessions as part of the follow-up can enhance engagement by encouraging quick, impactful exchanges among attendees, continuing the networking momentum even after the event has ended.

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While event organizers spent over $26 billion on promotional gear in 2023, exploring innovative online event marketing ideas could drive more sustainable engagement post-event. Implementing a few of the following eight best practices will lead to stronger relationships between attendees, co-hosts, sponsors, and vendors. These techniques increase the success of forums in both short- and long-term ways, connecting all event phases into a feedback loop that benefits the audience all the time.

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Top Post-Engagement Strategies

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1. Conduct Surveys

Surveys are a common tool among event organizers to measure engagement levels, with 70% of marketers using attendee engagement as a key performance indicator to gauge an event's success. Surprisingly, 37% of marketers consider this the primary metric for evaluating event efficacy.

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Extensive engagement surveys after an event are one of the best ways to gather qualitative insights, criticism, and quantitative satisfaction ratings. Custom questionnaires delve deeply into registration, venue, content, logistics, catering, critical takeaways, implementation readiness, benchmarking to prior events, and potential areas needing better attention.

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Surveys successfully re-engage past participants while securing actionable data points to enhance future events' success prospects. Maintaining continuity in survey structures over consecutive occurrences enables precise tracking of year-over-year satisfaction trends. These tools help organizers accurately assess which areas show progress versus nagging weak spots requiring additional nurturing.

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2. Dispatch Personalized Gratitude Gestures

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Express gratitude to guest participants by using personalized gestures that acknowledge the value of their time, content contributions, and advocacy roles that constitute the basic building blocks of your event. Send customized post-event appreciation emails within one week that express your appreciation for the investment in your event. You can also request additional selective feedback to bolster event excellence. Sharing event photos sustains year-round community connections, too.

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3. Repurpose Presentations Into Shareable Follow-on Content

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Get more out of highly informative speaker sessions by cleverly reusing the content in different formats. Try using content as social media cutouts, one-on-one interviews packaged as shareable clips, or in-depth blog-style analysis for people who are interested but cannot attend. Gated-access educational webinars are another option to foster a post-event learning environment.

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Content repurposing nurtures year-round engagement while organically inspiring people to prioritize forthcoming forum dates well in advance. Participants return to well-known industry community hubs because of the quality of the curation.

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4. Produce Promotional Content 

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Short montages distilling memorable highlights, candid photo albums, and music-backed social media shorts produced immediately post-event are ideal for nostalgic storytelling and magnifying positive event imprints. 

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Create event legacy content in a way that is easy to understand to introduce the next chapter to new audiences. Share ability digitally immortalizes outcomes, allowing for continued discovery at optimal times.

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5. Showcase Sponsors, Partners, and Vendors

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Publicly spotlighting key success stakeholders via channels and email campaigns expresses gratitude while attracting their repeat contributions and new ones for consecutive events. Acknowledging speakers, organizations, and vendors meaningfully elevates event success metrics. 

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Positive mentions, such as measurable impact and amplification factors, also make strong cases when pitching sponsorship opportunities to new possible partners. This is necessary to raise the level of future forum experiences using the tailwinds that were created. 

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6. Facilitate Attendee Connections

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Elevate the quality of networking by proactively enabling attendees to sustain peer connections post-proceedings around shared challenges and goals. Opt-in sign-up directories during registrations facilitate follow-up outreach across individuals passionate about banding together long-term, either virtually or through local chapters. 

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Following an event, these relationships between trailblazers in the industry foster valuable partnerships that spread innovation throughout related spaces.

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7. Strategically Promote Next Events

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Use tactical post-event promotions that preview your next planned forum to generate anticipatory buzz well in advance while positive vibes from the current event remain fresh.

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Teasers across social media, short introduction to the next speaker, exciting agenda announcements, and early bird specials for previous event participants help manage and consistently maintain intrigue levels to keep community members hooked.

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8. Sustain an Engaged Community

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Establish consistent post-event engagement mechanisms that facilitate touchpoints centered around the event's ethos, agenda, speakers, and advancements tracked across focus areas. Dedicated web portals, active social media spaces, and periodic newsletters allow healthy discourse to continue building stronger relationships and camaraderie between tribe members. This organically expands grassroots advocacy that improves future event participation and ticket sales.

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The Bottom Line 

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Proactive post-event community cultivation dictates your competitive edge and long-term viability. Surveys, testimonials, event montages, and behind-the-scenes videos are excellent tools to boost engagement following your event. Create shareable social media posts, create speaker-led workshop videos, and strategically promote your next gathering to create a thriving network.

‍Book a demo with Connect Space to find out how to promote attendee networking with our matchmaking app.