It’s great when your event is completely booked out, but this is not necessarily a reason to be satisfied with your event. You can get a lot more out of your event by putting extra thought into who you’re inviting to your event in the first place. Your guests will have a major impact on the outcome of your event, and on the KPIs you’re looking to achieve.
Defining your target audience is critical, but it is only the beginning. You also have to make sure your potential guests actually attend your event. Of course, the content of your event is a decisive factor there, but don’t underestimate the importance of how you communicate with people leading up to your event: stay top of mind with your guests, send plenty of reminders and practical information, and so on.
We’ve dedicated an entire blog post to discuss how getting the “right” guests to attend will impact your event. You can find it here.
The magic of a successful event lies in the alignment between marketing and sales. Both parties have their own responsibilities during an event: marketing needs to organize a memorable event and sales will mainly be interacting with the guests who attend.
But, in order for this strategy to work, both teams need to work together. Marketing should involve sales early on in the process. They need to inform sales of the KPI’s they want to achieve as early on as possible. With this information in mind, sales can then build a tailored guest list and they will know exactly what is expected of them at the event. If marketing and sales work together well and listen to one another, this will help a long way towards achieving the goals you’ve set for the event.
A small, but very practical tip: reward the guests attending the event with a one-time offer that they can only redeem at the event itself. During your event, guests are very receptive to learning more about the problem that your product or service solves. Making this the perfect opportunity to close a sale. A one-time offer is therefore a simple, but incredibly efficient way to generate more business during your business event.
Tip number one already explained how communication leading up to your event is important, but communication after your event is potentially even more important. Why? Because if you don’t properly follow up on promises you made during the event, potential customers will not view you as very trustworthy. It’s therefore vital to send a thank you email to your guests after the event. In that email, you can share pictures of the event, share materials that you promised to deliver or remind guests of the one-time offer.
But when it comes to generating more business with events, sales plays a crucial role in this follow-up. Make sure the sales team knows what to do after the event as well as how to follow up on any leads. All promises made to guests by the sales team need to be delivered after the event. This is not always easy; oftentimes when you attend an event, you end up talking to many different people, it can get late, and people might have a few drinks. As a result, it is not always easy to keep track of every promise that has been made.
However, a small feature in the InviteDesk app solves this issue. You can keep custom notes per guest during the event itself. This allows you to make a quick note of what you promised to whom as the event progresses. This will help prevent follow-up issues later on and increases the chance of closing new deals.
Improving communication beforehand, getting the right guests to attend your event, having a one-time offer & ensuring consistent follow-up after the event. Not all tips are created equally, but together they will surely make your event more profitable in the long run.
At InviteDesk, we know all too well what it means to host business events on a regular basis. From dinners to webinars, to large seminars & trade shows: we’ve seen it all. That’s why we developed a platform that helps automate a bunch of tedious, time-consuming things that are involved in organizing an event. With InviteDesk, you’re able to send out invitations automatically, you can follow up on them seamlessly as well as set up a communication flow with your own branding.
Curious on how to get started with the InviteDesk platform? Then watch our video demo.
