10 Things to Do After a Conference to Get the Best ROI – A Complete Checklist

Conferences are pivotal moments for businesses, offering an opportunity to create brand awareness, strengthen relationships, and generate valuable leads. But often, companies focus heavily on pre-conference planning and the on-site hustle, only to lose momentum once the event wraps up.

That’s a huge mistake.

The real magic happens after the conference ends. This is where you can build on the connections made, follow up with prospects, and assess the event’s true impact on your business. Whether you're a small business exploring digital marketing strategies or a seasoned player in the industry, what you do after the event determines your ROI.

In our previous blogs

• 3-Step Conference Strategy
• Do These 13 Things Before Stepping into the Conference Center, and
• 15 Must-Dos at Your Next Business Conference

We covered how to prepare for and succeed during the event. Now, it's time to focus on the crucial post-event phase.

Whether you’re at a conference center in a bustling city or attending a virtual conference, these next steps will help you capitalize on every lead and interaction you’ve made.

So, buckle up as we explore 10 things you must do after a conference from nurturing relationships to analyzing ROI, these steps will ensure that your efforts resonate after you leave the conference room.

1. Populate Your CRM System

To truly maximize the ROI from your conference efforts, it's essential to properly manage all the connections and conversations you've had. The best way to ensure timely follow-up is by using a CRM system to organize and track every interaction, lead, and opportunity.

Why Use a CRM?

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, like HubSpot or Salesforce, helps you centralize all the key details from your conference conversations.

13% of companies state that investing in a CRM is one of their main priorities.

This includes notes on potential deals, contact information, and even important reminders for follow-ups. The sooner you input this data, the more streamlined your post-conference process will be.

Quick Tips for CRM Management

• Update in Real-Time: Most CRMs, like HubSpot and Salesforce, offer mobile apps, allowing you to quickly input notes and track leads while you’re still at the event.
• Create Lead Tags: Use custom fields or tags to classify leads by category, such as hot, warm, or cold, making it easier to prioritize post-conference follow-up.
• Record with Permission: If note-taking becomes cumbersome, ask permission to record conversations. This saves you from typing out long notes manually and ensures you don’t miss any key details. Tools like ai can quickly transcribe recordings, making them easier to enter into your CRM later.

Streamline Follow-Up

Once your data is organized, create specific lists for your marketing and sales teams. This will allow them to begin targeted email marketing campaigns or social media outreach to nurture those leads immediately after the event. You can also set up email cadences based on the category of each lead, ensuring the right message reaches the right contact at the right time.

Pro Tip: At Market Me More, we’ve perfected the art of CRM setup tailored specifically for conference marketing. We can help you create a CRM structure that tags, tracks, and nurtures conference leads effortlessly, ensuring you don’t miss a beat. Need help with your CRM or conference follow-up strategy? Contact us today to get started.

2. Run Email Campaigns and Cold Calling Campaigns

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make after a conference is delaying their follow-up. Time is critical, and it’s essential to strike while the iron is hot. Your goal is to turn those handshakes and business card exchanges into meaningful conversations that can generate business opportunities.

Classify Your Leads

Start by classifying all your conference conversations into three buckets:

• Hot Leads: People who expressed immediate interest in your product or service.
• Warm Leads: Prospects who showed some interest but need more nurturing.
• Cold Leads: Contacts that didn’t engage much but may still be valuable for long-term outreach.

This classification allows you to prioritize follow-ups efficiently. While your hot leads should receive immediate attention, don’t neglect the warm and cold leads—they can often become future clients with the right approach.

Execute Targeted Campaigns

Once your leads are classified, it’s time to run targeted email marketing campaigns and make personalized follow-up calls.

Prioritize your hot leads first, ensuring they feel valued and receive personalized outreach. Use cold calling or direct emails for these prospects to deepen the conversation, reinforce your value proposition, and set up further meetings.

For your warm and cold leads, create nurturing email sequences that keep your business top-of-mind. Send valuable content that addresses their needs, showcases your expertise, and gradually moves them through the sales funnel. Don’t forget to include calls-to-action (CTAs) such as scheduling a call, downloading a resource, or attending a webinar.

Follow-Up with Missed Contacts

It's possible you didn’t meet everyone on your target list during the conference. Send a personalized follow-up message explaining that although you didn’t connect at the event, you’d still love to explore potential synergies and schedule a quick call.

Pro Tip: Walter Akolo, our chief digital marketer and in-house email expert, recommends setting up automated email campaigns immediately after the event. At Market Me More, we can help you seamlessly integrate your CRM and email marketing systems to ensure conference leads are nurtured separately from your other campaigns. Don’t waste time manually sorting through contacts—automation is your best friend here!

3. Share a "Lunch and Learn" Presentation with Your Team

One of the most valuable things you can do after attending a conference is sharing your key takeaways with your team. A well-organized "Lunch and Learn" session is the perfect way to ensure that the entire organization benefits from your insights and experiences.

Be sure to include not just the marketing team but also your events coordination team, sales team, and management. Each department can extract value from different aspects of the conference.

What to Share in the Presentation

• Key Takeaways: Summarize important trends, industry shifts, and innovations you discovered at the event.
• Competitor Insights: Discuss any competitive strategies you noticed that can provide lessons for your own business.
• Potential Partnerships: Share details about promising collaborations you explored, and decide on next steps with relevant teams.
• Customer Pain Points: Share the feedback and pain points that you gathered from conversations to help the team align future messaging.

Repurpose Conference Content

Repurposing the content and conversations from the event is a powerful way to keep the momentum going. Convert your notes and learnings into:

• Blog posts or marketing content for ongoing engagement.
• Case studies highlighting success stories you learned about.
• Email campaigns that nurture the leads you met during the conference.

This strategy helps keep the conference buzz alive for weeks, or even months, after the event has ended.

Pro Tip: Ensure your "Lunch and Learn" presentation includes actionable steps for each department. For example, your marketing team could create a content calendar based on the insights, while the sales team can build targeted outreach campaigns. At Market Me More, we specialize in transforming conference takeaways into tangible marketing assets that keep your audience engaged long after the event ends.

4. Post Key Takeaways on Social Media and Tag Relevant People

The conference may be over, but the engagement shouldn’t stop there. One of the most effective ways to extend the reach of your conference experience is by sharing key takeaways and tagging the people and organizations you interacted with.

Maximize Exposure Through Social Media

Posting your conference highlights on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram gives you an opportunity to not only reflect on what you’ve learned but also to connect with a wider audience. Here’s how you can do it:

• Tag Speakers and Attendees: Whether you had a deep conversation or just a quick chat, tagging relevant people in your post ensures they’re reminded of your interaction. It also allows their followers to engage with your content.
• Share Video Clips: If you recorded interviews or captured moments from the conference, share these as video clips on social media. Short, engaging videos are perfect for platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube.
• Use Relevant Hashtags: Make sure to use industry-related hashtags like #ConferenceMarketing, #DigitalMarketing, or specific hashtags related to the event like #BigTenConference to increase visibility.

Create Engaging Content

When you share your post-conference insights, think about ways to add value for your audience. Highlight trends, interesting discussions, or even new social media marketing tools you discovered. If you’ve captured any audio or video content, consider editing these into bite-sized pieces to create a series of posts.

One of our favorite techniques was using a small Bluetooth mic during a conference for iCG Pay, where we did walking interviews with industry experts. We repurposed this content across multiple channels, including YouTube and LinkedIn, while tagging the people we interviewed. This not only gave us great content but also helped generate earned media and goodwill from the people we interacted with.

Build Relationships Beyond the Conference

Tagging relevant people is more than just a social media strategy—it’s a way to nurture the relationships you began at the event. This simple action reinforces the connections you’ve made and keeps the conversation going long after the conference has ended. And don't forget: creating goodwill often leads to opportunities down the road, whether through collaborations, partnerships, or referrals.

Pro Tip: Don’t have the internal resources to manage a full-scale post-conference content campaign? Market Me More can step in and repurpose all the content you collected at the event, turning it into a social media content calendar or email marketing campaign. This way, you continue benefiting from the event months after it’s over.

5. Analyze the ROI of the Conference and Its Relevance for Future Attendance

A return on investment (ROI) analysis is critical in determining whether the conference was worth the time, effort, and resources. This analysis isn’t just about tallying up the direct sales you’ve made—it’s about understanding the long-term impact of your participation and whether similar events will offer value in the future.

Key Metrics to Track

To effectively analyze your conference ROI, you need to track several key metrics, which can be easily managed within your CRM system:

• Revenue Generated: Log every sale or deal you can directly attribute to the conference. This includes immediate sales as well as those that close months after the event through follow-up activities.
• Leads Captured: How many leads did you generate, and more importantly, how many were high-quality? Tag each lead with its source, and track their progression through your sales pipeline.
• Conversion Ratios: What percentage of your leads have converted into actual business? This is where detailed tracking comes in handy—make sure you’re tagging leads that originated at the conference separately from other email marketing campaigns or social media outreach
• Cost of Attendance: Factor in every expense, including booth setup, travel, accommodation, promotional materials, and team hours, to calculate the total cost of attending the event.

Proactive Tagging and Reporting

To ensure accurate ROI analysis, it’s essential to tag every lead correctly from the moment you meet them at the event. Use your CRM system to label the source of the lead as "Conference" and ensure the tracking is continuous, even if the lead converts several months later via a social media campaign or email follow-up.

This kind of proactive tagging will help you identify how much revenue was generated as a direct result of the event versus other marketing efforts, giving you a clearer picture of whether attending the conference was worthwhile.

Long-Term Insights

An ROI analysis shouldn’t be done just once—it should be an ongoing process. Set up regular reports and dashboards in your CRM to review conversion rates, revenue, and lead progression at set intervals. Doing so will also help you determine the relevance of the event for future attendance.

If a conference leads to multiple conversions and substantial revenue, it’s likely a smart investment for the future. Conversely, if an event generates minimal ROI, it may be time to rethink which conferences you attend or how you engage during these events.

6. Schedule One-on-One Follow-Up Meetings with Potential Collaborators

Conferences are not just about generating leads or signing new clients—they’re also about fostering partnerships. Often, you’ll come across potential collaborators who could complement your business, open doors to new opportunities, or help expand your network. Don’t let these opportunities slip away.

The Importance of Follow-Up Meetings

While conferences allow you to make initial connections, they rarely provide enough time for deep, meaningful conversations. This is where one-on-one follow-up meetings come in. After the event, schedule personal meetings—either in person or virtually—with potential collaborators to dive deeper into how you can work together.

Best Practices for Scheduling Meetings

• Act Immediately: Don’t wait until after the conference to reach out. Try to schedule follow-up meetings while you’re still at the event.
• Prioritize Your List: Focus on potential collaborators who align closely with your business goals or can provide complementary services. You don’t need to meet everyone—target the most relevant people.
• Use Multiple Channels: Some people may prefer face-to-face meetings, while others might opt for virtual ones. Be flexible in your approach and offer video calls.

Pro Tip: Schedule your follow-up meetings directly at the event to avoid the post-conference scheduling chaos. Tools like Calendly can help you seamlessly set up one-on-one meetings without the back-and-forth email exchanges.

7. Create a Repository on Your Shared Drive

While your CRM system is great for tracking leads and conversations, many of the valuable insights and resources gathered at a conference can get lost if not properly organized. This is where a shared drive becomes a crucial tool.

Why a Shared Drive is Essential

By setting up a shared drive, you provide a space for all conference attendees to upload key documents, notes, and resources in real-time. This not only helps with immediate follow-ups but also becomes a valuable reference for future events. It allows everyone, from the marketing team to the management team, to access, review, and utilize conference materials efficiently.

What to Include in Your Shared Drive

To maximize the value of your repository, organize it with clear folder structures that make it easy to find and retrieve information. Consider creating the following folders:

• Presentation Decks: Upload any slides or presentations you collected from speakers or panel discussions.
• Conference Notes: Centralize everyone’s notes from different sessions or networking conversations for easy reference.
• Business Cards: Scan or upload business cards with details of your contacts, or link them to the CRM for better integration.
• Marketing Collateral: Store brochures, flyers, or any marketing materials you handed out or received for future inspiration.
• Action Items & Follow-Ups: Maintain a list of important tasks and follow-up actions discussed at the conference.

The Benefits of a Shared Repository

A shared drive makes your conference content easily accessible. Whether you need to reference marketing collateral for future events, revisit key learnings from industry sessions, or analyze competitor strategies, everything is in one place. This saves time, enhances collaboration, and ensures consistency across teams.

8. Find Lessons to Share with the Management, Marketing, and Sales Teams

It’s essential to document and share the marketing lessons you learned—not just from a business development or partnership standpoint, but also from observing the innovative strategies of other businesses.

Why Sharing Lessons Matters

By sharing insights with your marketing, sales, and management teams, you can elevate your overall strategy. Whether it's an innovative social media marketing tool, a clever booth design, or a unique giveaway idea, these lessons can be applied to future conferences, trade shows, or campaigns.

How to Document What You Learned

Start by creating a detailed list of the things you observed during the conference. This list can be shared in your shared drive (as discussed in Section 7) or in a team meeting. Consider organizing the insights by category, such as marketing, sales, event logistics, or competitor analysis.

Here are some ideas to include in your list:

• Novel Booth Designs
• Engaging Giveaways
• Competitor Tactics
• Innovative Networking Strategies

Applying These Lessons for Future Events

After documenting these ideas, it’s important to share them with relevant teams and brainstorm how they can be adapted for your business. For example, the marketing team might want to experiment with new content ideas, while the sales team could adopt different networking tactics.

9. Establish a Good Rapport with Speakers and Conference Organizers

Building meaningful relationships with speakers and conference organizers can open doors for future opportunities and collaborations. While most attendees focus on networking with potential clients, fostering connections with the event’s key players can have long-term benefits for your business.

Nurturing Relationships with Speakers

Speakers are often industry experts or thought leaders with extensive networks. Establishing a connection with them goes beyond simply attending their sessions. Here’s how you can build rapport:

• Take Notes and Follow Up: During keynote speeches or fireside chats, make a point to note down one or two insightful comments made by the speaker. Use these as talking points when you follow up with them after the event—this shows that you were fully engaged and attentive during their session.
• Handwritten Notes: Personal touches matter. After their session, hand them a genuine, handwritten note expressing your appreciation for their insights. It’s a thoughtful gesture that will help you stand out.
• Schedule a Call: After the event, reach out and suggest a follow-up meeting or call. This can be an opportunity to dive deeper into the topics they discussed or explore possible synergies for collaboration. Scheduling a one-on-one conversation helps move your relationship from casual to professional.

Building Connections with Organizers

Creating a good rapport with the conference organizers can have significant perks. Organizers often manage multiple events and have a say in future conference participation, speaking opportunities, and even sponsorship deals. Here’s why building these connections is important:

• Discounts for Future Events: By establishing a friendly and professional relationship with organizers, you could gain access to early-bird pricing or special discounts for future conferences.
• Sponsorship Opportunities: If your company is looking to expand its visibility, connecting with organizers can help you land sponsorship opportunities for future events, giving your brand prime exposure.
• Exclusive Access: Organizers can offer you exclusive invites to VIP networking sessions, speaker meet-and-greets, or private events that aren’t accessible to regular attendees.

10. Create a Content Calendar and a To-Do List—and Stick to It

After a conference, time is of the essence. The window for maximizing the connections and insights you gained is small, so it’s crucial to stay organized. Creating a content calendar and a to-do list will help you prioritize your tasks and ensure that no important follow-up or marketing opportunity falls through the cracks.

Why a Content Calendar is Key

A content calendar ensures you plan and schedule your post-conference content systematically. From blog posts to social media updates, having a timeline helps you maintain consistency and keep your audience engaged with what you learned at the event.

Here are some things to add to your content calendar:

• Blog Posts
• Social Media Content
• Email Campaigns
• Video Content

By mapping out your content in advance, you ensure a steady stream of engagement long after the event, keeping your brand top-of-mind with both new connections and existing customers.

The Importance of a To-Do List

Along with your content calendar, a well-organized to-do list ensures you follow up on all the logistical and networking tasks that need to happen post-event. Break down your list into daily or weekly tasks to make it manageable.

Key tasks to add to your to-do list include:

• Follow-Up Emails
• Meeting Scheduling
• CRM Updates
• Content Creation
• Team Debrief

Conclusion

Attending a conference isn’t just about showing up and networking—it’s about strategically planning every phase to maximize your return on investment. From the moment you start preparing to the days, weeks, and months after the event, there are countless tasks that need to be handled with precision and focus.

While it might feel like there are 100 things to do before a conference, 1,000 things to manage during the event, and possibly a million tasks to complete afterward, having a clear checklist for post-conference activities is essential. This ensures you don’t miss out on key opportunities and that every dollar spent delivers measurable ROI.

Let’s recap the 10 things you can do after the conference to get the best return on your investment:

1. Populate Your CRM System
2. Run Email Campaigns and Cold Calling Campaigns
3. Share a "Lunch and Learn" Presentation with Your Team
4. Post Key Takeaways on Social Media
5. Analyze the ROI of the Conference
6. Schedule One-on-One Follow-Up Meetings
7. Create a Repository on Your Shared Drive
8. Find Lessons to Share with Management and Marketing/Sales Teams
9. Establish a Good Rapport with Speakers and Conference Organizers
10. Create a Content Calendar and To-Do List—and Stick to It

This blog concludes our four-part series on maximizing your conference experience. From pre-conference preparations to the critical actions you need to take after the event, we’ve covered it all.

Check out the other blogs in the series:

• 3-Step Conference Strategy
• Do These 13 Things Before Stepping into the Conference Center, and
• 15 Must-Dos at Your Next Business Conference

Need help with conference strategy, keynote speaking sessions, CRM optimization, or more? The team at Market Me More is here to help with everything you need to make your next conference attendance a HUGE success. Reach out to us today!