How to Follow up After a Show: 6 Things You Need to Do

Curtain call! You made it! The show is over, and you’re exhausted. It’s finally time to relax.

Or is it?

You’ve read our blog on how to plan a show, how to promote it, and what to do on the day. Surely, there can’t be more?

But there is more. And it’s important.

Time to find out how to follow up properly after a show.

1. Thank everyone

Once the show is over, the first thing you should do is thank everyone involved. There would be no show without the guests and event team, so make sure they feel appreciated.

The guests

Hopefully, you’ve had a big audience at your show. So big that it would take you all year to thank them individually.

There are a couple of ways you can go about thanking all the show attendees. You can send them a “thank you” email or post a message on social media.

It’s best if you do both. Write a general message on your social media profiles, and then send out an email with a bit more information.

You should include links to photos and video from the night in your email, as well as an event survey (more on that in a bit).

That way, you’re not only thanking them, but also reminding them what a great night it was. And you’re collecting valuable feedback.

The speakers and entertainers

You should also thank the people the guests came to see. Without them, there would just be an empty venue with people staring at each other in silence for a few hours.

Since the entertainers will not be as numerous as the attendees, you should send them a personalised “thank you” note.

Do encourage them to share some of the show’s highlights on their social media profiles. It will be good marketing for both you as an event planner and them as performers.

The venue and vendors

The venue management, staff, and any suppliers will also have played a big role in making the show a success.

Send them a personal note as well to let them know how well they did. They will appreciate it, and it will do a lot in terms of building long-term relationships.

The sponsors and donors

If you managed to secure any corporate sponsors, then they should also be thanked. The same goes for any donors if the show was for a good cause.

Sponsors and donors might be particularly interested in some of the data you’ve collected. Feel free to share the attendance numbers as well as any social media insights from the show.

Your event team

Last but not least you should thank your event team. Event planning is hectic, and a good team helps you stay sane for long enough to pull it all off.

If your budget is in the black, why not invite them out for dinner or drinks? Show them some love and celebrate the success of the show as a team.

Tip: Look at these follow up email templates to find inspiration for your own.

2. Ask for feedback

Your show has no doubt been great, but nothing and no one is perfect. That’s good because it leaves room for improvement and learning new things.

Ask everyone involved for feedback. You can conveniently do that at the same time as you send them your “thank you” note.

You can ask people to rate the show on a scale from one to five, but that doesn’t tell you much. It’s better to ask specific questions that can help you improve.

Here are some sample feedback questions you can ask:

• What did you like most about the show?
• What did you like least about the show?
• Would you attend a similar show in the future?
• Would you bring a friend along to the next show?

Tip: Feel free to combine a feedback rating system with specific questions. Use a website like SurveyMonkey to quickly generate feedback forms.

3. Analyse data

Now that you’ve collected feedback from everyone, it’s time to look at the data. You should also have a number of other data sets.

Here are some of the things you should look at:

• Ticket sales
• Social media engagement
• Feedback from attendees
• Media mentions
• Show budget (more on that later)

Tip: You can read our guide on how to evaluate events to get a better idea of what to look for.

4. Tidy up your show budget

With the show over and done with, it’s time to look at the books. You need to calculate your earnings and expenses—and pay everyone involved.

Here are some things you should do to sort out the finances:

• Calculate how much you made from ticket sales (and any food, drinks, and merchandise).
• Pay the entertainers, venue management, tech team, your event team, and any vendors.
• Compare the final numbers to your initial show budget.
• Share the details with any donors or sponsors who supported the show.

Now that you have an overview of where the money went, you know what to do next time. Maybe you spent too much on food and too little on marketing.

5. Hold a debrief meeting

You’ve now thanked everyone, asked for feedback, looked at the data, and closed the books. It’s time to review the show as a whole with your team.

Call a team meeting and debrief everyone. Read out the general feedback you’ve received and ask them for additional input.

The point of the meeting should be to identify what worked and what didn’t. Then you need to work on practical solutions to improve the next show.

It’s also a good time to review the goals for the show. Find out whether or not they were realistic. That will put you in a good position to plan your next show.

Tip: Here are some excellent suggestions for effective event debriefing.

6. Organise your marketing materials

If you’ve followed our blog, you’ll now have a lot of potential marketing material. For instance, if you’ve been live streaming the show, you have over an hour’s worth of footage.

You should also have a lot of still images taken by the photographer you hired. All this material is absolute gold when it comes to promoting your next show.

Use the raw material to create a highlight reel of the show. Create separate short videos, memes, GIFs, blooper reels, and anything else you can post on social media.

The goal here is to maintain the hype around your show and make people want to attend the next one.

To summarise

The show doesn’t stop just because the lights are out and the guests have gone home. As a show planner, your performance is a 365-day long one.

The point of following up after a show is to…

• Show appreciation
• Gather feedback
• Build long-term relationships
• Create hype for the next event

Hopefully, your next show will be even more legendary than this one!