INBOUND16 has concluded! For many attendees, or attendees of similar industry events, these occasions are calls-to-action.
Much like many events, conferences, and tradeshows, you accrue countless lessons tromping around a show floor, shaking hands and sitting in sessions. Afterward, you're psyched up and hunkering down to apply changes at your business.
How do you assure you act with precision and purpose after an event like INBOUND? Here are the five HubSpot tools you need to get off on the right foot after returning home.
1. Social Monitoring
Use the Social Monitoring tool to keep a finger on the pulse of larger umbrella topics.
Begin with laying out all your notes from event sessions. This is the non-negotiable number one thing you must do. Once you've taken a breather to set things out in order, go into your HubSpot Social tool. Go into Monitoring and create new tracking feeds. What do you base the feeds on? On your consistent, recurring keywords and terms from your notes, of course!
There's bound to be chatter around these following the event. Create four feeds to begin. Return to them at lunch time each day for the following week. Note any individuals or companies propelling the conversations within the feeds. Keep an eye on them. They're your new favorites.
You've built yourself a few extra cocktail hours of conversation, even after the event's conclusion.
2. Competitors
Regardless of their size or industry, run thought leaders from the social feeds through your Compeitors tool.
There's a possibility your notes from the event are incomplete or perhaps too brief. Not to worry, you can fill in the blanks with momentary background research. Whether a short handshake, or a business card exchange beside the coffee line, take five minutes to discover the person's site.
What's more, put their site through your HubSpot Competitor's tool. Sure, they likely aren't an active competitor, it's still an interesting spot-check activity. You might discover something remarkable that singles out about this person you met. It could drive a follow-up conversation or separate them from the pack of names and email addresses rattling around in your briefcase.
3. HubSpot Sales Email Extension
Install HubSpot Sales email extension to track your colleague's response time and use a template to codify your event follow-up communication process.
Now that you've researched people and separated the chaff from the wheat, it's time to get in touch. One-off emails from your business address are your best tool.
Load up the HubSpot Sales email extension to contact the folks you kicked up conversations with at the event. Send them your recap blog posts to see if they came away with similar thoughts.
This is an opportunity to craft or refine your event follow-up email template. Every sales email user can maintain five email templates for free! Write the message once and then nothing is standing in your way when completing post-event follow-up. Don't forget to replace any placeholder text around the event's name and your recap blog post's title and link, but otherwise, you can create and maintain a rock-solid template to blast out to everyone you met following future events or meet-ups.
4. HubSpot CRM
Load all contacts, big or small, into your HubSpot CRM, along with any notes relevant to that particular contact.
Did you have any longer conversations with people? Want to make certain your notes on a particular person are easy to access right out of their contact record? Record all these interactions in your CRM.
When your follow-up email goes out via the HubSpot Sales email extension, it'll be tracked right in your CRM for future reference.
Whether the business was a one-person operation or a giant agency that brought a team of twelve, add every single person into your CRM. There may come a day when you give them a phone call and need to work down the list of names you know to recall who you spoke with during the event.
All cards are useful. All notes are useful. Keep in touch and refine your follow-up process after every event with the CRM.
5. Blog
Create your blog post in HubSpot and distribute via social, email, and organic avenues.
Alright, enough teasing. Time to craft your follow-up blog post. Or blog posts. Write a blog post or two to recap what you learned and call out the folks you met by name.
Spare no detail. Your perspective and experience is unique to you and your business' context and motivation for attending the event in the first place. Keep that in mind if you feel your opinion is de-valued. It's okay to feel anxiety or apprehension at first glance. Just know the best way to attack that feel is to recognize you've formally assembled your thoughts, you've come to understand more about your fellow attendees, and you're piecing it all together for public consumption on your blog because you want to pursue the event's conversational tone well after the convention doors close.
As a bonus, if you're seeking even more guidance on how to make the most of your time before your next event, at the event, and following the event, utilize this Project Template directly out of your HubSpot portal.
See you all at #INBOUND17!
