Conference Followup Checklist

Coming back to work after a conference is always a little daunting.  Not only have your emails piled up and your coworkers have lots of questions lined up for your return, but you also now have a stack of people to followup with.  To help you with your personal and professional conference followup, take a look at our Conference Followup Checklist!

1.  Recap the Conference

Take a moment to sit down and write out your thoughts about the conference.  What did you like?  What didn’t you like?  What could you do more of or better?  How were the parties?  How was the conference overall?  Did you forget anything for the conference (if so, make sure to write a note, reminding yourself for the next conference)?  This will all be super helpful when you consider the conference for next year.

2.  Organize Your Business Cards

After receiving someone’s business card at a conference, it is so important to write notes on the card to help jog your memory later.  Hopefully you did this and can read through your notes.  Having a system in place to organize your business cards. Organizing your business cards right away will help you in the long run with remembering conversations for potential business relationships.  Having an excel spreadsheet to input all the new contacts will also help you in the long run.

3.  Email Your New Contacts 

Once all the business cards are organized, now it is time to send the emails. I’m sure you have an overwhelming stack of business cards staring at you right now. Do yourself a favor and sort them by interest level. Follow up with the most important contacts right away, then work your way through the rest of them.  It is also important to write individual emails to each person – you will likely get a better response rate! Need some advice on followup? 

4.  Review Your Conference Goals

It is so crucial to write down your conference goals prior actually attending the conference! If you did write down your goals – review them! Not only will this bring you full circle with the conference, but it will also be great information to share with your boss or team.

It’s impressive work if you can present the following to your boss:

• Your pre-conference goals
• What you learned and how you can apply it
• Who you met and why they are valuable
• A comparison of your pre-conference goals and actual accomplishments
• Your post-conference goals

5. Say “Thank You”

No doubt there was someone or some company who treated you nicely at the show – whether that was taking you out to dinner, hosting an event, sponsoring the show, or otherwise just giving you a great idea to help you in your business.

Email them and say “Thank You”!

This does 2 things:

1. It is one of the easiest ways to follow up and gives you a great icebreaker to also either ask a question or propose a business deal.
2. People remember those who reach out – it makes you look good, and it makes you look professional.

I’ll even give you a place to start!  Here are some people you should thank:

1. Missy Ward and Shawn Collins – co-founders of Affiliate Summit, put together an amazing show and while yes, you do have to pay to attend, they do a ton of extra work to make sure that you get the most bang for your buck.
2. The show sponsors.   This is often overlooked, but these sponsors are a big help to the show being put on.  If you get a lot out of attending, you should thank them for their involvement – as it will reinforce their good feelings about sponsoring and make it more likely for them to do so again (thus allowing you another opportunity to attend!)

6.  Recuperate Yourself

Get some rest. Sleep will help your body recoup from a week’s worth of indulgence, mental strain, talking and whatever else you did. You probably have lost lots of sleep during the conference and now is your time to catch up!

Get some exercise. Not only will it help you sleep better, but it will invigorate your body and clear the mental fog you have right now. If you are used to the same routine, switch it up a bit. 

7.  Take a Break

It’s true that sleeping and working out could be considered a mental break. But I mean – go out and do something fun in your town or city! Stroll down the lake path, go for a hike, play board games at your local pub, meet up with your friends, visit a puppy — just get out!