Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
Your CPD event has been delivered. Congratulations! You might be tempted to sit back and relax, waiting for the results to come through but… That would be a mistake! Whilst incredibly efficient, CPDs are not magic tricks, and very rarely will they get you leads on their own.
You need to work for it.
The important thing is to work smarter, not harder.
In this post, I have gathered ten tactics you should use after a construction CPD to boost conversion and achieve greater growth. Let’s dive right into it! But why should you believe us - view the testimonial video below from our most recent CPD client!
#1 Schedule A Thank-You Email
Going radio-silence after a CPD event is no longer an option. Following up after the CPD has been delivered is not only a polite gesture but also a key element when furthering the conversation about your services and products.
In the following sections, I will elaborate on the different types of follow-up that you should prepare depending on the behaviour of your audience.
However, regardless of their interactions, all those that have attended your CPD should receive an automated thank you email after the session has been completed. If you are able to identify those that have asked a question during the Q&A and thank them for it, that will be even better!
This thank-you email could be sent manually, through a bulk email, or automatically, which we would highly recommend. Platforms like HubSpot allow you to enrol the list of the people that registered to your CPD into a workflow so no lead is left behind!
#2 Segment the CPD Audience
Not every person on your registration list will be a good lead. Once the CPD has been delivered, you should be able to categorise the people registered.
For this, you will need to deliver your CPD through software that allows you to know whether someone joined the event, if they stayed until the end or, alternatively, whether they left halfway through.
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Registered but Did Not Attend
There will be people that have registered for your CPD, but that did not join the event. This does not mean that they are not interested; they could simply have been busy at the time of the CPD.
If that was the case, they would be thankful for a second chance. A follow-up email inviting them to re-watch the recording and catch up with the session will be a perfect way to keep them in the loop.
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Attended but Are Not A Good Fit
Whilst your CPD events should be targeted to construction professionals, chances are that your topic attracts other people, particularly students! We see often that students engage in CPD events with the aim of furthering their learning in a topic that they are interested in.
If you spot a student among your attendees, make sure you acknowledge that and that you address any follow-up from an educational perspective.
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Attended and Good Fit
Among your attendees, there should be some good fit leads! If the number is too low, you might need to look at your message and value proposition in case it could be misleading. For these leads, promptness is key!
Your follow-up should not be limited to just the recording… If they look like they could be a customer, why not send them an exclusive offer or code that they could use before a specific amount of time?
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Did Not Register
It is possible that your webinar was promoted to a list of people on your database, and, undoubtedly, there will be a big proportion that did not register for the CPD. You should have an understanding of why this has happened.
Did you announce your CPD early enough? Did they open any of your emails? Are they just not interested? Are those contacts good enough for them to be on your database, or are they just taking space?
#3 Maintain Engagement
Segmenting the people that have interacted with your CPD and who actively participated will give you a picture of where you should focus your efforts. For those leads that look like they could be potential clients, keeping the conversation is essential!
But… You already sent a thank-you email… What else should you do? You might want to branch out!
Connect on Social Media
Look into the social media that those leads might be most active in. LinkedIn is always a safe bet! Send promising leads a connection request, thanking them for attending your CPD and offering to answer any questions that they might have. If they interacted with you during the CPD, make sure you mention it!
Other social media platforms can also give you opportunities to connect, including Twitter, Instagram, or even Pinterest!
Launch a Targeted ABM Campaign
For those that might not be familiar with the term, ABM stands for “account-based marketing” and refers to any marketing activities that are made with a particular account or company in mind. If you have identified that a person for a company was particularly active on your CPD, why not widen your outreach to other people in the company?
Research what their value proposition is and make sure your message aligns with it. They will find it personal, thoughtful, and attractive.
#4 Ask for CPD Event Feedback
Whilst a Thank-You email is a polite way of following up after a CPD, it is unlikely that it will get you any feedback. Use software that allows you to trigger a feedback survey right after the CPD, so they can share your thoughts about the content of your event.
Platforms like HubSpot have these feedback surveys built into their CRM, which makes it easier to manage. There are different types of surveys you could send out.
Net Promoter Score Survey (NPS)
An NPS is intended to measure the likelihood of a person to recommend a service, a product or, in this case, a CPD event to a friend or a colleague. These surveys invite recipients to rate from 1 to 10 how happy they would be to bring a new customer into your database.
Depending on their answer, you can segment your audience in promoters, detractors, and neutral audiences, so you can follow up accordingly.
Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT)
A CSAT is used mainly to measure the happiness of a person after an experience with your brand. It does not need to be linked with a purchase and it can be used as a post-event feedback survey. Unlike the NPS, the CSAT asks recipients to click on three different emojis to report on their emotions towards their experience: a happy face, a neutral face, and a sad face.
Just like with the NPS, depending on their answer, you should follow up in different ways.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
A CES, while less prevalent, measures how easy it was for a customer to get the information they needed regarding a product or a service and, in the context of a CPD, it could be used to assess how relevant the content offered within the CPD was. This is measured through an answer to a question that ranges from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”.
If the answer is generally negative, you might need to elevate your CPD game!
#5 Make An On-Demand Recording Available
Surprisingly, very few companies follow up after a CPD, even with the recording. In fact, a big percentage of the CPDs are not even recorded! Recording your CPD will allow you to keep interacting with those who attended and those who missed the session.
You can, of course, send through the recordings, but using specific software can be particularly interesting.
Vidyard
If integrated on HubSpot, your Vidyard videos will allow you to gather data to segment, qualify, and nurture leads based on how they interact with your video content. If a contact on your CRM watches your Vidyard, the video activity will show on their timeline, and you will be able to see when and for how long they plated that video.
As a result, you can segment your database depending on who is most engaged with your content.
Dubb
Also available through an integration with HubSpot, Dubb can be used to host videos, creating conversion-focused videos that allow you to learn about the open rates, click rates, video watch rates, and call-to-action engagement rates in all your videos.
Since it is connected to your CRM, you will be able to capture all that data in a contact level.
Brightcove
Very similar to the previous two and also integrated with HubSpot, Brightcove is a video hosting platform that provides you with detailed data on the video activities of your database. With real-time video viewing behaviour, your CRM will always be updated regarding the activities of your database.
Using your video data will help you better leverage marketing and sales actions!
#6 Repurpose Your Construction CPD Content
Once the CPD has been delivered, the content you have carefully produced should not sit in a folder. There should be part of your content that is exclusive to those that attended the CPD event or that were sent the recording, but nothing should stop you from sharing some of the insights on your CPD!
The more channels, the better. So, keep your mind open when looking at the ways of sharing your content.
Email Marketing
A big part of the content on your CPD will be subject to being repurposed on a series of emails. These emails could serve to simply promote one of your products or services or, alternatively, could help you direct people to the on-demand version of your CPD, so you keep the conversation going.
Promotion should not be your only goal, what about providing your audience with context regarding your area? Wouldn’t that position you as an expert?
Blogging
If I told you that, together with sharing your CPD content, you could also optimise your SEO, and improve your Google ranking, what would you say? You can do that through blogging! Ideally, when producing your CPD, you would have looked at what keywords to use and, if that is the case, your content will be fully optimised to be shared!
You can also have a quick look at the most popular keywords on your area and tweak your copy, so it helps you position higher on SERPs.
Social Media
Shared in small bites, the information on your CPD can give you the chance of creating an endless amount of social media posts! Our advice, however, is to make sure that you are delivering value. Not every slide of your CPD can become a social post so, have a thought, and assess which parts of your CPD are worth tweeting about.
Slightly change each post depending on the platform so it feels personalised and targeted!
#7 Continue the Conversation
All these post-CPD interactions should create some engagement and, most often than not, will get people talking to you about your CPD through multiple channels. It is crucial that you continue the conversation and that none of those leads falls through the cracks.
If you are struggling to keep up with your leads, software with automated features can be a lifesaver.
Set Yourself a Task Queue
On HubSpot, for example, you can create tasks that are associated with particular contacts on your CRM. These tasks can be scheduled and made recurrent, making sure that you know exactly what the next move in the conversation is and when it is meant to happen.
Tasks can be categorised based on priority, so you can follow up with those leads that are just about to convert first.
Use Snippets
When emailing through HubSpot, you will have access to a snippet feature. Snippets are short pieces of text that can be inserted on emails anytime, saving you time from typing things that come up recurrently, such as pricing, timeline, features, etc.
These snippets include personalisation tokens, that vary depending on the contact that you are talking to and that make it feel more authentic!
Automate a Sequence
Sequences are the sales automation tool within HubSpot and will allow you to enrol contacts into a conversational path. Sequences are set to task series that include manual and automated emails, calls, and LinkedIn interactions. These allow you to have a consistent outreach with your leads while being mindful of the cadence of your interactions.
HubSpot has specific reporting for the interactions triggered through sequences, giving you the chance to assess their performance.
#8 Provide Further Value
A CPD event is not a sales pitch, and neither should the interactions be had after the CPD has been delivered. With attendees being followed up mostly by salespeople, there is a risk for those conversations to become too assertive too soon, pushing a lead away.
Before the sales conversation starts, there are other ways in which you can provide value to the attendees of your CPD.
Share The Script
Sending either the transcripts or the script of your CPD will be incredibly helpful for those attendees that are interested in revisiting your content but do not have time to re-watch the video. Having a physical and text-based copy of the content will allow them to search the part that they are more interested in and share it with their colleagues.
Make sure these documents are appropriately branded and includes some of the questions asked on the Q&A of your CPD session.
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Send More Resources
If you have produced content in the past that you believe the attendees to your CPD could find useful, feel free to send it along. This will position you as an expert in other areas aside from the topic of your CPD, increasing the trust that your audience has on your knowledge.
Past CPD recordings, E-Book, or, simply, blogs, could work as extra resources!
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Create Compelling Infographics
Sending the presentation after the event has been delivered is a common practice, but it is not always the most effective. Slides are meant to be accompanied by a presenter and, as a result, when sent on their own, they can seem empty and even irrelevant.
Concentrate your key point on a few graphics or infographics and send it to your attendees so they can easily refer back to the data on your CPD.
#9 Analyse Your Performance
The software that you are employing to deliver your CPD should allow you to report in different areas. Not only should you know how many people registered to your CPD, but also how many did not register, how many registered but did not attend, how many joined but dropped during the first 5 minutes, etc.
If your CRM is based on HubSpot, looking at integrated video streaming software could help you gather that data.
Bevy
Rather than a video streaming software, Bevy is a virtual event engine. The platform prides itself on providing event organisers with a 360° overview of the activities of their audience. To do that, Bevy syncs each attendee with a contact record and registers every time they RSVP or check into an event.
Because of its integration with HubSpot, Bevy is a good tool to run your CPD events while gathering real-time data.
Hopin
Similar to Bevy, Hopin is an all-in-one event management platform that focuses on improving the experience of attendees from the moment they register until the time they are asked for feedback after the CPD has been delivered.
Because of the data available through Hopin, the post-event segmentation is automatic, helping you address each attendee in the right way.
Demio
If segmentation is your main aim, Demio should definitely be in your lists of software to consider. With HubSpot’s built-in integration, Demio will input into your CRM all the information regarding your audiences’ interactions with your CPD.
This data can be easily leveraged on HubSpot’s custom reporting tool, helping you measure the performance of your CPD events.
#10 Reward Previous Attendance
Even if they do not end up converting, making sure you acknowledge that contact on your database attended a previous CPD event will encourage them to keep up to date with your updates. You could do this by including them into a list where you gather all the contacts on your database that have attended one of your events in the past.
Once you have segmented them, there are some actions that you can take.
Allow for Early Birth Registration
If you are running other events, give them the chance to register early. This will show them that attending your CPDs entails benefits, encouraging them to register and interact with you again.
Allowing for early registration will also generate a feeling of FOMO, prompting them to see you as a successful and busy industry expert.
Send Exclusive Offers
Just like mentioned above, following up those that attended your CPD and that are likely to convert as soon as possible is key! And you could aid that conversion by sending them an exclusive offer or code.
Not only they will see it as a reward for interacting with you, but they will also feel like they are getting a special deal, making them more likely to close the deal sooner.
About Insynth
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.