Following up with attendees after a show whether its via email, app, by phone or other means is very important to get post-event feedback and to strengthen the relationship.

It is important to know your audience to determine the best way to stay in touch during and after an event. Younger attendees might be more likely to check email, social media or an app for information, for example.

As every planner knows, the work doesn’t stop when the last attendee leaves — it’s what happens next that truly elevates an event. Whether it’s a 100-person or 100,000-attendee event, if the connections made and leads generated aren’t followed up appropriately and in a timely manner, they are in danger of being lost altogether.

However, the nature and size of an event can make some types of post-show follow-up impractical and others impossible. If it’s a large event such as the Automotive Aftermarket Product Expo (AAPEX), with 45,000 attendees, 2600 exhibitors and 1300 journalists, calling those who attended isn’t going to happen.

On the other end of the spectrum, Emily Lane, director of experience and engagement for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), has a myriad of follow-up options available because her primary target audience is 56: the governor-appointed chief information officer for each state plus the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

NASCIO’s mission is to advance government excellence through trusted collaboration, partnerships and technology leadership. With such a relatively small number of primary members, Lane could decide to call each of those 56 CIOs, or she could mail them each a personal letter. Such a targeted audience offers many customizable options.

NASCIO also has an additional membership segment of about 235 private sector partners and corporate providers of technology to state governments: companies such as Accenture, Deloitte, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Dell, IBM and smaller boutique companies, plus a small number of nonprofits. Direct mail to the 56 CIOs plus the private sector contingent is easily within reach.

Before email began its meteoric surge in the mid-to-late 1990s, direct mail had been such a frequently used marketing tool that it was commonly and unflatteringly referred to as ‘junk mail.’ However now that everyone’s inboxes are flooded by unsolicited email and text messages, direct mail has risen in effectiveness and stature.

Underneath those private sector companies, NASCIO has an additional 4000+ recipients which makes email the most practical communication tool. NASCIO’s website is another effective source of frequent and valuable communication. In September of 2025 alone there were three news articles published plus two downloadable tutorials.

NASCIO also stages two live events a year: a mid-year conference held in the spring and an annual conference, held this year in Denver, that just took place this fall. The goal of both is to facilitate relationship building, peer learning and collaboration among members.

The annual conference also included an awards dinner which recognized state technology projects selected by NASCIO’s members. The judging process is yet another member-engagement tool. Education sessions — often, case studies about issues SCIOs are facing, and solutions states have found — are also included at the conferences.

Although conferences provide many networking and relationship-building opportunities, Lane sees them as just one piece in a much bigger offering.

Lane adds that NASCIO’s community of members functions as an informal discussion board. Once someone registers for a conference, they’re looped in, and she makes sure they have the necessary credentials to access all available information, including practical ways to keep the connections made at the conference alive, and how to learn more about the issues that were discussed. She and her team pay attention to the discussions happening among their membership, select topics that seem to be of current interest and host webcasts that dig deeper into those specific issues.

Since CIOs operate in a very digital world, often that’s through mass email, but she also sends targeted communications after the conference, including conference recaps and a roster of everyone who attended. There are also monthly forum and issue calls, all virtual.

The core of the message is, “You probably met people while you were at the conference. Here’s how to keep in contact with them.”

New members are then folded into all the association’s non-conference communication, including various ways to remain engaged.

Lane emphasizes the importance of having a cohesive strategy in place that views conferences as only part of the complete membership experience, instead of stand-alone events.

“Seeing it holistically has been the best way for us to get people engaged and keep them that way.”

Mark Bogdansky, vice-president of trade shows and community engagement for The Auto Care Association (ACA), is on the opposite end of the membership spectrum; actually, he covers the whole spectrum.

ACA and the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) co-own AAPEX, where exhibitors display the latest products, services and technologies used to keep the world’s 1.4 billion vehicles on the road. Held the first week of November each year in Las Vegas, it represents a market valued at nearly $435 billion in the U.S. and $2.3 trillion globally. It’s one of the fastest-growing conferences in the world. The attendees are there in order to follow up and network with each other and learn — whether it’s from each other or from speakers.

For obvious reasons, email is the only realistic means of following up with that many attendees. Exhibitors are a much smaller target market, not to mention a highly valuable one. Bogdansky and his staff make sure to talk to all the exhibitors at the show, and a detailed exhibitor post-show survey is sent right after the show.

Reporters, journalists and online influencers are another valuable commodity. The free publicity that press coverage provides is invaluable, and Bogdansky makes sure he remains in touch with them all year long through email, monthly media updates and quarterly newsletters.

ACA maintains a regular email cadence to all show participants: attendees, exhibitors and media during the course of the year. In addition to seamless email connection, ACA also has a blog focused on what’s happening within the industry, written to appeal to anyone associated with AAPEX. Quarterly newsletters are also emailed to attendees and exhibitors.

”It’s always key to follow up with our audience to make sure we’re getting the most current read on what they’re interested in. That enables us to produce events and provide the education at those events our audience is looking for. I have an excellent team that keeps everything moving,” he says.

The Speciality Equipment Market Association (SEMA) is a trade association for companies that make products for personalizing and enhancing vehicles in appearance, performance, convenience and safety, and its annual show takes place in Las Vegas in concurrence with AAPEX. The two shows cooperate and boost one another’s attendance, and together, draw an audience 160,000.

ACA has other smaller, stand-alone events during the year. ACA owns Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week. Held every year in Dallas, the show, attracts about 3000 attendees. In the spring, ACA hosts about 1000 attendees for Connect. Other events are held throughout the year for 300 or 400 attendees. Regardless of size, however, there’s a post-show survey following every ACA event.

In the fall, another annual event takes place, in this case for a few hundred ACA volunteer leaders, committees and community boards. Every other year, that event is tied into a fly-in visit to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. where end-to-end meetings are conducted throughout the visit. Afterward, ACA’s government affairs delegation follows up directly with lawmakers’ offices about the topics and concerns unearthed during the member meetings.

Within ACA there are 10 separate sub-group communities based on members’ roles in the industry, focused primarily on education. “For example, we have a community for shop owners. We have a community for people who specialize in filter manufacturing. We have a community for manufacturers’ reps who work in between two different parts of the supply chain. Wherever someone fits in our supply chain ecosystem, we have a community for them. We represent everyone from the manufacturers who make the parts to the retailers who sell them to the distributors, who in turn sell them to the mechanics, shop owners and technicians,” Bogdansky explains.

These individual communities gather for a few days every year to network and learn from one another. One of the largest of those communities is Women in Auto Care. It holds its own annual conference focused primarily on education near the beginning of the year, but it engages in networking and interactive communication year round through monthly webinars, and virtual networking and mentoring sessions on relevant topics. Each month it hosts Connection Circles, online events which connect participants for professional development and networking with their peers.

Bogdansky says, “The point of putting on these meetings, of having and attending them and all of that is to educate and meet people, and if you’re not following up with the people you’ve met, whether they’re new connections or people already know, that pretty much defeats the purpose of having meetings in the first place.”

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s (SIOP) membership falls in between NASCIO’s small association numbers and ACA’s huge totals. The 9000 members of SIOP consist primarily of consultants to businesses in the field of industrial organizational psychology, but it also includes academics, often professors of college psychology programs, and a large number of students in undergraduate, master’s and doctorate programs, explains David Feldner, CEO of SIOP.

SIOP hosts two events a year; one is its annual conference held in the spring which rotates from city to city. While SIOP has utilized some cities more than once, Feldner likes to move the event around to locations from the East Coast to the Central U.S. and the West Coast to maximize accessibility. This year’s annual conference took place in the spring in Denver, CO and in 2026, it will be held in New Orleans, LA.

More than half of SIOP’s 9000 members attend the annual conference each year, including sponsors, exhibitors, students, researchers, academics and practitioners. When someone signs up for a pre-conference workshop, a research community forum or one of SIOP’s consortia, they get an individual survey for the particular program in which they participated, and all attendees receive a survey. SIOP also has an app that conference attendees can use to reread or download any of the presentations.

“We want them to remain engaged and involved with the organization throughout the course of the year,” Feldner emphasizes.

Since SIOP has members’ attention at the conference, he and his staff use that opportunity to help promote and market other programs and services the organization provides, such as webinars and other resources, some fee-based and some free of charge.

Feldner’s goal is for SIOP to be seen not just as a conference, but as a year-round resource providing services to help members better their career — wherever their career currently is, whether they’re a student, a professor or a consultant.

To that end, Susan Rogers, CAE, business development manager for SIOP, stays in touch with sponsors, advertisers and exhibitors all year long. Aside from the static survey, she makes personal connections with each of the company’s representatives and builds a relationship with them. Her goal is for them to see the SIOP conference as a valuable and highly desirable conference so they will return the following year.

“I believe in developing long-term relationships with our partners. Communicating with exhibitors and sponsors after the event is just as important, if not more so, than prospecting and preparing for the event. It’s important for us to be interested in what went well for them and what didn’t go so well, and then take steps to improve our products and services for the next event based upon the feedback we receive,” she says.

SIOP’s other annual event is The Leading Edge Consortium, or LEC for 200 to 300 attendees. It is specifically targeted to just practitioners, either consultants or internal industrial organizational staff from companies such as Microsoft and Meta, and focuses on topics that the LEC committee has drawn from previous participants’ assessments. The committee chair and co-chairs select an area of the country that will draw the largest audience based for a particular topic.

Rogers will survey attendees and follow up individually with sponsors and exhibitors after that event as well. She will also send targeted emails with information about webinars and other programming based on their previous demonstrated interests.

No matter the form of communication planner utilize, follow-up is paramount for creating important relationships with attendees and helping to guarantee they stay engaged year-round. AC&F