Build a Better Experiential Marketing Recap

Your agency spends a lot of time planning and executing activations for clients. Once the event is over, are you tracking the results? Years ago, we saw agencies overthink the post-event recap, requiring ambassadors to fill out dozens and dozens of questions. More recently, we’ve worked with agencies struggling to come up with the right mix of questions that can be quickly, easily and accurately reported by their team. The recap ends up being a quick email of random information from the event professional. Thus, trying to tally data or look for trends across multiple events is challenging. By building a simple but strategic recap form, you'll end up with a gold mine of information to share with your clients.

Build a better recap with these four tips:

1. Tie recaps to events and pre-fill as much information as possible.

We’ve seen systems where you simply click on “recap” and fill it out from scratch. While that functionality may be beneficial for random guerilla events, it’s not a strategic way to handle scheduled events. The system should automatically generate a recap for each event. When an event professional logs in, they should be able to click on that event’s recap. Information like date, time, location and team members should be pre-filled, with the ability to edit it just in case that information changed. This saves time and minimizes discrepancies.

2. Make the recap in responsive design.

Ensure your event management software is mobile-friendly, or at minimum, the recap is responsive. Event professionals can use their phone to log in immediately after the event and fill out information while it’s fresh in their minds.

3. Allow photo uploads to occur after the recap has been submitted.

If an event professional does fill out a recap on their smartphone immediately following the event, they may not have had an opportunity to sort through images and decide which are best to upload and include with the recap. Allowing an ambassador to come back later and upload appropriate images will not hold up getting the initial set of data needed to report to clients.

4. Use check boxes, drop downs or yes/no questions for the first part of the recap.

Make it as easy as possible for an event professional to answer questions with just one or two clicks. An ambassador is more likely to fill out this information since it’s fast and easy to answer. This format also minimizes the chance of error while recapping. You can ask non-required, open-ended questions at the end of the recap. If an event professional doesn’t have time or worthy feedback, they can bypass those questions and finish the recap.

Accepting post-event information via text messages and emails is a recipe for data disaster. By building the right framework to handle your experiential activation programs, you can more easily and successfully capture information from event professionals. If you need help building a better recap, contact our team.

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