What to Do With Your Leads After the Event
The event ends on a Friday. By the following Wednesday you're back in your regular work, and the 400 people who opted in for your gift are sitting on your list doing nothing.
Three weeks later you send a promo email and it flops, and you decide the summit audience wasn't very good. The summit audience was fine. Those people met you once, took a free thing, and then heard nothing from you until you asked them for money.
This is the last part of the Get Speaker Ready series, and it's the part with the most money in it. Part four covered the buyers you get on day one. This one covers the buyers you get in month three, and there are usually more of them.
Tag them before you do anything else
Start here, because it takes two minutes and everything else depends on it.
Every person who comes in from a specific event should be tagged with that event. Not "summit," not "lead magnet." The actual event name and the year.
Two reasons. First, it lets you talk to them like people who know where they met you, and "you grabbed my worksheet at the AI Newsletter Summit" lands very differently from "hey there." Second, it's the only way you'll ever know what a speaking spot was actually worth. At the end of the year you can pull that tag and see subscribers, buyers, and revenue from one event. That number is what tells you whether to apply again.
- Opt-ins from your gift
- Buyers of your small offer, and the revenue
- Commission you earned promoting the event
- Buyers of your signature offer from that tag, at 90 days and at 6 months
The first seven days
This is the window where somebody still remembers you, and what you're doing here is proving that the workshop wasn't a one-time thing.
Day one: deliver, and tell them how to use it
The gift arrives, and the email says how long it takes and what they'll have when they're done. Most people write a delivery email that says "here's your download" and stop, and then wonder why nobody uses the thing.
Day two or three: follow up on the gift
Ask whether they used it. Tell them the one mistake people make when they do, and how to avoid it. This email costs you nothing and it's usually the one that gets replies.
Day five: give them one more useful thing
Same topic, no ask. A short story about somebody who did this, or the second thing you would have taught in the workshop if you'd had another ten minutes. You're establishing that being on your list is worth it.
Day seven: make the small offer again
Most of them didn't buy on the page, and that's normal. A lot of people buy on the second or third look, so mention it again plainly, tie it to the problem the gift just showed them they have, and move on.
Weeks two through six: stay on the topic they raised their hand for
Here's where most people lose these subscribers. They finish the welcome sequence and dump everybody into the regular newsletter, which covers whatever the writer felt like that week. Somebody who came in for one specific topic starts getting emails about four other things, and they leave.
Stay on the topic for a while. These people told you exactly what they care about when they opted in, so keep giving them that for the next month or so, and let them get used to hearing from you before you widen out.
This is the Nurture stage of the Creator Growth Flywheel, which is the part of the cycle where somebody decides whether you're worth paying attention to. Attract got them in the door and it's already done. Nurture is what makes the rest possible.
"They told you what they care about when they opted in. Spend the next month talking about that."
Dr. Destini CoppWhen to make the real offer
Somewhere between week three and week six, depending on your price point and how often you email.
The bridge is the thing to get right. You're not switching subjects, you're following the thread that's already running. The workshop showed them a problem, the gift made the problem concrete in their own business, the small offer solved one piece of it, and your signature offer solves the rest of it. Say it in that order and the offer feels like the obvious next step rather than a pitch.
For a lower-priced offer, a straightforward three-email promotion over four days is usually enough. For something bigger, give it a couple of weeks of runway first, then run five to seven emails. And follow up with the people who clicked and didn't buy, because on the bigger offers that's where a real chunk of the sales come from.
The ones who bought on day one are a different list
Don't send your buyers the same emails as everyone else. Somebody who paid you $27 during summit week has already made the decision that most of your list is still thinking about.
Talk to them like customers. Ask how the thing went. Make the next offer sooner, because they've already shown you they buy. This is a small amount of work in your email tool and it's the highest-return segmenting you'll do all year.
What this makes possible next time
There's a loop here worth naming, and it's why I keep pushing speakers to build the whole thing rather than just the gift.
When your spot is set up this way, you know what an event produced for you. So the next time an application opens, you're not guessing about whether it's worth your time, you're looking at a number. And when you promote the next one to your list, you're promoting traffic into your own funnel, so you promote it properly, and the results get better again.
That's how a speaking spot stops being a nice thing that happened and becomes a repeatable channel. It's the same reason I run twelve events a year across both brands, because a system that works once and gets measured is a system you can run again.
Where to start
This is the one piece that can wait until after you've submitted your recording, so if your session is already done, start here. The tagging takes minutes, the first-week emails take an afternoon, and the plan for weeks two through six can be rough as long as it exists before the event opens.
And if you're not on a lineup yet, that's the easier problem to solve. Applications are open across the 2026 and 2027 calendar on both sides of my business, they're free to contribute to, and you keep the subscribers and the commission you earn.
- What a speaking spot is actually worth
- Pick a workshop topic that leads to your offer
- How to pick the free gift for your speaking spot
- Put something to buy behind your free gift
- What to do with your leads after the event (you're here)
Get on a lineup for 2026 or 2027.
Fifteen events across Creator's MBA and twelve HobbyScool summits a year. Free to contribute to, 50% commission on the pass, and every subscriber you bring in is yours.
Apply · Creator's MBA → Apply · HobbyScool →Frequently Asked Questions
Start by tagging them with the event name and year. Then run a first week that delivers the gift with instructions, follows up to ask whether they used it, gives one more useful thing on the same topic, and mentions your small offer again around day seven. After that, stay on the topic they opted in for.
Make the small offer immediately, on the gift delivery page and again in the first week. For your signature offer, somewhere between week three and week six works for most people, depending on price. What matters more than timing is the bridge, because the offer should follow the thread the workshop started.
Because most of them hear nothing after the delivery email until a promotion shows up weeks later. They met you once and took a free thing, so if the next contact is an ask, it reads like it came from a stranger. Staying on their topic for the first month is what prevents it.
Yes, with the specific event name and year rather than a generic summit tag. It lets you reference where they met you, and it is the only way to measure what a speaking spot actually produced in subscribers, buyers, and revenue. That number tells you whether to apply to the event again.
No. Somebody who paid you during the event has already made the decision most of your list is still weighing, so talk to them like a customer, ask how the product went, and make the next offer sooner. Splitting buyers from non-buyers is a small amount of setup with a large return.
