Chapter 10 of 12
Follow-up and conversion
The event's second half, where the pipeline is actually made or lost. Sequences are drafted before the event (chapter 06), personalised after it.
Why speed is the whole game
The rigorous evidence (research-foundations §Benchmarks): HBR's audit of 2,241 firms found average first response to a lead was 42 hours and 23% never responded at all — while firms responding within an hour were ~7× more likely to qualify the lead (HBR, 2011). The MIT/InsideSales study behind the "5-minute rule" shows qualification odds collapsing within minutes-to-hours of contact (2007–2011). Event-specific vendor data says the same thing louder: conversion likelihood decays across days, and teams that launch a pre-built sequence immediately convert at multiples of teams that start writing a week later. Hence the SLAs:
| Tier | First touch | Then |
|---|---|---|
| A | ≤24h, personal, references the conversation + fulfils the promise | 1:1 persistence every 2–3 days until meeting booked or explicit no |
| B | ≤72h | 3–4 touches over 3 weeks, each adding value; breakup touch at T+21 |
| C | ≤1w | single recap + subscribe path; nurture |
| Promises | per due date; ledger 100% clear by T+7 | — |
| Meeting no-shows | same-day gracious reschedule | 2 attempts, then nurture |
| Dinner/workshop no-shows + registered-non-attenders | T+1 "you were missed" + materials + 1:1 offer | they are still leads — treat as tier B |
Practically: hot-lead notes leave the venue the same evening (drafted at the debrief, sent before dinner), and the follow-up owner's first two days home are protected calendar.
The sequence craft
- First line references the actual conversation — the session, the table topic, the problem they described, the photo. "Great to connect at X" is the delete-line. Personalised-first-line evidence: replies multiply when the note demonstrably could only have been written to this person.
- Fulfil before you ask. The promised artefact is attached in touch 1; the meeting ask rides on delivery, not before it.
- One CTA per touch. Meetings > artefact > connection, in that order of preference.
- Touch structure for tier B (slots pre-drafted in the pack): T+2 recap + the promised/relevant artefact → T+7 insight (the A2 exec post from chapter 08 earns its keep here) → T+14 invitation (dinner series, workshop, assessment offer) → T+21 polite breakup that leaves the door open.
- Sequences of 4–7 touches out-reply 1–3 touch attempts roughly 3×, and most replies come from follow-ups, not the first email (memo-05) — the breakup touch is not optional politeness, it's where a chunk of the meetings come from.
- Channel mix: email spine + LinkedIn. Connection requests referencing the in-person meeting are accepted at roughly 45% (vs ~30% baseline), and 63% of acceptances happen within 24h — send them the same evening, message within the 48–72h engagement window. Voice notes on warm threads and short personal videos lift replies further (vendor data); physical follow-up is reserved for tier-A exec relationships.
- **What we convert to:** the CEF entry points. Tier A → a Path A/B scoping conversation. Warm-but-early → the workshop or assessment offer (chapter 12's conversion ladder) — a smaller yes that keeps momentum without asking for the engagement.
The 21-day conversion sprint
T+0 → T+21 is run like a delivery sprint, on the pack's board: every A/B lead a row, touches logged, meetings and opps tallied weekly against P2–P4.
- T+7 checkpoint: promise ledger 100% clear; every tier-A has ≥2 touches; meetings-held pace vs P3.
- T+14 audit — "no lead left behind": every A/B row has ≥1 logged touch, gaps assigned same-day; CRM tags (
event_idcampaign) verified. - T+21 close: sequence completions, breakups sent, board tallied into the post-event report; stragglers dispositioned to nurture or disqualified. Nothing rides indefinitely.
Hand-off rules (marketing ↔ sales, INTO-scale)
The documented killer is the context-free lead dump (memo-05: most teams route everything to sales while only a quarter is sales-ready). At INTO the follow-up owner routes: tier A to the exec who met them (with the note + promise attached — never a bare contact), tier B stays with the follow-up owner until a reply warrants exec time, tier C never touches an exec calendar. Every routed lead carries its capture note; if the note can't brief the exec alone, it goes back to whoever captured it.
Calibration (what good looks like)
Warm post-event replies run far above cold baselines — 20–40% reply on well-personalised tier-A/B notes is the published (vendor) range vs ~3–5% cold; meetings held at 60–75% of booked; event-sourced leads convert to opportunity at multiples of any other channel (memo-05, HockeyStack/Vendelux panels). Our own rates, logged per event in the pack, replace these within 3–4 events — that's the point of the template being an instance factory.