If you’re not hosting your own field events as part of your marketing strategy, you should be. When done right, events are the perfect way to engage your prospects and customers. After spending the early part of my career on the event planning side of the house, I know what it takes to host a great event that can accelerate pipeline and drive revenue. What comes along with that knowledge is knowing what to avoid at all costs. I’m going to use an event I recently attended as an example of what NOT to do when hosting a field marketing event.

Don’t do these things:

Mess up the invitation

I was invited via marketing email to a “breakfast roundtable” from a well-known company in the Customer Success space. It hit all the right notes – well-known industry “guru” guest speaker, nice restaurant, and a promise of an interactive and casual discussion.

However, after hooking me with all of this information, the Director-level “sender” then used the phrase “I’ve pasted the details below if you are interested in attending.” You’re trying to get people excited about your event, don’t let your hook include thoughts of document copy/pasting. I powered through and registered anyway.

Tip: Your invitations are the first impression your customers and prospects have of your field marketing event, so make sure it’s a good one. Leverage with your marketing team to put together a beautifully worded invite that sets the right tone from the start!

Confuse your registrants

The week before the breakfast, I received a calendar invitation to the event from the host company. Instead of being a reminder, it was more of a re-invitation asking me to me to “join others” in my field at this breakfast. If the re-invitation wasn’t confusing enough, it was set for the wrong date. Confused on what this was about, I sat on it for a couple of hours. I looked back at the initial invite eventually and thought – it must be another event.

A day later, an updated calendar invitation came through with the correct date. Beyond just invitations, your pre-event communications matters. Your emails leading up to the event can make or break your attendance numbers. People aren’t going to show up if they aren’t sure about the details of your event.

Tip: Personalize your event reminders, include additional calendar invites just in case, acknowledge that your customers and prospects have already RSVP’d. Adding language like “looking forward to seeing you” can go a long way. Last, but certainly not least, check and double check your dates/information before sending anything to potential guests. Preview emails go a long way!

Have no idea who is at your event

At the breakfast, I was greeted with a quick “hello” by one of the host company’s sales reps, but he was immediately consumed in conversation with another prospect that entered at the same time. No one recorded that fact that I showed up. After being ignored by the sales rep, I made conversation with some other guests around the breakfast tables before we eventually sat down.

It wasn’t until that point when a rep from the company (still had no idea what his name was) passed out sheets of peel and stick name tags with a sharpie. We’ve already networked, we’re seated for the roundtable portion, and we’re now writing out our name tags. Something about that flow doesn’t make sense. Also, it’s 2016 – you shouldn’t be hand writing name tags at any marketing event!

As we were all going around the tables introducing ourselves, I noticed the same name tag rep was furiously writing in his notebook. What was he writing? All of our names, companies and drawing a little diagram of where we were seated!

Tip: Event “check-in” is important. You should welcome each attendee to your event, no matter how big or small. Beyond the welcome, you need to accurately record who came to your field marketing event. How else are you going to follow up with attendees? Also, ditch the handwritten name tags. Printing on demand right when guests arrive couldn’t be easier and allows everyone to know who each person is without having to battle bad handwriting.

Send a meaningless follow-up email a week later

Here’s where my cautionary tale gets interesting. Over a week after this breakfast, I was walking home from work when I got a follow-up emailfrom the company that hosted the event.

It had a weird subject line that looked to be inviting me to join a group. In the email, this marketer thanked me for joining the breakfast and had a good call to action to join this group on LinkedIn.

There were a few problems:

1. I had already forgotten about the breakfast. It was over a week later and these days I’m lucky if I can remember what happened earlier in a given week, not to mention what happened over a week ago.

2. The email was sent to another person and I was just BCC’d. It started with a generic “Hi!”, so who knows if I was actually the intended recipient.

3. My VP who did not attend the event, got the same exact email. After reading the email, my VP forwarded his email to me and we went back and forth about all the things wrong with the follow-up. As prospects in their target market, what a horrible impression to leave.

Tip: Timely, personalized follow-up is the best touch point for your guests. It’s also the only way to drive real value from your events in terms of pipeline and revenue. Don’t overlook follow-up and phone it in with a late, generic message. And whatever you do, don’t thank people for coming if they never showed up! “Sorry we missed you” can make it more personal and goes a long way when trying to re-engage those targets.