Your summit wrapped last night. The tech is off, the inbox has finally stopped refreshing every five minutes, and you get to exhale for the first time in months.
That relief is exactly where most community builders quietly step away from the work that actually pays. You spent months building an audience for this event, and the post-summit strategy you run in the next few weeks decides whether that audience turns into real revenue or just sits in a list you never email again.
I talked with Julie C. Butler, known to her audience as the Summit Queen, about what she actually does once the last session ends. Julie has hosted her own summits since 2022, grew her email list by 1,500 people from a single event, and built a business where a serious share of her income traces straight back to the people who showed up. Here’s what she does in the days after, and what I’ve seen work across the summits my own clients run.
What’s the First Move in Your Post-Summit Strategy?
Thank your attendees and speakers first, then start nurturing your new list immediately. The relationships you just built are warmest in the first week, not the fourth.
Julie’s first move after any summit is gratitude, not analytics. She thanks the people who showed up and the people who spoke, because those speaker relationships turn into future podcast guests, collaborations, and referrals you can’t plan for in advance.
Then comes the list. Julie tracked her numbers across two years and found that 42 percent of her income came directly from people who attended one of her summits. If you get those names onto your list and then go quiet, you’re leaving that revenue on the table.
The old rule of seven touchpoints before someone buys doesn’t hold anymore. Julie puts the real number somewhere in the forties. That means the week right after your summit isn’t optional extra credit, it’s the start of the relationship that actually converts.
How Do You Turn Summit Attendees Into Paying Customers?
Start emailing your new list immediately with content that builds trust, then make a clear offer. Warm leads who just watched you deliver value are the easiest sell you’ll make all year.
Consistency is what makes this work. If emails that sell without feeling sleazy isn’t already part of your routine, a summit is the moment to start, because these are people who have already seen you show up.
Don’t be afraid to sell. Julie is direct about this: people don’t buy from brands anymore, they buy from the human who showed up consistently and earned the trust first. If you built a strong email list before your summit even started, the nurture sequence after it is just picking up a conversation you were already having.
Also worth remembering: the size of your list matters less than who’s on it. Julie had almost 1,900 attendees at her first summit. I’ve worked with a client whose summit pulls over 20,000 people, and another in a niche education space who’s thrilled to hit 1,200, and both generate about the same revenue from their summit. The right audience beats the bigger one, every time.
Launch something to that warm list while it’s still warm. A program, a membership, one-on-one spots, even an encore of the summit itself. They’ve heard from you, they’ve watched you in action, and they probably already like you. That’s the moment to ask.
How Do You Get Feedback From Summit Attendees?
Send a short poll inside your email instead of a full survey, and follow up by asking happy attendees for a testimonial. Polls get answered. Long surveys mostly get ignored.
Julie has tried the full survey route and found the response rate weak. People are busy, and a long form asking for their time doesn’t get filled out. What’s worked better lately is a simple poll built right into the email.
That tracks with what I’ve seen too. My team has been testing polls inside Flodesk instead of standalone surveys for client summits, and the lift is real: people can answer in one tap instead of opening a separate form. We’ve also run small giveaways, an Amazon gift card for anyone who fills out the longer survey, to push completion rates up.
Testimonials matter just as much as feedback. If someone had a great experience, ask them to say so, then use that on the registration page for your next summit. Social proof from an actual attendee does more for your next launch than anything you could write about yourself.
Where Should You Keep Nurturing Your Summit Audience?
Move engaged attendees into your own private community, not just your email list. A space you own gives you a second channel to nurture, sell, and collect feedback long after the summit ends.
Most of Julie’s audience and mine run their communities on platforms like Circle, with some on Mighty Networks, School, or Bettermode. Wherever you land, the point is the same: you want a home base you control, not a rented room.
That’s the real argument against building your summit follow-up entirely inside a Facebook group. You don’t own that space, the algorithm decides who sees what, and you’re building your business inside someone else’s platform. If you’re weighing private communities against Facebook groups for this exact reason, that decision matters more after a summit than almost any other time, because it’s where your best new leads are about to land.
Whatever platform you choose, use it for what a full inbox survey can’t do well: real conversation, testimonials in context, and a place to tease your next launch without it reading as one more sales email.
What Should You Do With Your Speakers After the Summit?
Keep the relationship going past the thank-you email: give your speakers a dedicated space to connect, and say yes when they ask you to speak on their summit too.
On my team, we built what we call a speaker lounge, a private space just for the people who spoke at a summit. It started as a practical thing, a place to hand out swipe copy and social graphics outside the mass email blast. Then something better happened: the speakers started talking to each other. That connection made them promote harder, not because we asked them to compare notes, but because they had real accountability with each other.
Julie is trying something similar for her current summit. Instead of live expert panels, she’s running three separate networking sessions for her 50 speakers, timed around different time zones. Her past live panels were popular for a reason that had nothing to do with the audience questions: the speakers built relationships with each other on stage, even while answering questions for someone else.
The visibility runs both directions. Being a speaker on someone else’s summit builds your authority just as much as hosting your own does, even when it doesn’t move your email list much. People remember your face, and the more consistently they see it, the more they treat you as the expert in your corner of this work.
Julie plans about six months out for each summit and has skipped a year entirely when life got in the way. That’s worth remembering if you’re comparing yourself to anyone hosting two summits a year. There’s no required frequency, just enough runway to do it without burning out the rest of your business.
Try This Prompt
If you just wrapped a summit and you’re staring at a list of new names with no plan yet, here’s a prompt that gets you moving.
“I just finished hosting a virtual summit for [type of community] with [number] attendees. Here’s what I’m offering next: [describe your program, membership, or one-on-one offer]. Based on the approach of thanking attendees and speakers first, starting a nurture sequence built on trust before the pitch, and surveying for feedback with a quick poll, draft me a 7-day email nurture sequence for my new summit subscribers that ends with an invitation to [offer]. Give me a subject line and a one-line summary of what each email covers.”
It drafts the outline. You still know your audience better than any AI does, so adjust the tone and the offer to match what’s true for you.
Your Summit Isn’t the Win. What You Do After It Is.
The summit itself is the visible part, the thing people congratulate you on. But the summit was never the business. It’s the moment that hands you a list of people who just watched you deliver, and what happens in the weeks after decides whether that moment turns into anything real.
Thank the people who showed up. Nurture the ones who are still watching. Give your speakers a reason to stay close. None of it is complicated. Most of it just requires you to keep showing up after the applause stops.
That’s the part almost nobody talks about, and it’s the part that actually pays.
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More Like This
Listen: Engagement Over Numbers: Why Quality Beats Quantity Every Time. The case for a smaller, right-fit audience over a bigger one, which is exactly what Julie’s summit numbers back up.
Watch: The Contributor Goldmine: Why Your Community Needs a System (Like, Yesterday!). More on building real systems for the people who show up for you, speakers included.
Watch: Your First 10 Members Matter More Than Your First 100. Why the first wave of engaged people matters more than the total count, on your list or in your community.
Listen: Why Your Facebook Group is Failing: Build a Real Community That Thrives. The deeper case for owning your nurture space instead of renting one.
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coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
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