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020. (Part 2) To Summit or Not to Summit? Answering Your Questions About The Creative Future Summit

• Yevgeniya Davarashvili

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This episode is part two of my Summit BTS series, where I dive deep into your burning questions about planning and running the Creative Future Summit.

From promotion and marketing to handling affiliates and feedback, I share everything I learned and what I'll do differently next time. If you're considering hosting your own event or just curious about the behind-the-scenes details, this episode is packed with valuable insights and lessons. Tune in to get all your questions answered and more!

Here are the questions covered in this episode: 

  • (03:15) Why did I decide to create another summit?
  • (05:11) How did I juggle managing the event, work and being a mom?
  • (08:05) What aspects of the summit did I outsource and what will I outsource next time? 
  • (13:08) How did I approach sponsorship for the summit and what role did they play in the event success?
  • (14:13) What were the marketing strategies and tools used to promote the summit?
  • (23:18) What affiliate promotion strategies work best for driving signups and engagement?
  • (27:02) How did I segment my marketing efforts to target different audience demographics and which segments responded the best?
  • (28:48) How did I track the success of my marketing campaigns? 
  • (29:31) What tools did I use to plan, promote, and run the summit? 
  • (33:16) What was my favorite part of the summit and what was the favorite part for the audience based on the feedback you received?
  • (37:14) Which sessions, activities, or features received better than usual feedback from attendees?
  • (38:46) How effective were the different engagement activities, and what would you add or remove next time?
  • (41:05) How did I track feedback from your attendees and speakers?
  • (42:23) Do I already know what I definitely won't do next time?
  • (42:52) What are the key takeaways, suggestions, or lessons learned from this summit?
  • (46:38) What's next? Will I run the Creative Future Summit again, or was it a one time thing? And would I consider running any other events?

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Hello there. Welcome back to the podcast. This episode is part two of my Summit BTS series, where I share with you the ins and outs of planning and running my first-ever virtual event called the Creative Future Summit that took place in May 2024.

Last week, I shared some personal reflections and behind the scenes of organizing the summit, pitching my speakers, and running it. I shared about the results, the numbers, but in this episode, I'm going to be answering some specific questions from my audience all about promotion, marketing, affiliates, what I love most about the summit, and what I'll be doing differently next time. It's going to be super fun.

If you are curious about the questions I'll be answering, then I encourage you to check out the timestamps in the episode description and the show notes so you can just go and jump to whichever question you want to learn more about. Otherwise, let's get started.

Before I get into the first question, I do want to say that I'm going to try not to repeat myself too much with what I shared in part one of this series because I received a lot of questions from my audience and I do want to keep the answers focused on these questions. So if you are curious about my reflections about my summit experience as a whole, I really encourage you to listen to part one of this series as well, whether now or later, whatever you prefer.

When I was wrapping up my summit, I asked my summit community, as well as my email list and my Instagram audience, whether they had any questions for me about my summit experience. I ended up receiving over 50 questions, which is awesome, but I'm conscious that we don't want to be here forever. So I had to kind of organize them and merge some of the questions and group them into different categories. Here are the topics we're going to be focusing on in this episode: First, we're going to look at some general summit questions, then I'm going to dive into promotion and marketing, then affiliates, engagement and feedback, and finally, lessons learned and future improvements. So let's get started with the general summit questions that kind of didn't fit into any of the other categories.

Why did you decide to create another summit? From the outside, they all seem the same. Same topics, same speakers. What inspired you to create the Creative Future Summit?

I actually went into detail about how the idea of the Creative Future Summit came about. And I know I said earlier that I'm going to try not to repeat myself, but this is a really great introductory question. So I'm bending my own rules here. It's true that there are a lot of summits out there, not just in the creative industry, but in general. And I personally think that each summit brings its own angle. They have a specific focus and a specific audience to target. I feel like the reason why we feel that it's getting a little repetitive with all of the different summits is because as your experience grows as a designer and as a business owner, those summits are just not as relevant for you anymore. You're not their target audience anymore.

After speaking at some of the summits myself, I realized that there aren't really many summits or virtual events where we talk about the future, the changes happening in our industry, and ways to innovate and experiment as creative business owners. I wanted to fill in that gap and create an event that will discuss hyper-relevant topics, will be relevant to designers of all levels, and also be relevant year after year. AI was the perfect kick in the butt for me to finally make it happen because it completely disrupted the industry and I just had to act on it ASAP. I went into it totally aware that the industry is probably a little over summits and AI was a love it or hate it kind of topic. So it was definitely a risk, but I am super happy that I took the plunge.

How did you juggle managing the event, work, and being a mom?

I dedicated three months to planning the summit, and during this period I didn't take on any new clients. I won't say that this is the only way or the correct way of doing it, but based on my physical and mental capacity and considering I don't work full time, I have a 3-year-old, and I am working on not working outside of my office hours, all these things played a role in my decision. That does mean that I had to tap into my savings account and take on that risk, but it was a conscious decision, a family decision really. Sometimes you do have to take those risks in your business journey to see what will come out on the other end.

Of course, I did do some small work-related bits here and there. I think I even had a design intensive with a past client during that time. I also took on a couple of discovery calls and I actually closed two new projects that were scheduled to start in May after the summit. But I would say that about 90 percent of my time was dedicated to summit planning only.

During the running of the summit, my husband took the parenting reins, so to speak, because I was in the office until 11 PM, midnight all week. I'm based in Europe and most of my summit community and speakers were in the U.S. and Australia, so the schedule was all over the place. He was the one picking her up, feeding her, putting her to bed. Then I would get home past midnight, do the morning routine with my toddler, drop her off at nursery, and do it all over again. Physically, it was really hard. I knew it was going to be exhausting, but I didn't know how much of a toll it would take on me. For the two weeks after the summit, I was completely exhausted, and it took me almost a month and a half to get back to my normal energy level and start performing as I used to pre-summit.

I think I mentioned in part one that I'm super introverted and my social batteries deplete quickly. Four days with five to six hours of live interaction each day was just a lot for me personally. But it's also part of taking risks, challenging yourself, and pushing your own boundaries so that you can get the reward in the end.

What aspects of the summit did you outsource and what will you outsource next time?

I outsourced the video and audio editing to my podcast team. For the paid ticket holders, I had a separate podcast with 16 additional interviews and my editing team took care of that. For video, my speakers submitted edited video presentations, so I didn't need to do any major editing there. I would add a little introductory title and animation at the beginning of each presentation to make it more on brand. I also had two or three video interviews instead of pre-submitted presentations with some of my guests, and my team edited those as well.

I hired a web developer on Fiverr to help me take my Figma designs for the registration and Growth Pass pages and bring them over to Showit. These were bigger and longer pages, so I didn't want to spend a lot of time on those. For all the other pages, like the speaker info page, schedule, and presentation pages, I ended up designing those myself.

Next time, I'd like to either start designing and developing way in advance myself or outsource the whole development part. The development took a lot of time and ended up being a challenge. I also hired someone to help me create some Instagram filters for my summit promo, which I'll talk about later in the episode.

Finally, I initially hired a tech VA to help me out with various things, but a month in I ended up canceling our contract simply because I was not organized enough to outsource efficiently and it just ended up being a waste of resources. I wanted to outsource scheduling all my emails, setting up all the redirects, uploading the speaker info, all those things. When you are launching a summit, there are a lot of things that you could outsource, but I didn't have all the processes in place to hand over these tasks to the VA and I was still figuring things out as I went.

Now that I've been through the process myself and I know where I wasted most of my time, I think the top five tasks that I will outsource in the future are:

  1. Customer support: Now I know the issues that people ran into and I have templates for all the answers, so this can easily be outsourced or maybe even automated.
  2. Speaker onboarding: From the moment the speaker agrees to participate, I would send them an agreement and onboard them. This can be easily outsourced and maybe even automated.
  3. Uploading speaker presentations and updating presentation pages: This needs to be done manually for every single speaker, and it took me so much time. Since it's a repetitive task dealing with data, this can be outsourced as well.
  4. Tech and setting up timers and redirects: Ensuring that all the links are correct and all the redirects are working. It's not super time-consuming, but it takes a lot of mental power because you keep checking multiple times to ensure it's working. This can be outsourced.
  5. Creating promo graphics for the summits: Especially for all the speakers and presentations. Using the templates I design, but just repeating for every single speaker and presentation. This is another repetitive task that takes a long time.

Additionally, I would also outsource uploading and scheduling all the promo emails and checking that all the links in the emails, all the formatting, and tagging work as they should. I didn't end up writing promo emails in advance this time around, so that's not something I could really outsource, but I hope that next time I'll be more organized and able to get extra help there.

How did you approach sponsorships for the summit and what role did they play in the event’s success?

Unfortunately, I didn't have any sponsors for the summit this time around. Honestly, I'm kind of bummed and disappointed that I didn't make time for it because I think I could have landed two or three great sponsors for this event. Sponsors are a big responsibility and commitment, and I think I had some nerves around that, maybe some imposter syndrome with this being my first event. But also I just had so many things to do and figure out, it wasn't something I was ready to commit to.

However, now that I saw the success of my first event and I know how to do it, I will definitely be pitching and inviting sponsors for future events.

Promotion and Marketing

Can you break down the marketing strategies and tools used to promote the summit? Which ones were the most effective and which ones didn't perform as well?

Generally speaking, we can break it down into two main categories: in-house marketing and affiliate marketing. In-house marketing includes strategies I did myself through email content and other channels. Here, I would say that email marketing worked best for me. My emails generally have a pretty high open rate of about 45 to 55 percent and a good conversion rate. However, I was a little worried because I fell off the wagon of emailing my list regularly for a couple of months before. So I was worried that I didn't have enough time to reconnect with my audience and create a strong nurture sequence to warm them up to the summit.

Nevertheless, I wanted to ensure that I create a personalized experience for my email list during this promo period. I had tons of different sequences and tags. During the promo period, I think I had a total of 42 emails written. Obviously, you did not receive 42 emails from me during the promo. All of those emails were across different sequences and actions, whether you checked out but didn't purchase, registered but didn't upgrade, or abandoned your cart. I aimed to customize the customer journey.

The main feedback for myself here, what I would do differently next time, is to aim to have all the emails drafted and scheduled way in advance. I had all the automations set up, but the promo emails during that two-week period leading up to the summit, I ended up writing them on the day they were supposed to be sent. This is just how my brain works. I would love to be a batch gal who can come up with awesome ideas well in advance, but my best content and ideas come at the last minute.

In terms of content marketing, I shared a lot of behind-the-scenes on my Instagram. I shared sneak peeks so people knew what was coming. I like this kind of marketing where you slowly warm up the audience by showing how you're creating a product or an offer before you even get to market it. But my engagement on Instagram decreased over the last year and my reach is low considering my audience size. Despite this, I decided to share, be vocal, be open, engage in conversations, and just show up.

I showed up a lot in my stories because it's one of my favorite mediums. It's quick and easy and doesn't need much editing. However, considering my problem with low engagement, that probably wasn't the right approach. Looking back, I wish I created more long-term content, focused more on reels, and created more carousel content, basically content that had a better chance of performing and wouldn't disappear within 24 hours.

I also set up some automation through ManyChat where you could write the word "future" and that would send you a link to sign up to the waitlist and get you into a short sequence. I would continue doing this because it's an automation that saves time. I created some Instagram filters for the summit promo, which I'll discuss more later. The branding for the Creative Future Summit was unique and different from my personal branding. The filters helped add a visual cue to my stories, making them more recognizable and memorable, and let the speakers and attendees engage with them.

I also spent about $100 on Instagram ads, but I turned them off within a day because it was a panic decision rather than a strategic, well-thought-out move. It was during a promo lull where nothing was happening and I thought ads would help, but that wasn't the right approach.

In terms of affiliate marketing, speakers automatically become affiliates of the summit and get 40 percent commission on ticket sales made through their links. They are asked to promote at least once via email and once via social media. I'll go into more detail about the effectiveness of affiliate promotion in another question. I also invited additional guests to join as affiliates, including experts who participated in the secret podcast and the Lunch & Learns, and some friends in my network. In total, I had about 30 affiliates, 21 of whom were speakers, and they brought in nearly $9,500 in extra revenue.

There are definitely plenty of things I wish I'd done more of. Looking back, I think marketing and promotion were my weakest link, which is a little embarrassing considering how much I love marketing and how much I praise my marketing skills. But I think it's because I was too busy and overwhelmed with admin, planning, and organization.

Next time, I will start promoting way sooner, book podcast interviews to share about the summit, share more content on different platforms, and not only focus on Instagram. There are a lot of things that can be improved when it comes to marketing, but I need to be more organized and free up my time by outsourcing so I can focus on marketing and promotion.

What affiliate promotion strategies worked best for driving signups and engagement?

I had 30 affiliates sign up, 21 of whom were speakers with an obligation to promote. They were asked to promote once via email and once via social media to be eligible for their 40 percent commission. Judging by the results, speakers with the most loyal email audiences, similar to my target audience for the summit, performed best. Interestingly, social media size did not play as big a role as I thought. I also saw a correlation between the number of emails a speaker would send about the summit and their results.

In terms of numbers, the best-performing affiliate earned about $1,800, the second best around $1,000, and the third best just over $850. The Pareto principle applies here: 20 percent of the speakers drive 80 percent of the results, which is why some hosts bring the same well-performing speakers over and over again. They need those revenue-generating affiliates to ensure the event is profitable.

However, speakers who do not bring sales are not worthless. They may have added leads to the list and contributed tremendous value to the event. Not every single affiliate generates revenue for the summit. Next time, I'll probably ask speakers to send two emails instead of one as a minimum, where at least one email is fully dedicated to the summit, and a second email where the summit gets a mention in the newsletter. Also, I'll create more speaker-specific content, like short videos around their presentation, to encourage speakers to share about the event even more.

Additionally, I want to build my relationship with my affiliates by connecting with each speaker one-on-one to see how I can support them individually. I did a good job of keeping my affiliates updated through emails and the Slack community, but I could have done better at reaching out individually.

How did you segment your marketing efforts to target different audience demographics and which segments responded the best?

I'll answer this in terms of email marketing because that's where I had the most segmentation. The main segmentation groups I had in my email marketing platform were Summit Waitlist, Free Ticket Registrations, Summit Ticket Upgrades, Speakers, Not Interested in Summit but Want to Stay on the List, Abandoned Cart, Clicked on Summit Link but Didn't Register for Early Bird Price, and Full Price.

I had four automations running: Abandoned Cart Sequence with a 30 percent conversion rate, Free Ticket Registration Workflow that led into a ticket upgrade, Workflow for those who purchased a Growth Pass, and Post-Summit Workflow for those with a free ticket giving them a last chance to upgrade before the summit closed.

I'm pretty happy with the setup I had during the summit promo for email marketing. The only thing I wish I'd done better is the pre-promo nurturing sequence before the summit began. I didn't have a chance to provide value and nurture my email list before going into promo mode.

How did you track the success of your marketing campaigns, and what metrics did you find most useful?

This is a great question and something I wish I'd done better. Besides my email marketing, affiliate promo, and social media analytics, I didn't track much else and don't have a lot of specific data to rely on. With my next event, I want to make sure I create unique links so I can clearly track the performance of each activity and its conversion. Honestly, for me, this is a bummer and definitely a missed opportunity. Don't be like me, track everything.

What tools did you use to plan, promote, and run your summit?

For summit planning, I used Notion to plan and organize all the moving pieces of the summit, all the to-dos, and all the speaker info. I used Content Snare to collect info from my speakers, which then populated into my Notion database, and Moxie, which is my current CRM, to set up official speaker agreements. For speaker updates, I set up a Slack channel for easy and quick communication. I used MailerLite as my main email marketing platform.

For running the summit, I had a Circle community where the summit took place. I upgraded to the top tier to stream directly inside the community, which was expensive but saved me a lot of time and simplified the process. The presentations were hosted on Vimeo and embedded on my website, which is on Showit. I signed up for Deadline Funnel to set up timers and redirects for the presentation pages. All the Growth Pass assets were hosted on ThriveCart Learn, and the private podcast was hosted on BeCast. I used ProofSource to add social proof to my registration page and Formaloo to collect feedback from speakers, attendees, and non-attendees after the summit. I used Noota to write transcripts for the presentations, and ChatGPT to create recaps and action tasks for each presentation.

Engagement and Feedback

What was your favorite part of the summit and what was the favorite part for the audience based on the feedback you received?

Personally, I loved all the new connections I made with the speakers. I got to meet and learn from so many people, including those I've looked up to in the industry. Networking and making connections was one of my favorite parts. Networking is such an integral part of my business growth, and this summit helped me 10x it. I have a fond memory of the last day of the summit during the closing call, where people shared the sweetest, most encouraging, and kind things about their experience.

Based on audience feedback, the favorite part was the unique angle of the summit. Many people said it was refreshing to see something new and different. They loved how practical it was and that it wasn't just based on theory. They also appreciated the diverse speakers and new faces. Some commented on how present I was throughout the event, though a few mentioned it might have been a bit too much.

Which sessions, activities, or features received better than usual feedback from attendees?

AI topics, especially those that were practical, got the most engagement and positive feedback. Any session showing practical application performed well. Lunch & Learns, although limited to paid ticket holders, had great attendance and feedback. The AI design competition encouraged people to try AI and experiment, which was rewarding.

How effective were the different engagement activities like Q&A sessions, bingo, and Lunch & Learns? Was the extra audio podcast needed, and what would you add or remove next time?

Q&A sessions were awesome, despite the effort to go live with multiple speakers each day. It made it easier for the speakers and more engaging for attendees. Bingo was super fun and an easy way to add some light engagement. The audio podcast added extra content for paid ticket holders, but only about 8 percent listened to it, so it may not have been worth the extra effort.

Next time, I would focus on more practical and interactive sessions like Lunch & Learns and consider dropping or revamping networking and coworking sessions, which had low attendance.

How did you track feedback from your attendees and speakers?

I had three feedback surveys: one for attendees, one for speakers, and one for non-attendees. The non-attendee survey was sent to email leads who checked out the registration page but didn't convert. The attendee and speaker surveys were sent out after the summit. I also checked in daily in the community to ask attendees about their takeaways from the previous day and their overall experience.

Lessons Learned and Future Improvements

Do you already know what you definitely want to do next time?

I won't be doing it all by myself. I'm undecided about the additional podcast. I won't sleep on sponsors again. It was a missed opportunity, and I want to change that next time.

What are the key takeaways, suggestions, or lessons learned from this summit?

One of the biggest lessons I learned during the pitching process is that the answer is always no until you ask. Don't be scared of pitching people, even if they seem outside your comfort zone. Don't be afraid of tapping into your personal network and asking for connections or referrals.

In terms of summit planning and running, be mindful and prioritize your capacity. Make decisions based on what you are and aren't capable of. Know what you want from your summit and how it fits into your offer map. Plan the post-summit experience for new leads better.

What's next? Will you run the Creative Future Summit again, or was it a one-time thing? Would you consider running any other events?

I am planning to run the Creative Future Summit again next year with adjustments based on my experience and industry changes. I'm also planning a different summit focused on marketing for creatives in the fall of 2024. It's going to be exciting with new tricks, ideas, and experiments.

That's a wrap on this Q&A episode and my short series of behind-the-scenes of my summit experience. I hope you got your questions answered and found value in these episodes. If you have more questions or want to share your thoughts or feedback, please reach out to me via email, DM on Instagram, LinkedIn, or threads. I always try to be as real, honest, and transparent with my content, and I hope these episodes gave you valuable nuggets to take away if you're planning your own event soon. Thank you for tuning in, and I will catch you next time, my friend. Bye for now.