Anyone who has ever organized a big event knows how important it is to invite good guest speakers.
Whether you find yourself at the helm of a conference, convention, graduation, launch, or any other large gathering, your guests’ entertainment is your responsibility.
You are relying on guest speakers to attract interest in advance of the event.
Then, on the big day, you need them deliver an interesting outside perspective, express the significance of the day, and hopefully inspire the audience.
When a guest speaker performs well, it can save a flailing event or be the cherry on top of an already successful ceremony.
But whether they do exceptionally well or not, and regardless of whether you are paying them for their time, it is necessary to thank your guest speaker after their speech.
The best way to do this is with a brief thank you note that expresses how important the event was to you and how their words added to the day.
Not sure how to put this into practice? Here are some sample thank you notes for a guest speaker.
21 excellent messages to write in a thank you note for a guest speaker
- Thank you for your inspiring words at our conference this year. Your speech was the perfect blend of funny and moving, and we have received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback about your address.
- Many thanks for sharing so much of your personal journey with us in your presentation on Friday. You are an inspiration.
- On behalf of the planning committee, I would like to express our gratitude to you for going above and beyond to deliver an inspiring speech at our company’s anniversary party on Sunday.
- My family extends our sincere thanks to you for your beautiful words at the memorial event last weekend.
- When we invited you to speak at our company’s launch party, we were just ticking a box. We weren’t expecting anything like the beautiful and moving talk you gave. You made the event unforgettable, and we couldn’t be more grateful.
- Thank you for sharing your wisdom with our congregation last Sunday.
- Our sincerest thanks for your time and your exceptional speech. Your engaging way of communicating with our audience made a significant impression on our guests and we hope to have the honor of welcoming you back to our events stage sometime soon.
- Thank you for channeling our foundation’s ethos so perfectly at our recent fundraiser. Your carefully researched address and your evident alignment with the values of our mission were a huge hit.
- As soon as you began speaking on Sunday, the board knew we had made the right decision by inviting you to be the guest speaker at our annual conference. Thank you for your time and your inspirational words.
- The gift of being able to truly motivate people is a rare one, but it is abundantly clear that you have it. Listening to you speak to the new recruits on Monday was a treat. I hope to be able to welcome you back to our offices sometime in the near future.
- Thank you for reading the room so perfectly and delivering a speech that struck just the right chord with the conference attendees.
- Dear Ms. Speaker, thank you for talking to our employees about the value of innovative thinking. The feedback on the event was overwhelmingly positive, and your formula for success struck a particular chord. Thank you for taking the time to present at our company’s offices.
- Dear Dr. Riordan, thank you for sharing your expertise with our students at our school’s annual Science Conference. The children enjoyed your address and could not stop talking about it in the days after. We hope to welcome you back to our campus soon.
- Dear Dr. Seamus O’Rourke, the board of Half-Time Holdings Inc. would like to extend our sincerest thanks to you for your excellent speech at our company’s recruitment day. We registered a record-setting level of interest, and we can’t help but attribute some of that to your insightful words.
- Dear Ms. Takahashi, please accept our heartfelt thanks for speaking at our high school graduation. Your words about overcoming the challenges of new beginnings were moving and certainly struck a chord with the class of 2023. We wish you all the best with your own new beginnings.
- Lisa, no words can express how wonderful I think you are. Your speech at my Yoga Studio opening shindig was so beautiful. Your spirit and heart shone through, and everyone who came told me how motivated they felt by your words about the sanctity of the practice.
- Dear old friend, it was so wonderful to see you up on stage expressing your truth. Thank you for agreeing to come share some of your work with me and my students. You certainly made an impression on the class and your words about why we try to discover the unknowable will stay with me for life.
- I don’t know how to thank you, so I will just tell you that I think you are an absolute inspiration! Watching you speak to my company’s board members at the retreat last weekend made me so proud. You are wise beyond your years and your words went down a treat.
- Thank you for so generously agreeing to speak at our charity event. The gift of your inspiring words was deeply appreciated by all who attended.
- The favor you did our school by coming in to talk to our graduating class about developing a personal budget will not be forgotten. Thank you for being so generous with your time.
- On behalf of my family, thank you so much for so kindly offering to talk at our memorial event for our late grandfather. Your accomplishments and contributions to society are an inspiration to us all. To hear you talk so openly about your own challenges and grief was a consolation to everyone in attendance.
Great sample thank you notes for a guest speaker
Well, the rush is over! All that careful planning, designing of invites, scheduling, speaking to caterers, and so on and so forth has resulted in a great day, and you can finally relax.
Or, at least, you can almost relax.
Before you close the cover on the saga of the event you’ve organized, make sure you’ve thanked everyone you need to.
That of course includes the people you’ve invited to speak to your guests.
Thankfully, you don’t need to say much when thanking a guest speaker.
Keep your message concise.
All you need to include is an expression of appreciation, mention of something particularly impressive about the speaker or their speech, and make a concluding comment about how well their words were received.
You can also always say that you hope to welcome them back soon.
If you’re wondering what this kind of message looks like in practice, have a look at these sample thank you messages for a guest speaker.
1. Thank you for your inspiring words at our conference this year. Your speech was the perfect blend of funny and moving, and we have received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback about your address.
This message hits all the key points it is important to include in a thank you note for a guest speaker.
It expresses appreciation for their inspiring words and then compliments something specific about their presentation. It then discusses how much the people in attendance liked the talk.
2. Many thanks for sharing so much of your personal journey with us in your presentation on Friday. You are an inspiration.
This note would work well as an inscription in a thank you card sent alongside flowers. It is not overly expressive, but it conveys genuine appreciation.
3. On behalf of the planning committee, I would like to express our gratitude to you for going above and beyond to deliver an inspiring speech at our company’s anniversary party on Sunday.
Thanking a speaker for “going above and beyond” is a wonderful sentiment to include in the card you send them in the days after the event.
Knowing that you are aware that they did more than just show up will mean a lot to them. Referring to someone’s speech as “inspiring” will also always go down well.
4. My family extends our sincere thanks to you for your beautiful words at the memorial event last weekend.
When writing a thank you note to a guest speaker on behalf of a group of people, you can extend sincere thanks and then offer a brief but sincere compliment about the talk they gave.
You don’t need to do more than this, particularly if the event in question was a personal and emotional one.
5. When we invited you to speak at our company’s launch party, we were just ticking a box. We weren’t expecting anything like the beautiful and moving talk you gave. You made the event unforgettable, and we couldn’t be more grateful.
This is a moving thank you note to send a guest speaker.
If you’ve been searching for a message that conveys genuine gratitude and shows sincere appreciation for a visiting lecturer’s commitment to their craft, look no further.
No one would be disappointed to get this thank you card after giving a presentation.
6. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with our congregation last Sunday.
If the guest speaker you are thanking gave an address in a faith-based setting, you can start with this simple sentiment and embellish it depending on the circumstances in which they spoke.
The best appreciative messages to thank a paid guest speaker
Look, just because someone is being paid for their time doesn’t mean you don’t owe it to them to thank them.
After all, you would still put time into considering how to write an appreciative thank you note for a daycare teacher even though teachers are obviously compensated for their work.
Some people show up for work, do the bare minimum required to get their paycheck, and then go home.
Others go above and beyond every day to improve the lives and situations of those they are around, whether in a professional or a personal setting.
So, if you want to thank a speaker for an exceptional address or for putting their heart and soul into motivating the group you’ve hired them to speak for, don’t hold back.
Here are a few ways you might go about thanking a hired guest speaker.
7. Our sincerest thanks for your time and your exceptional speech. Your engaging way of communicating with our audience made a significant impression on our guests and we hope to have the honor of welcoming you back to our events stage sometime soon.
Someone who has come to an event as a speaker will never be disappointed to hear that their words have made a lasting impression.
After all, no matter how confident a person is, getting up on stage in front of a large audience can be nerve-racking.
Then, if someone has social anxiety or struggles to even think of ways to respond to “what’s up?” in their day-to-day life, getting up on an events stage might feel like a mammoth task.
Whatever someone’s level of self-belief is, no one would be upset to hear that an address they gave was well received. Mentioning that you would be happy to invite them back will act as confirmation that they did a really good job.
This thank you message for a guest speaker would work well in almost any context.
8. Thank you for channeling our foundation’s ethos so perfectly at our recent fundraiser. Your carefully researched address and your evident alignment with the values of our mission were a huge hit.
If you’ve just finished organizing a fundraiser or charity drive, you will want to thank the speaker you invited by telling them how well their words aligned with your organization’s goals.
As anyone who has ever struggled to come up with a good message to write on a donation brick knows, it is hard to find words to fit a charitable setting.
You want to make sure that what you share is as much about the cause as it is about yourself, which means you have to do some research.
Can you tell that the guest speaker you invited took the time to look into exactly what your organization stands for and incorporated these values into their talk? If so, you will want to thank them for the care they put into writing their address.
9. As soon as you began speaking on Sunday, the board knew we had made the right decision by inviting you to be the guest speaker at our annual conference. Thank you for your time and your inspirational words.
If you want to thank a speaker not just personally but on behalf of the board of the organization, institution, or company you are working for, this a great way to go about it.
Mentioning that the board or organizing committee is grateful lets a speaker know that their presentation was widely well received. In other words, that it isn’t just you that liked them!
10. The gift of being able to truly motivate people is a rare one, but it is abundantly clear that you have it. Listening to you speak to the new recruits on Monday was a treat. I hope to be able to welcome you back to our offices sometime in the near future.
What do likeable politicians have in common? Well, more often than not, it is their charisma.
We’re all familiar with people who have that “I can’t look away” quality.
If you were moved by the way the speaker you hired addressed the crowd at your event, tell them so.
We hear the term “motivational speaker” bandied about often. But whether someone has the gift of being able to get underneath people’s skin and inspire them is a big question. In fact, you probably have to experience it to believe it.
That said, if you have experienced it, it would be a shame not to openly compliment a speaker on it.
After all, there are only a few opportunities in life to express the extent of our feelings openly. Writing a thank you card for a baby shower comes to mind, as does writing an anniversary card for friends.
But while these are both personal expressions of emotion, being moved to have an emotional response in a professional setting is rare, which makes it all the more important to tell the speaker how they made you feel.
11. Thank you for reading the room so perfectly and delivering a speech that struck just the right chord with the conference attendees.
Giving a good speech is one thing, but delivering words that resonate with a particular audience is evidence of a different skillset altogether: perceptiveness.
Knowing how to reach specific people and how to adjust the message and delivery of a presentation to make it accessible to any audience is a true gift.
If the guest speaker was able to tweak their address in the necessary places to make it palatable to the people in the room, compliment them on this.
Telling someone you have invited to speak to an audience that they struck just the right chord is the perfect way to express your gratitude to them for going above and beyond.
After all, if a speaker delivered a talk that didn’t gel with the people listening, the audience would likely come away from a conference with a less favorable impression overall. On the flipside, hearing a keynote speech that they really connected with has the power to change their whole experience of the event.
Perfect formal messages to write in a thank you note for a guest speaker
Most of the sample thank you messages included in this list so far are relatively formal. However, there is a level of propriety that some established professionals, politicians, authors, and celebrities expect when receiving written correspondence.
The great thing about formality is that all of us are linguistic chameleons to some extent.
We might spend our time off responding to “what’s good?” from our close friends and then become ultra-formal when choosing a great message to write in a house guestbook.
How formal you choose to be when thanking a guest speaker will come down to on a variety of factors.
First, it will depend on how close you are to the guest speaker. If you have invited an established politician that you have no relationship with to address a college graduation, you will want to err on the side of formality.
However, if you have invited your friend the yoga teacher to come talk to your first-grade class about calming down when they get frustrated, you can be as informal as you want.
It will also depend on how well respected or high profile the speaker is.
If you have invited a local businessperson in to address your Economics 101 class, you’ll thank them differently than if you have invited a former president to talk at a company retreat. Obviously, the former president will require you to be less casual.
If you’ve considered your situation and determined that it is better to thank your speaker formally, here are a few sample messages you could draw inspiration from.
12. Dear Ms. Speaker, thank you for talking to our employees about the value of innovative thinking. The feedback on the event was overwhelmingly positive, and your formula for success struck a particular chord. Thank you for taking the time to present at our company’s offices.
This response follows the prescriptive formal template for writing a thank you note for a guest speaker. It notes the positive response to their speech and thanks them for their time.
13. Dear Dr. Riordan, thank you for sharing your expertise with our students at our school’s annual Science Conference. The children enjoyed your address and could not stop talking about it in the days after. We hope to welcome you back to our campus soon.
In a thank you to a high-profile guest speaker, it is important to open with a formal address.
Immediately after, express exactly what you are grateful for. Next, compliment the way they gave their speech.
Finish by letting them know you would be pleased to hire them to come speak at your organization again.
14. Dear Dr. Seamus O’Rourke, the board of Half-Time Holdings Inc. would like to extend our sincerest thanks to you for your excellent speech at our company’s recruitment day. We registered a record-setting level of interest, and we can’t help but attribute some of that to your insightful words.
Another great thing to include in a formal thank you note for a guest speaker is the measurable effect their presentation had on the success of the day.
If they were speaking at a recruitment drive, mention the number of recruits.
If they were speaking at a fundraiser, you can mention the higher-than-expected donations.
You will know what is appropriate based on your specific circumstances but conveying that a speaker changed the nature of the event is the highest compliment you can give.
15. Dear Ms. Takahashi, please accept our heartfelt thanks for speaking at our high school graduation. Your words about overcoming the challenges of new beginnings were moving and certainly struck a chord with the class of 2023. We wish you all the best with your own new beginnings.
The phrase “please accept our heartfelt thanks” is a great one to use when thanking a guest speaker in a formal letter.
Follow up this generic but appropriate expression of gratitude by complimenting something specific about their delivery.
Heartfelt informal thank you notes for a guest speaker
If you’ve assessed how formal you need to be in the thank you message that you’re writing and have concluded that you don’t need to stand on ceremony, you can breathe a sigh of relief.
That said, don’t let “informal” make you think you can use the same tone as you might when you are choosing a fool-proof message to write in a bachelorette card.
You are still thanking someone for a professional and serious engagement!
Here are few ways you might write an informal thank you note for a guest speaker.
16. Lisa, no words can express how wonderful I think you are. Your speech at my Yoga Studio opening shindig was so beautiful. Your spirit and heart shone through, and everyone who came told me how motivated they felt by your words about the sanctity of the practice.
The key to a good informal thank you note is that it is personal and that it mentions the specifics of your relationship to the speaker.
A genuine, heartfelt compliment will never go amiss either.
So, while you might not tell President Barack Obama that you “can’t express how wonderful” he is because that would be too informal, you can certainly tell your friend Lisa this.
As a rule, when writing an informal thank you card, the more authentic your compliments are, the better.
17. Dear old friend, it was so wonderful to see you up on stage expressing your truth. Thank you for agreeing to come share some of your work with me and my students. You certainly made an impression on the class and your words about why we try to discover the unknowable will stay with me for life.
A great line to use in an informal thank you card is to tell someone how wonderful it was to see them “expressing their truth.”
If you’re a little confused by what it means to tell your truth, don’t worry, you aren’t alone.
It’s certainly a slang-y phrase, which is what makes it so perfect for an informal note.
Essentially, someone who is speaking their truth is expressing their needs, beliefs, and values.
They are doing so without adjusting them or changing them to fit other people’s preferences or to make other people more comfortable.
Basically, this compliment acknowledges that someone is “being real.”
18. I don’t know how to thank you, so I will just tell you that I think you are an absolute inspiration! Watching you speak to my company’s board members at the retreat last weekend made me so proud. You are wise beyond your years and your words went down a treat.
Using superlatives is something you can do in informal thank you notes that might be out of place in a more formal note.
Telling someone they are an “absolute inspiration” a “complete legend” or “the best” are things you can do casually, but that would come off strange in a formal letter.
So, if you’re tempted to include a sentiment like, “you are a complete and total star” in a thank you message, pause for a second.
Ask yourself, “Do I really know this person well enough to say that to them?”
If you do, happy days. However, if you have a niggling doubt that you are being too familiar, rein in your expressiveness and opt for a more conservative compliment like, “your speech made a lasting impression on me.”
Clever things to write in a thank you note for a voluntary guest speaker
What is generosity? Well, there are two different kinds of generosity that spring to mind when one thinks of a guest speaker who is sharing their wisdom on a voluntary basis.
The first, of course, is that they are doing work without being paid for it.
Whether they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart because they believe in the cause that the event is furthering, or to gain personal exposure, it is still undoubtedly a kindness.
The second kind of generosity is what we speak about when someone openly and freely shares their story (often in a personal way) with others.
A lot of people are very guarded when it comes to protecting their personal experiences, struggles, and thoughts.
However, if we were all so guarded, we would have a hard time relating to others, because we would have no knowledge about what was going on in their minds.
That is why speakers who truly open up are rare and deserve praise.
As an aside, if you want to work on this generous quality in yourself, and ask yourself “What’s my story?” why not start by writing your personal thoughts down?
Here is a list of great things to write about when you are bored to spark your creativity.
19. Thank you for so generously agreeing to speak at our charity event. The gift of your inspiring words was deeply appreciated by all who attended.
We all give in different ways. Some people regularly donate to a cause they believe in, while others practice daily acts of kindness.
Some people do extremely simple things like responding when someone says “Hi” by taking the time to pause and smile genuinely at them.
Whatever your preferred way to give back to your community or show care for those around you, it is nice to acknowledge that other people’s ways of doing so may differ.
If someone has a public profile, they might choose to give back by volunteering their time to speak at charitable events.
Maybe you were able to draw in a bigger crowd and sell more tickets or tables at your event because you could promise attendees that they would hear a speaker in person.
If so, the person you’re thanking has contributed significantly to your charitable drive.
Acknowledging how valuable the time a guest speaker has given you is is an appropriate thing to do.
20. The favor you did our school by coming in to talk to our graduating class about developing a personal budget will not be forgotten. Thank you for being so generous with your time.
If you want to acknowledge that a guest speaker gave a presentation on a voluntary basis without coming across as crass, you can refer to what they did as a “favor.”
Favors are unpaid by definition, so calling a speech a favor is a way to show the person you invited to talk that you are aware of the sacrifice they made for you.
Many people with enough money and a big public profile would probably be happy to give back to their community. That said, acknowledging the kindness and good faith they’ve shown is important.
21. On behalf of my family, thank you so much for so kindly offering to talk at our memorial event for our late grandfather. Your accomplishments and contributions to society are an inspiration to us all. To hear you talk so openly about your own challenges and grief was a consolation to everyone in attendance.
Are you are writing a thank you on behalf of your family because the guest speaker that you’re addressing came to speak at an intimate event?
If so, thank them for their kind words by referencing the importance of the wedding, funeral, or memorial event to everyone there.
As anyone who has ever struggled with what to say to someone who has lost a loved one knows, speaking about personal grief (or even personal joy) can be a tricky thing for an outsider.
Often, the only way for an external speaker to genuinely connect with those in attendance at a family even is to discuss their own story.
If a speaker generously talks about their own personal challenges, thank them for opening up by using the final line from this sample response.