2014 exhibitor marketing toolkit includes: guidelines, email templates, checklist & more
DESCRIPTION
More tips at www.bartizan.com/blog 110-Page Ebook With Everything You Need to Exhibit Like a Pro. Download our free Ebook and use these ideas as a roadmap to your exhibiting success. What You'll Get in This Ebook: Tips to make your booth stand out. Follow-up checklist The worst tactics to avoid. Four proven email templates to help you follow-up. Methods to lure the best prospects to your booth. Easy social media tactics to make you stand out. Close more sales at tradeshows using these tips, checklist and templates.TRANSCRIPT
EXHIBITOR MARKETING TOOLKIT:Guidelines, Email Templates, Checklist & More
Contents
1. The Organizer 2The Economy 3Technology 6Marketing 7Keys to Success 11
Clarity 12Consistency 13Communication 13
2. The Exhibitor 14Separating Buyers from Grabbers 16Characterizing Attendees 18Time—the Great Enemy 12Booth Zoning 22
1. Low Value 222. Future Value 223. Immediate Value 23
Role of Technology 23Lead Management 26
3. The Attendee 29
The Curious Attendee 30Connection Breakdown 31Back at the Office 32Exhibitor Follow-Up 32The Problem 33A Joint Solution 34Our Call to Action 36
4. The 17-Point Exhibitor 38 Follow-Up Checklist Best Days for Follow-Up 48
5. Seven Sins of Tradeshow Exhibiting 52
6. The Facebook Toolkit 59Create a Page 60Add Customized Elements 61Build a Following 62Start Posting Status Updates 62Promote Your Page 64Respond to Comments and Questions 65Set Up Timed Events 66Use Facebook Tools 66
Measure Your Success 67Post Show Content and Gather Feedback 68Summary 69
7. The LinkedIn Toolkit 70Recruit Exhibitors, Sponsors and Attendees 70Show Up in Searches 72Create the Perfect Profile 72Helpful Hints 73Create a Company Page 74Add a Group, Join Groups 74Grow Your Group 75
8. The iPad Toolkit 77iLeads 79Summary 79
9. Fifty Social Media Ideas 80
10. The Exhibitor’s Guide to 92 Email Follow-Up with Four Proven Templates
When to Send 96 Low Click Rate?
Try These Tips 98 Proven Templates 100
10. Conclusion 110
t Bartizan Connects, we recently surveyed tradeshow organizers, exhibitors and attendees across a range of industries and
show profiles with a view to discovering how organizers and exhibitors could better meet the needs of attendees,
AWe used a series of online focus groups to solicit attitudes and opinions on people’s tradeshow industry experiences. These focus groups were conducted over number of days, allowing respondents to candidly discuss and debate topics. The respondents did not know who was sponsoring the survey.
In this eBook, we summarize the results and draw lessons that can help you, as a tradeshow exhibitor, convert the curious attendee into the satisfied customer.
Share this Ebook:
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1
The Organizer
The focus of the tradeshow organizers’ survey was to determine how they are handling these difficult economic times and how they see the future of tradeshows moving forward.
Using this data, this chapter highlights key points for organizers to keep in mind as you plan and market your shows—both in today’s difficult times and tomorrow’s better days.
We’re going to focus on four main factors:
• The impact of the current downturn on tradeshows and their organizers.
• The use of technology to manage, promote and support those shows.
• The changed and changing face of marketing.
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• Keys to success.
The Economy
Let’s start with the obvious question, the one foremost in our tradeshow organizers’ danger zones: what impact is the economy having?
For some tradeshow organizers, it’s already taking a bite out of business. For others, the impact is not yet felt. There is commonality of vision: things will get tougher before they improve. But make no mistake about it, all our respondents and all the studies we consulted agree—things will improve.
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Here’s Tradeshow Week’s Q1 09 analysis:
Net square footage decreased by 8.1%, compared with the year-ago quarter, and attendance was down a bit more, with an 8.7% decline. The number of exhibiting companies took the deepest dive in the first quarter of this year, with a 10.1% decrease.
Our respondents echoed that, quoting up to forty
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percent drops in delegation registration. Among those who had seen smaller decreases, the sentiment was one of gratitude it had not been worse and apprehension for when the impact makes itself known.
The upshot? Brace yourself for impact, even if you’re not feeling it now. Tradeshow organizers never feel the impact of an economic downturn immediately. Often exhibitors have already booked the space and consider it money already spent, rather than a candidate for surgery. Planning ahead, you must accept the fact that an economic downturn means that all corporate marketing activities are going to take a hit. There is no doubt that includes event participation, with all the planning and travel and lodging expenses that go along with it.
Not only that, but tough money times give support to the ROI arguments of the show alternatives (like virtual tradeshows and online presentations). We’re not suggesting that the end is near, nor that there won’t be a revival when the downturn swings back up. But it’s clear to us that recovery isn’t going to happen the day after tomorrow.
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How are our respondents dealing with it?
They’re working smarter. Harder. Leaner.
They’re understanding and responding to the core business truth that a lot of little things make a significant impact on the bottom line, and doing detailed line-by-line evaluations of their budgets.
Belt tightening is taking place across the board. Organizers are spending less on every element of show organization. However, it's a tricky balance, as they must still maintain quality and not lose sight of who they are amidst the cuts.
These cuts are taking place across the board. From eliminating some of the labor costs entirely (by doing some of the work themselves), to breaking loose familiar relationships with vendors and putting jobs out for competitive bidding, to working to reduce freight and transportation fees for the exhibitors.
Technology investment is not near the top of the list. We found few respondents exploring new investment in tech tools to plan shows, manage registrations and attendee lists, or streamline logistics. However, many
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of our respondents already had some of this in place and were relatively satisfied.
Significant focus was placed on restrictions to the show itself: in scope, in size, and in duration. Along with that came a move to start planning regional rather than national shows to reduce the costs incurred by both exhibitors and attendees.
Technology
As mentioned, technology is not majorly important to the tradeshow organizers we asked and things don’t look like they will change much in that area in the coming years. Essentially, technology is used to manage the show, and to provide lead retrieval services for the exhibitors. Most tradeshow organizers have in place (and have had in place for some time now) exhibitor management, reservation and lead retrieval technologies to support them.
Research firm Maya, in their elucidating report, The Invisible Exhibitor, supports that finding:
The tradeshow industry seems to be more than a step behind other businesses in implementing
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technology that is commonly expected for information access and sharing.
Indeed, some of our respondents reported they were still relying on colored markers and sticky notes in the last year.
The greatest need we perceive in what we’ve learned is that these technologies, by and large, are silos: individual programs that don’t work together to create an integrated solution. One technology handles registration. Another handles lead retrieval. A third handles foor design. There is a dominating need to have all that integrated, simplified and connected, not only to each other, but to applications like CRM as well.
Some are finding the time is right now to adopt technology, experimenting with online techniques for data management in order to reduce their staf workload and save money on printed materials. However, this is the exception and not the rule.
Marketing
If we were to find one word to describe how our
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tradeshow organizers approach marketing to their members and exhibitors, it would be “traditional”.
While some are scaling back, in general our respondents continue to market as they always have.
Determining Basic ROI
Here’s a basic ROI formula:
((result – cost)/cost) x 100 = ROI
For instance, if you generated $10,000 in exhibitor sign ups from an expenditure of $4000 in direct mail costs, your ROI calculation would look like this:
(($10000-$4000)/$4000) x 100 = 150%
It’s all about increasing the value of the show for exhibitors. While not every organizer was cutting fees, many were. They are also working to negotiate better room rates with hotels, better airfares with the airline of choice, opening registration and housing earlier. Many are changing the way they reach out to the exhibitors: streamlining collateral, increasing the amount of telemarketing they do, and decreasing the
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amount of printed mail. Still others focused on bringing back past exhibitors who opted out of the recent shows.
And then there’s email. When it comes to digital marketing, email reigns supreme, both with our own respondents, and with CEIR’s 2009 study, which reports that 95% of exhibition tradeshow organizers use e-mail as their primary marketing tool. At the same time, our respondents were starting to feel a growing dissatisfaction with email: the sheer bulk of email that lands in any individual inbox is creating a noise level that is increasingly difficult to be heard above.
Those are the tactics. What about the strategy behind them? Not the “how” of marketing, but the “what”? Here, there is change going on in the industry.
The bulk of changes focus on creating increased value to the marketplace and enhancing the oferings to exhibitors.
Some of those are directly cost related: free registration for multiple registrations, deep discounts, and free day passes being good examples.
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Not everyone is in line with this. Some are making the budget decision to maintain their rates. Many other changes and enhancements are not focused on cost reduction, but on providing added value.
Increased exhibitor education programs can help exhibitors make better use of existing facilities (for instance, lead retrieval systems). This includes providing resource pages and mentoring for novice exhibitors and training exhibitors on how to use event-provided technologies.
Allowing exhibitors pre and post show access to registration lists, including breakout attendance, accurate and timely demographic delivery. It’s up to you, the organizer, to do smart things with that information.
Another common theme was getting a head start on marketing since approval is taking longer.
We advise closely tracking your results with each unique marketing tactic, and measuring it against the cost to deploy it. Make sure you’re achieving positive ROI.
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When it comes to email, the critical issue is not just response but understanding whether your emails are being opened in the first place. Many email marketing services (Mail Chimp, AWeber, Constant Contact being just three) allow you to track every email you send and track not just responses, but whether recipients opened it in the first place. They will also help you scrub your lists by automatically removing all the bounce backs and opt outs.
Also expand your value adds to your exhibitors, on two fronts:
• Remember the chain you’re in: attendees drive exhibitor behavior, and exhibitors drive your behavior. Find out what attendees want from exhibitors, and then figure out how much of that you can provide.
• Provide stronger marketing support for your exhibitors, before, during and after the show.
Keys to Success
If there’s one overarching principle we found, both
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from our discussion with tradeshow organizers and from outside research, it’s this:
Listen to your exhibitors.
They will drive the direction your shows need to go.
MAYA’s survey echoed our own findings. Their primary message:
Knowing what to look for and pay attention to regarding the exhibitor experience, and knowing how to address breakpoints in that experience, can have an effect on the long-term viability of a show.
Taking our cue from both that report and from our respondents, we see three things as being critical for success—both in today’s strangled economy, and in the future when things improve—clarity, consistency, and communication.
Clarity
You’re confusing your exhibitors by overloading them with materials, both in your Exhibitor Service Manuals and in the stream of updates and changes that are
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sent out. The IAEE cites one case where the Exhibitor Service Manual was “over 450 pages to download/review.”
Think carefully and be ruthless when deciding what information is actually necessary.
Consistency
You’re overloading your exhibitors with diferent rules, standards and requirements from show to show.
Tradeshow organizers of diferent shows in a related industry need to talk to each other, and work together to provide their common exhibitors with a common experience. Consider the benefits of ofering a “show package” across organizer groups, which could provide per-show discounts in exchange for a multi-show commitment from the exhibitors.
Communication
You’re sending mixed signals, when you’re sending signals at all. Exhibitors are consistently dissatisfied with the level and quality of communication tradeshow organizers ofer. You have to make sure
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that everyone from your show team has the same information, everyone communicates it the same way, and everyone does so in a timely and efective manner.
There’s no doubt about it: tradeshow organizers have a rocky road in front of them. By holding down costs, by making prudent technology investments, and by using efective marketing strategic and tactics, you’ll be able to survive the ride, and be in a stronger and more profitable position when things smooth out.
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The Exhibitor
Our survey of tradeshow exhibitors focused on how they view attendees and how they handle the difficult (and often frustrating) process of separating those that are merely curious from those that represent
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qualified sales opportunities.
We focus on these factors:
1. The complex triage involved with separating buyers from freebie hunters.
2. Time as “the great enemy”.
3. The use of technology to handle lead gathering and retrieval.
4. Lead management.
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Separating Buyers from Grabbers
Interaction between attendees and exhibitors sometimes appears as if the two groups are speaking two diferent languages. Or maybe like one is from Mars, the other from Venus. Attendees are, by and large, “just looking”—for information and freebies—and you are, by and large, trying to sell.
MAYA’s report, The Invisible Attendee, details the disconnect between exhibitor and attendee:
Attendees told us that they felt like they were wearing big targets on their backs, or like lambs led to the wolves in terms of their interactions with exhibitors. They felt like the quality of those interactions was low due to the staff in the booth primarily focused on capturing contact information about the attendee (a.k.a. lead retrieval) and because of lingering hucksterism still evident on the floor.
As exhibitors, your response tends to be Newtonian—an equal and opposite reaction to this.
On the other hand, exhibitors feel attendees are now
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trained to want free stuf: t-shirts, pens, water bottles and other collateral. One respondent even described a recent tradeshow where the name on an attendee’s badge was “Gimme Stuf”.
In other words, you think they’re wasting your time, and they think you’re predators.
Bearing this in mind, the challenge for the exhibitor is to separate the attendee wheat from the chaf.
Exhibitors want attendees who are well-researched and looking for hands-on experience of the product, which they can impart knowledge to and make their buying decisions easier. What they get is someone who likes the free giveaways, not even in the industry. Someone who just gets their card scanned and walks away without getting any information.
You want qualified, thoughtful, serious buyers to enter your booth. You get people whose primary goal is to find a way to stuf your freebie in with all the others in their show bag.
You can’t control who comes to your booth. Nor should you, since as we discussed, you’ve trained
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them to be tschotske hunters. But you can control what happens when they do.
Characterizing Attendees
Although they use diferent terminology, our exhibitors view the attendee population in basically the same way:
1. Those that are there because they actually want information to take back with them on products they came looking for.
2. Those who just want to wander around like a carnival seeing how many tschotskes they can collect.
3. Those who treat it as a vacation with mandatory classes.
Make sure your sales staf in the booth understands that they should not approach people who are just gathering goodies. Let them take their toy and move on to waste your competitors’ time. Much better to waste trinkets than to waste time. Think of it this way: preshow, your freebies are meant to attract people to
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your booth. During the show, they’re meant to distract people from wasting your time.
Make sure you establish the correct goals for your sales staf. The true measure of a successful show is not how high you fill the fishbowl or how many badges you scan. It’s how many qualified opportunities they generate.
Also make sure everyone who does booth duty for you understands how to recognize the diference and how to appropriately manage the crowd. Attendees send of plenty of signals (for instance, a low-value visitor is likely to ask “what do you do” while a high value visitor is more likely to start talking about their needs). Solid training in this will yield significant results.
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Time—the Great Enemy
There’s no doubt about it, all our exhibitors agree that the biggest obstacle they face is time. Whether they’re working basic 10 x 10s or giant display booths, the amount of traffic makes it extremely difficult to find the time to be able to identify and connect with prospects that could turn into business.
This causes our responders two common problems:
• They have their time wasted with low-value (in many cases, zero-value) traffic.
• As a result, they miss out on connecting with customers and qualified sales opportunities.
Unfortunately, our exhibitors are not putting strategic methods in place to deal with these problems.
Diferentiating real prospects from the rest and knowing how best to move on low value attendees from your booth takes real skill, but is essential to make time to focus on those who ofer true customer potential.
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This imposition of large amounts of aimless traffic on small amounts of available time creates problems for our exhibitors. To rely on the skill of the sales team alone to handle what we’ll call attendee triage is inefficient—sales folk are busy in their booth and the truth is that not every sales rep doing booth duty is going to have that skill.
For many, exhibiting is an opportunity to meet with multiple existing customers both as a general customer satisfaction tactic (which often involves setting up meetings to probe your existing customer satisfaction levels) and as a chance to generate qualified sales opportunities. Our exhibitors are finding that too much low-value traffic prohibits them from achieving these goals. If all sales reps are busy talking to low-value attendees, valuable prospects may bypass the booth rather than waiting for somebody to talk to.
In order to attract the right people, instead of sending the same booth invitation to everyone (complete with the usual giveaway as an incentive), send very focused and targeted invites out to your existing customers. Go through your existing pipeline and send them a unique invitation too—including the names of the
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people who will be handling your booth.
Booth Zoning
Your booth, even if it’s a tabletop display, can be designed to both attract and distract. Think of your booth as having three zones:
1. Low-value
These are the people who are just walking by, or who are interested only in your giveaway (if you provide one). Station the goodies table as far from the sales force as you can and hope that once they satisfy their greed for goodies, they go away.
2. Future value
These are the just curious who might one day want to do business with you. These can be dealt with en masse, providing product demos, a general discussion of features and value, or similar. Make sure the people handling this have a keen eye and ear for those who might be qualified leads, and that they direct them to the
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third station. (“That’s an interesting question. Let me get John, our expert on that product, to answer that for you.”)
3. Immediate value
Here’s where you deal with those customers that might have an immediate value or at least very qualified need.
Role of Technology
Our respondents use technology provided by the organizer for lead retrieval but other than this, technology plays a minor role.
Exhibitors described customer service and personal attention as imperative, and few believe there is technology capable of bettering a conversation and handshake.
However, the climate changes when we turn to lead retrieval technology. Here, our exhibitors are generally very satisfied with lead retrieval technology.
A minority of exhibitors do still prefer old-fashioned
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methods like fishbowls and business cards.
They ofer two reasons for this:
1. A reluctance to violate the personal space of the attendee with a scanner.
2. The sense that giving a business card indicates a bigger commitment from the attendees.
We also gauged interest on the potential of new technology. With one notable exception, we found that our exhibitors are not enthusiastic.
Self-service kiosks, where the attendees could swipe their own badges, proved popular with exhibitors we spoke to. Not surprisingly, this is also a hot ticket item for attendees.
We suggested using text messaging as a way for attendees to indicate a product interest. That didn’t go over well at all, with respondents, who had concerns about not getting enough information to know how to follow up with the leads.
We suggested allowing attendees to opt in for specific
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follow-up information. Our exhibitors didn’t want to give up the control that that implies.
Audio and video technologies for recording leads and notes fared no better.
Our respondents were strong on the value of lead retrieval systems and generally lukewarm about tools for use during the show. We agree. Whether you take notes by audio or pen, or whether you connect with a customer via twitter or text or talking face to face, the critical issues of communicating with key attendees remains the same.
We strongly recommend using the information you gather at the show, along with information you’ve gathered elsewhere, to create a stronger understanding of which your key attendees are, and to develop a more focused way to reach out to them before, during and after the show. Some CRM systems are beginning to provide that, but it remains in the hands of organizers and vendors to develop Lead Retrieval systems that integrate with those lead management systems. Put pressure on both organizers and vendors to make that happen.
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Lead Management
If we were to paint the lead management story our exhibitors told us with a broad brush it would be traditional, uncreative and ultimately unsuccessful.
Let’s look at pre-event and post-event processes. From a pre-event standpoint, there was very little innovation on the part of our exhibitors, and their general assessment of the efectiveness was lukewarm. Exhibitors didn’t have difficultly getting leads; the challenge was knowing how to follow them up.
Follow-up generally consists of mailing, emails and calls. What was missing from our respondents was any sense of targeting valuable traffic. For almost all of them, “one size fits all” describes the generally operating procedure. Or, more accurately, one size fits none.
Post event is not much better. The typical post show interaction was a thank you note. However, there were a few exceptions, such as Jill:
All leads we get are entered into our lead database.
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This database is periodically merged with our customer database to get the leads fully into the marketing stream within a week of the show the leads sent to either our outsourced calling center (for large quantities) or our internal sales team for personal call follow-ups. Within a month we send a "thanks for coming by" email or letter (depending on the info we have) with a special offer—something fresh that addresses what we do in more detail.
Clearly, this kind of follow-up has a better chance of generating response than noting an email and sending a thank-you card.
Think before you reach out to attendees, before, during and after the show. Your potential key attendees—which includes your current customers—are people who must get special invitations, special ofers, special touches (for instance, an evening reception), that the bulk of attendees neither hear about nor are allowed to attend.
During the show, in addition to those special services, make sure that someone who is a strong possible qualified sales opportunity walks away from the booth feeling like one. A unique gift (for instance, a
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monogrammed cofee cup sent after the show) is just one idea. If you think they’re special, make them feel special.
Post show, don’t just send out a thank you. After all, everyone gets the generic “it was good meeting you” boilerplate message and if you do the same, you’re lost in the pack. Your post show message is your best chance to diferentiate yourself. If you’ve done a good job of capturing their information and putting that into your CRM or other lead management system, use that knowledge to add unique messages to every thank-you that you sent out.
You can’t manage the herd. Nor should you try. But you can manage how you control the herd once they enter your booth space. By creating techniques that naturally eliminate the low-value attendees (for instance, providing simple and uninterrupted access to your giveaways), you’ll quickly find that those that do enter your booth are more qualified and more valuable. And by removing the need to generate large numbers of useless names, you’ll free your staf up to have more contact with people that might just become qualified sales opportunities.
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3
The Attendee
Our attendee survey tried to determine how attendees view the show experience and how they deal with what they’ve learned from the show when they return home.
When we analyzed what we learned in the context of similar interactions with exhibitors and organizers, we were struck by how inefective post-show interaction is between attendees and exhibitors. Not necessarily the communication with possible prospects, but the communication with all those attendees who were “just looking.” The attendees with no intention to buy, who make up the vast majority of visitors to any booth.
If broader marketplace visibility plays a role in your show strategy, then how you handle those visitors who aren’t active sales opportunities becomes important to you. In this chapter, we pinpoint where
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exhibitors lose their visibility in the broader marketplace and suggest a general approach to improving it.
Specifically we focus on:
■ A profile of the curious attendee.
■ The breakdown of the connection between exhibitors and these attendees.
■ The problem that breakdown causes.
■ The collaboration between exhibitors and organizers that can repair that connection.
The Curious Attendee
When asking what attendees wanted to get out of attending shows, one common answer emerged:
Learn as much as I can in the short time I have.
Every study about show attendees tells the same story. The vast majority of attendees are on a knowledge hunt. We imagine this aligns with most
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exhibitors’ experience—most of their traffic isn’t interested in buying. They’re walking the foor. They’re engaging in informal professional development. Learning who’s out there, and what they have that’s new. They may be on the foor between learning and breakout sessions. They may be passing your booth on the way to another company whose product they are interested in. They may just be looking for stress balls.
This is the “broader market visibility” part of your show objectives. The objective is to become somehow part of the conversation when this group of attendees returns to work. To have made enough of an impression that when the post show review session takes place your product and company are remembered . . . along with your stress ball.
Connection Breakdown
During the show, your connection to this broader market is active. The show is designed that way, designed to guide people to see as many displays as possible, to connect curious visitors with exhibiting companies. It’s a very limited connection—neither the curious attendee nor the sales rep in the booth want
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to interact with each other. But they do want to connect. The rep wants to scan the badge and the attendee wants to see what his company does. It is a quick connection. But a connection nonetheless.
After the show, instead of being something to build upon, the connection breaks down and eventually disappears. But why does this happen?
Back at the Office
Things are generally informal for attendees when they get back home. Few have any rigid obligations (reports, summaries, meetings, email) from the show. They may be encouraged to share information about the products to interested departments and administrators, and share out any freebies they’ve picked up! Our attendees all described the same thing—if they thought information was interesting, they shared it. If not, it was forgotten. Your fate is entirely in their hands.
Exhibitor Follow-up
Our exhibitors were equally unanimous in describing what they did upon their return. Follow-up was the
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same across the board. They use the show scanners and send messages out to everyone they’ve spoken to.
What do they send? A thank you email. Sometimes an ofer. Paths to more information. And, always, an invitation to call if there are any questions. Sometimes a call or two. Everybody with the same lead qualification code gets the same letter.
The Problem
Here’s the issue. These attendees (the merely curious) have let you know in action, word and behavior that they’re just learning what’s out there. Keeping up-to-date. That they aren’t interested in your product.
And how do you follow up? With information about your product. It’s no surprise that your message falls on deaf ears.
Exhibitors are calling attendees to say, “Thank you for your interest in our product” or “you requested a call.” But really, the attendees they’re calling have not expressed interest in their product. They weren’t looking for a call.
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The conclusion is clear. If you want to maintain your goal of “broader market visibility,” you need to deliver a message they do want to hear.
A Joint Solution
So what is the message they want to hear? Our attendees have already told us the answer to that question:
Learn as much as I can in the short time I have.
Attendees are looking for broad industry knowledge. To remain in their minds, you have to deliver more than information about your product. You have to deliver information that they can use for their own professional development.
It’s such an easy answer. The practical solution, though, is not easy. There are three big obstacles:
1. Cost
This is not a critical marketplace; this is a “good to have” group. No marketer has a significant budget to
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allocate for brand awareness to this group.
No marketer has a significant budget, but they do have a tiny one.
2. Content
Coming up with a continual supply of interesting content is difficult. No individual exhibitor has the ability or the motivation to become a conduit of broad market knowledge. Something within their product category, yes, but across categories is a diferent story.
No individual exhibitor does. However, working together they do.
It’s an extension of lead sharing. They contribute interesting articles encountered and make it part of a broader package of information. Two articles from company A and one from company B and two more from C, and you have a useful package of information that extends beyond any individual company’s sphere of interest.
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3. Infrastructure
You need to have the delivery infrastructure in place to send this information out on a regular basis, and few individual exhibitors do.
Exhibitors don’t have registration processing systems, or data analyses that point to qualified collaborating companies, or content management systems, or sophisticated email creation, delivery and tracking methods.
They don’t. But organizers do.
Organizers have the registration systems. They have access to data that can tell them that this person visited these booths, and they can use that information to suggest collaborations. They have email and postal mail systems in place. They can develop SIGs and focus groups.
Our Call to Action
That’s the collaboration we’re suggesting. Using predominantly existing resources, and making only
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the most modest of additional investments, exhibitors and organizers can together create a message delivery vehicle, which supports the often-critical goal of broader market visibility. Which allows companies to stay in front of people and organizations who may not have a need today, but who still contribute and make purchasing decisions within the broader industry. And that continues providing the full value of the show to everyone, after the show has closed.
It’s a win/win/win opportunity. Attendees get what they want: access to industry trends and insights. And they credit the participating companies and the show itself for it.
Exhibitors get what they want: ongoing visibility in the industry, at a price that makes it worth doing.
And organizers get what they want: value-add to attract exhibitors and attendees (and possibly additional revenue by providing participation as a service option).
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4
The 17-Point Exhibitor Follow-Up Checklist
1) Do Some Pre-Show Marketing
You’re making a significant investment. Let potential visitors know where your booth will be located and what products will be displayed. Efective methods: email, postcards, mentions on your website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all customer communications.
Send a press release about your participation at the show. Google “Free Press Release Distribution” to post your release. Include the show name and your company name in the title; this will get your release found.
2) Prior to the Show: Set Goals
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Attendees invest time and money in order to learn about products that will help them become more efective and efficient. Exhibitors invest time and money to…what? To “show the fag”? Some claim that is their only goal, but the vast majority of exhibitors participate in order to generate leads. Simply showing up is not going to assure that you will meet your goals. Yes, you have to do a good job at the show. But few tradeshow attendees place orders on the spot. Most make their buying decisions in the days, weeks and months following a tradeshow. Do you want to leave your prospects buying decisions to chance? Efective follow-up is required if you are going to meet ambitious goals.
3) Reevaluate Your Lead Collection Method
The ability to follow-up on tradeshow leads is dictated by the manner in which the leads are collected. If your “system” is to ask for a business card on the back of which you make a few notations, you will have a lot of key entry to do and you will have to work on assumptions for which there may be no foundation. You will have to ask for or do without key qualifiers, such as:
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1. Type of business2. Product Interest3. Annual sales4. Number of employees5. Level of decision-making authority of the
badge holder6. Purpose for attending the show
4) Tips for Using Electronic Lead Management
If you will employ an electronic lead management system at your tradeshow, acquaint yourself with its features prior to the show. Some of these features could prove very helpful to you in your follow-up phase. For example, if your organization is promoting multiple products or services at a tradeshow, wouldn’t it be useful if you could break down your leads by product or service? Perhaps you would like to pass on leads to sales representatives based on assigned geographical territories; in that case, an automated breakdown by postal ZIP code would expedite matters. The ability to download your leads to your contact management or customer relationship management database is particularly useful.
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5) Use the Qualifiers
One important benefit of electronic lead management is its ability to attach qualifiers to each of your leads. Some systems contain a limited number of fixed qualifiers, such as “hot lead,” “send salesman,” ‘send literature” etc. Not everyone at a trade show is a prospect. Don’t focus on lead counts, focus on lead quality. Leads captured should have qualifiers and notes so you remember the interaction. Gathering critical information about each potential customer’s needs will make your post-show lead follow-ups more efective.
6) Don’t Waste Time with Tire Kickers
We have all met these “time wasters” and as a result, have missed out on connecting with customers and qualified sales opportunities. You can’t control who comes to your booth. But you can control what happens when they do.
Make sure your sales staf in the booth understands that they should not approach people who are just
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gathering goodies. Let them take their toy and move on to waste your competitors’ time. Much better to waste trinkets than to waste time.
Attendees send of plenty of signals (for instance, a low-value visitor is likely to ask “what do you do” while a high value visitor is more likely to start talking about their needs). Solid training in this will yield significant results.
7) Business cards are not good enough.
Not if you drop them, or lose them or never input the info into your CRM. Additionally, lead retrieval captures attendees full registration data – this is much more info than what is on a business card. It includes purchasing authority, buying timeline, company size as well as other useful data.
8) Weed out the Grabbers from the Real Leads
You may have had a dozen visitors to your exhibit or thousands. Determining just who your visitors are is the first step in qualifying them. The name of the company with which they are affiliated may ofer an indication of their interest. Your visitor could be a
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competitor.
9) Ask, Don’t Tell
You need to ask questions, not tell booth visitors about your product. Who does your visitor represent? A Fortune 500 firm? An Internet hotshot? A multi-national? A firm on the rise or on the decline? A company that you can grow with, or a Goliath to your David?
Trade show attendees are there to find solutions. If they knew all the best solutions, they would not be walking the show foor. These folks are the source of new business. Why did your lead attend this event? If she was looking for products/services like those that you ofer, you clearly have a prime prospect. If she was there to gain competitive intelligence, that puts her at the other end of the spectrum. Why did the lead visit your exhibit? Perhaps a current customer referred her. That makes her a particularly well-qualified prospect.
10) What are Your Customer’s Biggest Problems?
Learn how to make their life easier and you have a
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customer. Business people do not buy products or services, they buy solutions to problems. What is the problem that your visitor hopes to solve? What can you ofer as a solution?
Defining the problem that your prospect hopes to solve is not always straightforward. For example, he might say, “My problem is that our air compressor is only 15 horsepower. Our usage has grown. I need something bigger.” Maybe he does. Or maybe he simply has the wrong type of compressor. A newer, more efficient model of the same capacity might serve him quite well, while reducing his energy consumption. His problem could be that he does not have a drier to dry the air that the compressor is using, resulting in excessive moisture that is causing mechanical damage. If your response is to simply send him a quote on a 25 horsepower compressor to replace his “inadequate” 15 horsepower unit, you may lose the sale to a more inquisitive salesperson.
Before you can ofer a solution, you have to thoroughly understand the problem. If you want a long-term customer, one that I call a “decade-plus customer,” your goal has to be one of mutual satisfaction, not simply a sale. You must give the
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customer a real solution, one that will look as good, or even better, a year down the road.
11) How Will You Add Value?
When following up on a lead, focus on this question: What can I ofer this prospect that will add value to his product or service and help diferentiate it from those of his competitors? You may not have been able to sufficiently analyze his problem on the spot on the tradeshow foor. In the follow-up phase you have the opportunity to do this and to ofer the value add that will begin a “decade-plus customer” relationship.
12) Ask Visitors for a Timeframe Make it easy for your leads to take action. Present the next steps clearly to them and quickly. When will a decision be made on the product/service that you are ofering? The answer plays a large part in how you prioritize your leads. To whom do you devote your energies right now, the Fortune 500 lead who plans to purchase in 18 months, or the three-year-old outfit with $2 million in sales with an immediate need?
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If your company is firmly established and a leader in its field, your outlook is quite diferent than that of an entrepreneur in the early stages of growth. Sure, the entrepreneur would like to grab some Mr. Fortune 500’s business, but, hey, 18 months out? For a start-up, that is an eternity. The lifeblood of a start-up is cash, and cash comes from sales.
For extra inspiration, watch Alec Baldwin’s legendary scene in Glengarry Glen Ross (NSFW): http://vimeo.com/14305226
Below are the four steps you need to take your audience through if you want them to buy your product.
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13) Follow-up Fast
You can’t be “too pushy.” In October 2012, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) released a new study entitled Exhibitor Sales Lead Capture and Follow-up Practice Trends. It contained the usual stats on how poorly exhibitors follow-up with their leads, no surprise there. But what was most surprising to me was that following up within two weeks was considered “very quickly,” yikes.
Here’s the chart (courtesy CEIR)
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14) Best Days for Follow-Up
According to the Lead Response Management’s 3 year study, Thursday is the best day to contact a lead in order to qualify that lead (by 19.1% better than the worst day). 4 to 6pm is the best time to call to make contact with a lead. It is 114% better than calling at 11 to 12am, right before lunch. This data presents an enormous opportunity for trade show exhibitors willing to follow-up fast.
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15) Your First Email Follow-Up
Email is great for follow-up because you don’t get caught playing phone tag. You also have entered your prospects inbox. Now they can follow-up on you. Start with an e-mail message or brief letter thanking your prospect for having visited your exhibit.
16) What to Include in that First Email
Provide your prospect with a value add, either a solution to his problem or a means of diferentiating his product or service. Close with a call for action. Since your initial point of contact was a tradeshow, you might instill a sense of urgency by ofering some type of show special, some inducement for him to act now. This is the “tell him” phase. Ofer this prospect a clear conversion path: an quick product overview to remind them what you sell, then a case-study or testimonial, a demo and then fingers crossed you will get to close the deal.
In another five to seven days, tell him what you’ve told him. Send an e-mail or letter recapping the benefits your organization is prepared to deliver that will solve
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problems or diferentiate products. Ofer a compelling reason to act now.
17) Don’t Forget to Follow Up on Your First Touch point
Don’t expect a one shot follow-up to produce results. Too frequently an exhibitor’s follow-up, if you can call it that, consists of nothing more than a single piece of literature with a “personal” cover letter. Don’t kid yourself. That isn’t follow-up. After you send an email, call to follow up. If they have not received your info, you can quickly email it to them (possibly again) while you are one the phone. In your next email recap the benefits your organization is prepared to deliver that will solve problems or diferentiate products. Ofer a compelling reason to act now.
Leads are highly perishable
Do not let the qualified leads you have assembled languish. They are gold-but perishable gold. Leads grow quickly. Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Efective People, divides tasks into four
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categories: Urgent and important; important and not urgent; urgent and not important; not urgent and not important. Done properly, tradeshow preparation should be “important and not urgent”- it should be done well in advance of the show. Lead follow-up is both important and urgent.
Keep at it
No athlete, no matter how talented, wins every game, nor does any athletic team win ‘em all. But great players and great teams learn from their losses and come back to win another day. So, too, for the successful salesperson. The leads that do not pan out following this year’s tradeshow should not be assigned to the scrap heap. Many of the same folks will attend the same show next year and the year after. Some will move up within their company. They will become decision-makers. Others will move on, seeking more fertile pastures. While your product did not go over at their previous organization, it might be just what their new company needs. Continue to work the leads that did not result in a sale. Some (OK-maybe most) will eventually be discarded after a period of years. But others might become decade-plus customers.
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Summary
As an exhibitor, you have made a substantial investment. Just add up the cost of salaries, exhibit space, your display, travel, food, lodging and entertainment and I am sure that you will agree. Preparation, execution and above all lead follow-up are the elements that will assure that you will realize a substantial return on investment.
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Seven Sins of Tradeshow Exhibiting
From not doing preshow marketing to simply not having good booth staf, here are the top seven reasons why exhibitors don't make sales at
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tradeshows.
Sin #1: You didn’t do any pre-show marketing.
You’re making a significant investment. Let potential visitors know where your booth will be located and what products will be displayed. Efective methods: email, postcards, mentions on your website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all customer communications.
Here are some quick tips:
Send eBlasts to the preshow mailing list inviting them to your booth. Include an incentive such as a show discount or a free gift with demo. Include a “call to action.”
Announce your show participation on your website, blog, Twitter page, Facebook page and LinkedIn groups.
Send a press release about your participation at the show. Google “free press release distribution” to post your release. Include the show name and your company name in the title; this will get your release found.
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Use direct mail in a creative way. Think handwritten cards, or an unusual shape. Provide an incentive such as adding a QR code and instruct them to bring to your booth so you can scan it to see if they won a prize.
Pick up the phone. Your salespeople should contact local prospects to set up appointments and see if they are attending your industry show.
Sin #2: People look at your booth and ask, “What is it you do?”
Plan your booth layout so that it is inviting and so that signage makes it clear what your company ofers.
If your booth display and signage does not grab people’s attention and represent what you sell, people won’t know to stop at your booth.
Your sign should say more than just your company name. It should also explain what your company sells and its key benefits.
Sin #3: Snacking on the job, instead of greeting
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customers.
Your booth should be free of clutter and maintain a professional and welcoming appearance.
Scenario: A booth visitor looks around helplessly to find someone who can answer her questions…but the booth staf are making phone calls, talking with one another or away to get a snack.
Staf can take breaks to eat and drink outside of the booth. Booth staf should be trained with talking points and sales messages and be informed of objectives. For example: to introduce a new product or get new orders for existing products. Booth staf should be able to demo your product efortlessly.
Sin #4: Packing up before the show is over.
Scenario: The exhibit hall doesn’t close for another 10 minutes, but your booth staf has already made a break for it…and here comes another prospect…
The show foor is only open to attendees for a limited time; make the most of it.
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Sin #5: Members of your staff are all nursing hangovers—and it shows.
It is expected that you attend networking events, but getting too drunk with potential prospects (or worse, your competitors) doesn’t leave a great impression.
You’ll be too tired to give good sales pitches at the booth the next morning. Easy does it!
Sin #6: “Leads” consist of notes scribbled on the back of business cards.
Scenario: You rented the lead retrieval at the show but you don’t know how to use it. Instead, you scan everyone that walks by without talking with them.
Remember, not everyone at a tradeshow is a prospect. Don’t focus on lead counts; focus on lead quality.
Not all leads are created equal. You need to determine if the lead is hot, warm or cold. This is accomplished by having a conversation with booth
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visitors and not just scanning random people’s badges.
Leads captured should have qualifiers and notes so you remember the interaction. Gathering critical information about each potential customer’s needs will make your post-show lead follow-ups more efective.
Don’t forget to capture leads at parties, dinners and luncheons during the tradeshow, too.
The end of the show is not the end of the show. It’s the beginning of the all-important follow-up process. Most of your competitors (over 70% according to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research) will not follow up, not even once. Here is where you can get a huge return on your investment in the show.
Why do so few exhibitors actually follow up on their leads? It isn’t necessarily that they are lazy—the vast majority are not. Follow-up can be time-consuming. It can be unproductive without the right tools. Fortunately, at your show the right tools are available. The cost of renting lead retrieval is a tiny fraction of your total show investment.
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Post show, don’t just send out a thank you. Everyone gets the generic “it was good meeting you” boilerplate message and if you do the same, you’re lost in the pack. Your post show message is your best chance to diferentiate yourself. If you’ve done a good job of capturing their information and putting that into your CRM or other lead management system, use that knowledge to add a unique message to every thank you sent out.
Sin #7: Wasting time with unqualified attendees.
We have all met these time wasters and, as a result, have missed out on connecting with customers and qualified sales opportunities.
You can’t control who comes to your booth. But you can control what happens when they do.
Make sure your sales staf in the booth understands that they should not approach people who are just gathering goodies. Let them take their toy and move on to waste your competitors’ time. Much better to waste trinkets than to waste time.
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Attendees send of plenty of signals (for instance, a low-value visitor is likely to ask “what do you do” while a high value visitor is more likely to start talking about their needs). Solid training in this will yield significant results.
It takes a skilled show rep to know how to quickly spot the real prospects from rest. Also, they have to be skilled on moving the unqualified prospects back to the trail and away from your booth, so you can focus more of your time on those that ofer true customer potential.
6The Facebook Toolkit
Why Facebook? Because other marketing methods are not working anymore. Think about it. You use caller ID to block unwanted calls, add emails to your spam folder, and hate junk mail too, right? Out with the old ways of reaching prospects—customers don’t want them.
■ Phone calls are blocked by caller ID and “do not call” lists.
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■ Direct mail is not green.
■ Email has spam filters.
■ TiVo has reduced the efectiveness of the TV ad.
■ Newspapers have been usurped by blogs and social media.
The new ways of marketing include search engine optimization (SEO), blogs, third party validation (customer reviews), permission-based content, word-of-mouth, and social media.
We believe the best way to reach prospects is with permission-based content, such as Facebook. Not everyone is using Twitter yet but, with more than 500 million active users, everyone is on Facebook.
Step #1: Create a Page.
Avoid a big mistake—create a page, not a profile. It goes against Facebook’s rules to create a profile for a business and they can remove your page.
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If it’s too late and you’ve already created a personal Facebook profile for your company, use Facebook’s Business Page Migration Tool to turn it into a page.
Come up with a name that makes it clear who you are and what you do. If you are creating a page for a show, make sure you include the full name and tagline. For example: “TAPS—The Annual Pizza Show”
Write in your “About Us” tab, including keywords to help with your SEO rankings.
Step #2: Add Customized Elements to Your Page.
Use a free tab application to enhance your page. Facebook lets you create additional tabs that can display any extra info that is not standard. Create as many additional menu items your event needs, including a welcome page, discounts, calendar, contests, hotel info and documents. Use a service like fiverr.com, spend five dollars and get a great customized timeline and profile picture.
Search for Facebook Timeline Artists here.
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Step #3: Build a Following.
Suggest your page to friends and colleagues who might “like” it. Then invite your existing email subscribers, ofering them an incentive to become a fan.
Create an interactive promotion to embed on your page, using a company like Wildfire. Campaign formats include quizzes, contests, coupons, virtual gifts and more.
Register your username. Once you get twenty-five fans, you're allowed to register your unique username (e.g., http://Facebook.com/Bartizan ).
Step #4: Start Posting Status Updates.
What to post? Share your content, news releases, blog posts, webinar invitations. Add show contact information. Add anything, as long as it's relevant to your event participants. Ask questions! It engages your audience. It can be simple like “What are your weekend plans?” Or, who is watching the Following tonight?
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Make your show more environmentally sound by posting digital copies of your show guides, foor map, schedules, session handouts, exhibitor sales collateral. Create a tab for “event documents”.
In terms of posts, try some of the following: Facebook fan-only event invitations; contests; discounted event admissions; exclusive two-for-one ofers; behind-the-scenes photos and videos; advance event announcements; interviews with exhibitors; a list of common exhibitor or attendee mistakes.
You can also post various videos: exhibitor booth setup; product demos; video announcements; testimonials; presentations and events during the course of the show; interviews with exhibitors and attendees; guest spots from editors or other industry experts; live drawings for products and prizes.
Remember that most people become a fan of a page because of a promotion. Keep rolling out good promos to maintain interest in your page.
However, don't just post for the sake of posting. There's nothing wrong with remaining silent for months then starting up again as your event
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approaches. Your fans will appreciate it.
Have the page admin setup on your mobile phone to easily add event photos, videos, last minute changes, updates, contest results and promos.
When to post? Click through rates on Facebook updates are better on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The best day is Tuesday (Source: Vitrue Findings)
Try posting on the weekend or after hours when many users log on. Save some good promos or an early bird special for a Saturday.
Step #5: Promote Your Page.
Your Facebook page is your new business card. Promote your page on your event or association website.
Encourage sharing by adding “Like” buttons on your events website and emails. Allow people to “Like” or “Share” session descriptions, parties, speaker profiles, etc. Quick way for users to share content, it fires directly into attendee and exhibitor’s newsfeeds.
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You can download a “Find us on Facebook” badge to promote your Facebook Page here: http://www.facebook.com/badges/
Learn how to make "Post to Facebook" links. It’s simple, just use the code below and add in the link and/or text you'd like people to share via a status update: http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u= add your link here.
Step #6: Respond to Comments and Questions.
Improve public relations. Fans expect quick resolutions from social media, so meet expectations. Remember the old adage that an unhappy customer tells ten people. Now with social media, they tell ten million.
Get fans to add content. Ask questions and ask for
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Tip: Try a Facebook ad. Don’t be afraid to pay for an ad, they are very effective. Test it out by paying as little as $1 per day. You choose your ad’s audience based on targeted criteria to drive traffc to your Facebook page. Ads can be seen by potential exhibitors, attendees and sponsors.
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advice. Ask for ideas to improve their show experience.
Step #7: Set Up Timed Events to Establish an Exclusive Location Check In.
Create an event directly from the “events” box on the right-hand column of your home page. By typing your event into the "What are you planning?" field, a form will open. After you add a time and place, your event will be created.
Create mini events for sessions, keynotes and parties add a start and end time, add descriptions and photos. All mini events can be set up in advance. Anyone with a mobile phone can check in.
Step #8: Use Facebook Tools.
Facebook Questions is a free tool and lets you create a custom multiple-choice poll. It is located at the top, by the newsfeed.
To share important updates, use the “Send an Update” feature to email all the fans that have liked your page. However, be careful not to overdo it.
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Add Facebook’s free social plugins to your website: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
Import your blog entries via the Notes app. Type “notes” into the search box at the top of the screen.
Click the “Import a blog” link on the right side of the page. Enter the URL (web address) of your blog into the text box.
Once you do this, your previous posts will appear as notes and any new posts you make will display automatically.
Step #9: Measure Your Success.
Check your Facebook stats. Log in as an admin and click “View Insights” on the left navigation of your page. Scan your fans and page views count. If you are a member of a group, check to see if any new discussions have started. Get Insights for your domain: http://tinyurl.com/4k3uuvu
You can also use Google Analytics to see how much traffic is coming from Facebook.
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Step #10: Post Show Content and Gather Feedback.
After your event is over, create a photo album and video highlight reel and post it on your Facebook page. This is a good opportunity to send out a Facebook direct message with the highlight material, include a link to your post show poll.
Create a “value highlight” package for event attendees to justify your show’s value to their managers. Include listings of topics covered, keynote videos, etc.
Post all session handouts via PDF on your Facebook page. Attendees spent money to attend sessions, and they want the PDF handouts.
Setup a post show poll to get feedback on sessions, events, services, venue, and city choice. Let the respondents know that their feedback will be used to improve next year’s show.
Post a follow-up with a summary of your poll findings
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and actions you will be taking based on the polls.
Summary
Remember that using social media gives you the edge over other events (even larger ones) that haven’t adopted these free strategies, so get to work!
However, do also remember that social media is not a substitute for good, old-fashioned, face-to-face conversations and meetings.
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7
The LinkedIn Toolkit
The events industry is abuzz over Twitter and Facebook, but LinkedIn is another incredible networking tool and probably the best social media site for professionals and small businesses. This LinkedIn toolkit will focus on:
• How to recruit exhibitors, sponsors and attendees for your event.
• How to increase the amount of times your event will show up in keyword searches.
• How to create a perfect profile and group page.
Recruit Exhibitors, Sponsors and Attendees
Use status updates. Communicate to your network on a frequent and ongoing basis to build leadership in
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your network. Share blog articles you’re reading, make an important announcement about your organization, or discuss recent results and activities at work.
LinkedIn Today shows you the top articles shared on LinkedIn by people in your network. This is an incredible way to stay up to date on what’s happening in your industry of interest. It’s also a great way to interact (comment and like) with industry folks.
Find exhibitors, sponsors and attendees. A quick LinkedIn Search can generate hundreds of leads in seconds—as well as much of the contact info you need to turn leads into actual prospects.
Use the survey feature to get closer and gain insights from exhibitors, sponsors and attendees and use this data to tailor your future programming.
Make introductions easier by using the search feature to do research on potential sponsors and exhibitors, learn their interests and background. Then use the inMail feature to send your ofer to a prospect.
Look up someone’s profile before you meet with them. Learn their background and see who you know
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in common to get of to a fast start.
Search for service providers and select based on trusted recommendations from people in your network. Anonymous web searches to find providers are a thing of the past.
Show Up in Searches.
Answer questions in your industry groups to establish credibility. Find questions in your areas of expertise. Browse questions to find categories familiar to you. Answer those questions. Either provide your own answers, or recommend connections who can help.
Create the Perfect Profile.
Use all your links they give you. LinkedIn allows you to add three links to your profile page. Use this for your event website, Facebook page and Twitter page instant follow link. Use the proper anchor text so the link reads, for example “Instantly Follow ABC's Twitter Page” as the link text.
Use the apps. Link your Slideshare and Blog accounts
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automatically to LinkedIn.
Complete all of the sections. Spend time crafting a good profile section and change the default headline that lists just your current job title to something more descriptive and helpful.
Optimize your profile with keywords. Make sure the profile summary and headline use appropriate keywords and phrases that will attract targeted exhibitors and attendees to your event. List keywords others are likely to use for searching, and then describe yourself with those terms in mind.
A complete profile helps people find you and therefore helps you build your network. Take inspiration from some great profiles, such as Greg Baldwin, CEO of VolunteerMatch, and Beth Kanter, Author of Networked Nonprofits.
Helpful Hints
Encourage your staf to create 100% complete profiles. The more complete staf members profiles are, the more likely your organization is to attract and
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connect with all your critical audiences: exhibitors, attendees and sponsors.
Creating a great LinkedIn profile does not mean importing your resume. Make sure to sprinkle in industry terms and keywords. People will find you through searches, and since searches are based on keywords the more relevant keywords you include, the better.
Create a Company Page
Use a company page to create an official presence for your association on LinkedIn. Use this page to position your organization and diferentiate yourselves.
As long as you have a company email address, you can create a page on behalf of your association. Make use of all of the sections, especially the new product showcase section. Use this to add product photos, descriptions and videos to business pages.
Add a Group and Join Groups
There are over 75,000 nonprofit groups on LinkedIn, ofering associations a place to connect and host
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conversations with all their audiences. For example, The Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN) uses their group to host content and agenda discussions before their large annual conference every year.
Why not create a LinkedIn group around a hot topic in your industry?
Use LinkedIn Groups to create a “Your Event” Alumni Group to keep all former attendees, speakers and exhibitors in the loop.
LinkedIn Groups allow you to quickly discover the most popular discussions in your professional groups.
Grow Your Group
1. Send invitations to your LinkedIn connections and other contacts that are not on LinkedIn.
2. Allow your members to invite people to the group to help it grow faster.
3. LinkedIn lets you send out mass invitations by uploading a .CSV file of your email addresses.
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More and more people are using the web to start learning, so make sure you control your message. LinkedIn is a great place to start. Just take a look at how many groups there are for tradeshows alone: 410!
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8
The iPad Toolkit
An inexpensive yet powerful tool, the iPad is starting to revolutionize tradeshow displays. It’s ideal for on-the-go product demos as, unlike a laptop, the iPad is extremely portable.
You can pick it up. You can rest it in your lap. You can pass it around. You can tuck it in a bag. You can one-hand it while reading on a train. It is ideal for travelers, and lots of people travel for tradeshows.
During your exhibit, you can carry an iPad all over the booth without the need for plugs or electricity. It allows you to go green by putting your literature and other sales related info in a digital format. Instead of printing handouts that are likely to be thrown away, you can immediately email your prospects demos and marketing materials.
By using an iPad on a stand, you can create an
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information kiosk to allow prospects to read detailed information or watch promotional videos. The touch screen and intuitive interface is ideal for getting attendees involved. It also has the benefit of connecting you to the Internet wherever Wi-Fi is available and has a comparatively massive battery life—up to twelve hours of video playback. Nevertheless, the screen quality is excellent.
The iPad can also be used as a tool to draw traffic to your booth. A game on an iPad to win a prize or a random digital prize draw on an iPad are both likely to be popular with tradeshow attendees.
Although an iPad may seem like a hefty investment, it actually costs as little as $499. This may not be cheap for consumers, but it is relatively low for most tradeshow budgets.
For less than the cost of renting carpeting you can buy a powerful business tool you can take show to show.
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Tip: Branding opportunities abound. Sponsors’ logos can be featured on iPad cases and tradeshow specifc apps. There’s also a lot of screen real estate for including innovative sponsorships.
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iLeads
The iPad’s touch screen, advanced capabilities, vivid LED-backlit IPS display and expansive onscreen keyboard are perfect for lead retrieval, surveys and product demos.
The award winning iLeads is the first and most widely used exhibitor lead retrieval app. It was developed in response to complaints about traditional lead retrieval (in particular, barcodes and unqualified lead lists).
Summary
The iPad has changed the way that we experience and participate in events. There is no better device to consume content and tradeshows have never been more content rich than they are today.
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Fifty Social Media Ideas 1. If you don’t have an event presence on Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, start there.
2. Deals matter most to your social media fans. Deals also get shared more often than anything else. Ofer exclusive discounts and freebies. Visit: http://ht.ly/2ILkH for the article, “Why We Like & Follow Businesses Online.”
3. Tag everything, everywhere! Think Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Using your strongest keywords and search terms, tag all of your content including blog posts, photo names, press releases, directory listings and company pages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, etc.
4. Google has compiled a guide with Google tools that can help you reveal opportunities and achieve your marketing goals. Even better? Many of these tools are free, so they also help you do
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more with less. Click: http://snipurl.com/s8jd2 5. Know when to post. Click through rates on
Facebook updates are better on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tuesday is your best day to post. (Source: Vitrue Findings)
6. Check your Facebook stats: visit your Event Page and click Facebook Insights (this can be found by logging in as an admin and clicking "View Insights" on the left navigation). Scan your fans and page views count. If you are a member of a group, check to see if any new discussions have started.
7. Encourage sharing by adding “Like” buttons on your events website. Add to session descriptions, parties, speaker profiles, etc. This is a quick way for users to share content, as it fires directly into attendee’s and exhibitor’s newsfeeds.
8. Don’t overdo it with the Facebook updates. Too many updates will increase your opt-outs. Up to one week before the event, post one update a week. During the event, post one update a day. After the event, post one update with a thank you and an early bird special ofer. Then close shop till next year, unless you have more special
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pricing.9. It is simple to make "Tweet This" or "Post to
Facebook" links, just use the links below and add in the link and/or text you'd like people to share via a status update:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u= add your link here
Twitter: http://twitter.com/home?status= (add your link and text here)
10.On that note, make sure that there is, at minimum, the standard social sharing buttons such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook on your event website and blog. Add your social media icons to all email signatures, business cards.
11. Recruit exhibitors, sponsors and attendees by adding your event using LinkedIn Groups. Use keywords to ensure you will rank high in Google’s results for your event name and those keywords.
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12. Use LinkledIn Groups to create a “Your Event” Alumni Group to keep all former attendees, speakers and exhibitors in the loop.
13. Answer industry-related LinkedIn questions in your groups: Search for questions on LinkedIn that you or members of your company can answer and ofer your expertise.
14. Engage visitors by ofering Foursquare discounts and prizes when attendees check in at your conference, pubcrawl, special event or scavenger hunt, and encourage your exhibitors to do the same. Visit: www.Foursquare.com
15.Create an event hashtag (#ExpoExpo) for Twitter to expand your audience before, during and after the event. Use them every time you tweet to help people find you. Don’t forget your post-show thank you’s.
16.Make it easy for your tweets to be re-tweeted. Keep them short enough so your followers can add hashtags and short comments. Keep your
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Twitter name short too, for that reason. With only 140 characters, each space is valuable.
17.Improve the attendee experience at your show: tweet unplanned changes to schedule, reminders and notifications.
18.HashTracking is a paid service you can use post-event to track campaigns on Twitter. They ofer a free sample report and one report starts at only $40. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a client. At the closing general session, have a slide that acknowledges the Twitter handles that tweeted the most at your event.
19.Twisplays are LED signs that allow you to conveniently display whatever Twitter streams you desire at your conference—your attendees’, your events’, your exhibitors’. Check it out: http://www.twisplays.com/
20.Using a free desktop application like HootSuite, you can monitor event mentions, keywords, and manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm and WordPress profiles and schedule messages. Set up a search to learn
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when people are tweeting about your event, Visit: www.Tweetdeck.com
21.With Hootsuite, you can schedule Tweets ahead of time. That way you can be sure announcements and reminders go out on schedule.
22.Sign up your Twitter account with Klout to get your infuence score. Go to www.klout.com for advice on making your tweets and Facebook posts more infuential.
23.Five tips to build a larger Twitter following:
• Tweet frequently, people look at recent tweets to decide whether or not to follow you.
• Retweet, @replies are very powerful.
• Link to videos and pictures—think variety.
• Make sure you follow relevant industry insiders (e.g., Corbin Ball, TSNN, PCMA).
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• Assign an intern to add people who will automatically follow you back (1001 Twitter Users Who Will Follow You Back).
24.Fill out your Twitter bio. You have 160 characters, so make them count.
25.Create a snazzy, custom Twitter background for free: Visit : www.TwitrBackgrounds.com
26.Promote your event by starting a free event blog. Use a site like Wordpress. Fresh content is good for search results, conversions and budget. Visit: www.Wordpress.com
27.Stuck for ideas on what to blog about? Ratings, exhibitor reviews, stories, surveys, early bird discounts, sessions, and FAQs all will improve customer service about your event. Here’s a link for 100 Blogging Ideas: http://tinyurl.com/68wg32h
28. Ways to make your content easier to read: Use a less formal tone—prospects are likely to search in a casual voice. Add bullet points, headlines and
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quotes that let prospects breeze through posts.
29.Showcase your exhibitors with testimonials, photos, and case studies.
30.Start a free event blog on Tumblr. Tumbling is a fast form of blogging, and it’s catching on. Blogs are loaded with inbound marketing potential. Visit: www.tumblr.com
31.Comment on other blogs, message boards and forums and link your name back to your own. Also, don’t forget to respond to comments on your own blog.
32.Post event photos on Flickr. Don’t forget to tag them with your event name and keywords.
33.Vlog (Video Blog) your event to reach those that may be unable to attend. Broadcast video updates during the event on your event’s YouTube channel. YouTube is the second most popular search engine, next to Google.
34.Use free platforms like Ustream.tv or LiveStream.com to stream live video of company announcements or to do a live Q&A with
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company leaders.
35.Need ideas on what to vlog about? Exhibitor booth setup, product demos, announcements, testimonials, presentations and events during the course of the show. Interviews with exhibitors and attendees. Guest spots from editors or other industry experts live drawings for products and prizes. Good blog posts will generate additional press coverage.
36.Ofer charging stations and Wi-Fi hotspots for free at your event. Let attendees and exhibitors connect and communicate.
37.Use a free URL shortener like Bitly or TinyURL to make a short and memorable URL from a long URL. Short URLs are easily shared, tweeted, or emailed to friends. Also these free tools track and analyze your links.
38.Use Technorati for real-time search for user-generated media (including blogs) by tag or keyword. Also provides popularity indexes. Visit: www.technorati.com
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39.Add QR codes to cocktail napkins, brochures, displays. Link them to online info for Smartphone users. It’s easy and free to make QR codes. If you simply add “.qr” to any shortened URL made with bit.ly or goo.gl, you will be taken to a page with a QR code for that URL. Just save the jpg to your desktop and you’re all set.
40.Extend the life of your event’s sessions by uploading session slides to Slideshare. Don’t forget to embed an HTML lead generator form—with an early discount, for example—anywhere in the presentation. It’s never too early to build buzz and increase attendance at your next event.
41.Wibiya is a free web toolbar that provides visitors access to innovative and useful web applications, like search, “contact us” forms, Twitter sharing and Facebook “Likes.” Visit: http://www.wibiya.com
42.Setup a Google Profile to link all of your social profiles in one place. Visit: www.google.com/profiles
43.Check out Knowem.com It’s free and lets you
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search more than 525 popular social networks and over 40 domain names to instantly secure your show name or username across the social web. Visit: www.knowem.com
44.Register social media accounts in your event’s name even if you have no plans to use them right away.
45.TweetAdder automates all things Twitter.
46.Do you like Google Alerts? Use Socialmention.com for free, real-time social media alerts and analysis. Visit http://socialmention.com you can setup an alert about your show so anytime it is mentioned on a social media website you will receive free daily email alerts.
47.You may at some point decide to graduate from free tools to paid ones like: Sysomos, Radian6, Hubspot, ArgyleSocial or SocialRain.
48.Remember the five Ts of Social media:
Talkers. Find people who will talk.
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Topics. Give them a reason to talk.Tools. Help the message spread.Taking Part. Join the conversation. Tracking. Measure and listen.
For the Five T’s Marketing Worksheet, click here: http://ht.ly/2AS8D
49.Cloud Flood is another great free tool. It’s a button creator that helps you get traffic from Twitter and Facebook by adding the button on your site next to your freebies. Cloud Flood
50.Get found. Submit your event site and blog to Bing, Google and Yahoo to improve your search rankings.
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10
The 2013 Exhibitor’s Guide to Email Follow-Up with Four Proven Templates
New to Exhibiting? New to Email Marketing?
Start at the beginning. Email marketing is how you can let your leads know about promotions relevant to their interests, or what their next step in the buying cycle should be.
1. Segment your leads to create email lists. Base your lists on product interest, buying timeframe, etc.
2. Next, determine the goal of the email or the “Call to Action”. Would your leads like pricing info, a demo, a proposal, and a sample? All emails should have a goal in mind so you can measure its success.
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Elements Key to Success »
Subject Line. Your email subject line should make it clear what the email is about. When you write your subject line, don’t sell what’s inside—tell what's inside. It can be funny, enticing or irreverent too, but it should be relevant. Begin with the most important information in case the subject line gets cut of in their inbox. Remember that most people read the subject line looking for a reason to delete it, not to read it. Don’t be lazy with the subject line. It can convey action with an action verb such as learn, download, or sign up.
Here are some good examples after the show:
• (Prospect Name), Thinking of you after (Show Name) ex: John, Thinking of you after ASAE
• When we met at (Show Name)• What You Were Looking for at (Show Name)• Info you requested at (Show Name)• (Prospect Name), Download the Ultimate Widget
Buying Guide• (Prospect Name), Sign up for the (Product Name)
Webinar
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Using the prospects name in the subject line is a proven winner when it comes to open rates. Test a few out by mailing half your list one subject line and the other half another. The one that gets more opens should be used again.
Email Body, Text and Style »
1. Opening. Put your most important and compelling information at the top of the email.
2. Make it readable and easy to scan. Tests have also showed that narrow margins on the top make it easier to read, so try adding a photo on the top right to naturally cut the text in half. Getting prospects to read the first sentences is key.
See in this example to our right? »
3. Line spacing should be set at 1.5 lines and larger text is best, try 14 -15 point Arial font.
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Today, more than half of Americans are using Smartphone’s and reading email is the top activity for users of Smartphone’s.
4. Images. We recommend using one awesome looking graphic. A high text to image ratio improves the chances for them to take your desired action because it presents them with fewer options.
5. Try Bolding, Italics and Using [Brackets] to highlight certain terms. If, as an example you want to highlight how your service will guarantee a sales increase of 50 percent.
6. Call to Action. This is critical. What do you want the reader to do? Do you want them to register for a demo? Talk to Sales? Make sure you include a link in the email that sends them to a page to take the next step. Don’t waste an email by trying to educate and inform, that will happen later (if they are interested). You can’t put everything in an email. Send them to a form to capture information and gauge interest
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7. Write in the second person. Use you, your, yours instead of me, us, our.
8. Say it in a new way. Every email does not need to end with “Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have” Ugh. Stand out. Try this instead and an example: “Hit reply on this email, I’m standing by to help you.” Instead of “Have a good day” try “Have a fantastic afternoon!”
9. Avoid jargon words like “cutting – edge.” Write like you speak. No one speaks “As per your request” Double ugh. Same goes for clichés – this can make the diference between a good and a great email. Be creative, stand out.
When to Send »
You know your customer best, are they night owls, overachievers likely to read email after 6 pm? Trust your gut, and then test sending your email at various intervals. You’d be surprised how often your guy is wrong. Try early morning, afternoon, evening even weekends.
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To try: Try testing a couple email campaigns during unconventional times, say on a Sunday afternoon. You may just stand out enough to improve open rates. Are your customer’s tech-savvy? Try sending on a weekend when in-boxes aren't as cluttered and your smartphone-using customers will find your message at the top of their list.
To be safe choose the morning or afternoon. Studies by GetResponse found the following:
Top Open Hours: 8:00 am, 9:00 am, 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm
Top Click Hours: 8:00 am, 9:00 am, 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm
Measure the Success of the Email »
Measure what worked and what didn’t work. Here are some ways to judge the success of your email. Ideally you will find that a good percentage of the recipients opened, clicked and took action (signed up you’re your demo, downloaded a guide, requested a proposal, etc) based on your email.
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■ Good open rate is above 20 percent■ Good click rate is above 2 percent
Your open rates will tell you how good your subject line is. Your click rate will tell you how engaged your prospect is, how good the content and ofer of the email is.
Low click rate? Try these improvements:
• Try putting a second link at the beginning or at end of the email.
• Try adding an additional call to action, like a link to a demo and a whitepaper.
• Change the opening line, mix up your bullet points, change the picture.
• Add a link to your call to action at the beginning on the email.
• Try making your link larger and bolder
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Another tip: Buttons! Make your button bigger! Check out these huge buttons »
Exhibitor Follow-Up Email Templates »
Template #1
Subject Line: ASAE Show Review: Help Buying (Product Name)
Hi (Fname),
Thanks for stopping by our booth today! Do you have
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any follow-up questions for me?
Here are some helpful resources:
• Photos from the event (view and download), click here
• Short Product Demo to share with coworkers, click to watch
• Product Buying Guide, click to download
Do you run events? Start saving money and increasing attendee and exhibitor satisfaction with our lead retrieval services, watch this short video to learn how our technology can improve your events.
Joanna StasukMarketing DirectorBartizan ConnectsYonkers, NYDirect: 914-375-7985
PS: Hit "reply" if you have a question or comment, thanks!
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Why this is a good email:
1. Use “Hi” or “Hey” as the salutation as opposed to “Dear”. Often when you are emailing a list some form field may be missing, like the first name. Using Hi as your salutation ensures an email that makes sense, you would rather read Hi, then Dear, right?
2. Email is written in the second person, focused on benefits for leads by providing helpful resources and the chance to ask questions
3. Clear, concise and most importantly a brief email. Two sentences and three bullet points are all that is needed to communicate the information efectively here. It’s easy to scan and explains the value of products.
4. Uses a “PS” – Often readers will read the PS if nothing else, try adding an addition call to action there.
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5. Links to landing pages to collect contact details
Template #2
Subject Line: ASAE Custom (Product Name) Consultation
Hi (Fname),
Remember when, about a week ago you visited us at the ASAE show and were looking for some info on widgets? We wanted to thank you for it wit a custom consultation!
Get a complimentary (insert your service name) assessment with (Insert company name’s) experts, and find out whether your (insert your service) is optimized to (your service’s benefit #1) and (your service’s benefit #2).
Claim Your Complimentary (Your service) Evaluation
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Joanna StasukMarketing DirectorBartizan ConnectsYonkers, NYDirect: 914-375-7985
PS: Hit "reply" if you have a question or comment, thanks!
Why this is a good email:
1. Uses a graphic to make text in beginning easier to read.
2. Speaks the language of the reader and their interests
3. Brief email lets prospects know you value their time.
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Template #3
Subject Line: Data Proves (Product Name) Brings More (Product Benefit)
Hey (Fname),
It’s been a little while since we heard from you last; have you found a solution to your (pain point)?
Here’s some research to help you decide…this research shows that (insert a data point from your buying guide) directly impacts the (Your product benefit or use) your business gets.
Check out the data yourself, and see how (your product type) can afect (your company service or product) for your business.
Grab Your Guide to Buying (Your Product) Now
You are always welcome to speak with me about your (customer pain point) by calling 914-375-7985 or schedule an appointment for a convenient time to
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talk .
We would love to hear from you and help you solve (customer pain point).
Joanna StasukMarketing DirectorBartizan ConnectsYonkers, NYDirect: 914-375-7985
PS: Hit "reply" if you have a question or comment, thanks!
Why this is a good email:
1. Visually communicates the primary ofer with a relevant image and link to download the ofer.
2. Second-person point of view is used.
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3. Ends with a strong call to action to determine if they are a good prospect or not. Weeds out the tire kickers - moves people further into the sales process.
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Template #4
Subject Line: ASAE Attendee (Your Product Type) 101 Kit
Hey (Fname),
Here’s everything you need to know about (Your Product Type) and how to get started (product benefit 1 and benefit 2)
This (Your Product Type) 101 Kit Includes:
■ Ex: Best Practices
■ Ex: Worst Mistakes
■ Ex: Case Studies
Download your (Your Product Type) 101 Kit here.
We would love to hear from you and help you solve (customer pain point).
Joanna StasukMarketing DirectorBartizan Connects
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Yonkers, NYDirect: 914-375-7985
PS: Hit "reply" if you have a question or comment, thanks!
Why this is a good email:
1. Visually communicates the primary ofer with a relevant image and link to download the ofer.
2. Second-person point of view is used.
3. Ends with a strong call to action to determine if they are a good prospect or not. Weeds out the tire kickers.
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Conclusion
What is your number one goal of exhibiting at a tradeshow? It should be following up on those hot leads as fast as possible, right? Yet most exhibitors fail to qualify their leads (making follow up much more time-consuming) and many wait too long before reaching out to them after the show.
Use these tips and templates; they present an enormous opportunity for trade show exhibitors willing to follow-up fast.
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Conclusion
The slump in the economy may be afecting tradeshows, but the smart exhibitor need not stand by and let this happen. Currently, tradeshow follow-up is dictated largely by the desires of the exhibitor, and fails to consider what the attendee is looking for out of the relationship. Inverting this—beginning from the standpoint of what the attendee wants—will guarantee you are ahead of the pack.
Combine this with a pro-active approach to social media. Our surveys found that the majority of organizers and exhibitors still aren’t using these tools to their full potential, so doing so will give you an instant advantage.
This is not a prescription; it’s an observation. Something we at Bartizan thought worth sharing with our customers, and our customers’ customers. We don’t expect that it will apply to all of you, but we do
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expect that it will apply to many. In a landscape where show attendance is at risk, this may be good territory to explore.
Share this Ebook:
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