I have a client whose company attends about 25 trade shows per year and up till now the follow-up for these events has been a little haphazard. We’ve begun working on ways to provide a series of automated post-show emails for these events. We want to come up with something scalable that can work for all of the events, but at the same time has a personal touch and features some show-specific elements. Here’s the direction we’re heading right now – but we’d love to hear your ideas to helps us improve:
- Email One will be sent to the show attendee approximately one week after the show — that gives the attendee time to come back to the office and sift through all the email they missed while they were away so our message won’t get lost.
- The From Name is the company name at this point since the relationship with the prospect is just getting off the ground.
- The Subject Line mentions the fact that the attendee stopped by the booth. We will run an A/B test on: “It was nice to meet you last week” and “Thank you for visiting our booth”.
- The Design mirrors elements of the trade show booth graphics. (This one can be tricky, especially if your company has multiple booths that don’t all look alike. In that case, you should just rely solely on company branding.) TIP: Another thing I’ve seen work well is to include an image of your booth giveaway item if it’s unique and memorable.
- The Content is short and to the point. A quick thank you, a link to the online Flash demo of the company’s product, a toll-free number, and a “I want someone to call me” button that drives them to a form. We also use this chance to introduce them to the name of their salesperson and include all the necessary contact details. (In case you’re wondering, we’re using the Signatures feature of Eloqua to make this happen.)
- After one week we check to see if the recipient clicked through the email to the demo or the contact form. If they did, we know that they’re now being followed up by the salesperson because of some other cool features we have in place. If they did not click through, we send them a plain text version of the initial email with a different subject line.
- After two weeks we check again to see if they clicked through and if not, we add them to the educational nurturing program.
This may seem like a very simple (overly simple?) solution and I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a lot of room for growth. However, this ties back to my previous post (Don’t Be An Overachiever) in that we’re starting small to get something off the ground. For the past two years the client hasn’t had anything in place for consistent event follow-up. Now that we have this small solution in place we can focus on building out more complexity going forward.
How are you following up with your events? Do you have any ideas we should consider adding into the next round of edits in this program?
Posted in: Event Management
This was a good read, thanks! Your system is similar to our own. An organized system for post-show follow-up is absolutely crucial in quantitatively determining your trade show results. We use ACT to organize the leads, and Constant Contact for the email follow-ups. What tools do you use?
Thanks! For this latest project my customer is using Eloqua (www.Eloqua.com) to automate and send their emails. They have a lesser-known CRM system, so there is not an automated flow of data between the CRM and Eloqua and we’re making do with scheduled list uploads between the two.
Cool, thanks for the info!
Good post Heather. Your approach is a good and systematic way for handling an age-old challenge “who is a qualified lead”?
I’d be curious, if you’re able to share, the response and penetration rate you’re seeing on the first vs. second “thanks for visiting our booth” emails.
What’s critical, in our opinion, is better qualification at the booth level so you’re not sending emails to a “list of the list of total attendees”. A truly engaged conversation needs different follow up than a simple pass-by might. Unfortunately, what’s common in most/all lead management tools is the inability to differentiate between a pre-qualified lead and someone that is simply ‘trick-or-treating’ for the glow-in-the-dark-logo-pen-and-pez-dispenser.
Would be interested in sharing with you how we’re doing that.
@BusyEvent on Twitter or email me: bslawin@busyevent.com
marketinginsights.eloqua.com – cool sitename man)))
————————
sponsor: http://lolej.ru/
This sounds like an effective system you’re implementing – especially if it’s just the first steps to follow-up for your customer. My biggest challenge lately has been finding new ways to make sure that potential contacts are engaged when the pass my booth. I’ve been looking into audience response systems – do you have any that you suggest? So far I’ve been researching http://www.audience-response.ca/
Brian – thanks for stopping by the blog! Wow, it only took me a month to reply to your comment!
I’ll be happy to share some results when we have them. We’re just now implementing this and I’ll want to let it run for a few trade shows before we have strong data points. Take care!
Great tips, it may seem a little simple, but simplicity is nice and effective. Clients definitely prefer emails that are concise and to the point. Your strategies are great its just a matter of implementing them, which many companies don’t make a great enough effort to do so.