5 ways to increase lead capture adoption at events

With in-person and hybrid events coming back in full force, it’s time to think in-person lead capture again. For many exhibitors, this usually involves scanning a name badge or business card through an app or scanner. These apps are great for quickly getting contact data from your event and into your marketing automation or CRM system of choice.

But in order to get contact data from a scan, booth staff have to actually use them.

Many organizations struggle to get staff to adopt new lead capture methods. After all, taking someone’s business card and scribbling a few notes worked before, why shouldn’t it work now?

Event marketers know exactly why that doesn’t work. People fall through the cracks and don’t receive follow up, and you have a delay in processing your data. 

How event marketers can help increase staff adoption:

1: Set Expectations

This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many event coordinators pay good money for lead capture without setting expectations. Who should booth staff be scanning? Here are a few different responses we’ve gotten from our partners:

• Scan everyone who comes to the booth, no matter what.
• Only scan potential customers (exclude vendors, sales people, etc).
• Only scan qualified potential customers.
• Only scan potential customers with a sales opportunity.

Different people will have different opinions. Many marketers usually favor gathering as many leads as possible and qualifying later. Sales teams, on the other hand, are mostly interested in hot leads, seeing potentially unqualified leads as time wasters. Make sure everyone knows what you need from them.

2: Keep it Simple

We all know it’s important that follow up is targeted for the attendee. You can’t just send a giant email blast with generic content and expect people to engage. You can’t either send personalized content if you don’t know anything about the person.

Having said that, we’ve seen a tendency to ask a lot of survey questions. 

A while back, we had a partner who was switching from paper lead capture forms to digital lead capture. They copied the paper form which included 20 survey questions. All of them were marked required and many had follow-up questions. They left their event with only three new leads from the app.

What happened? The sales staff got frustrated. They felt like they were stuck doing data entry while lines built up at their booth. To quote one of the reps, “I look like I’m just playing on my phone or texting friends; it’s embarrassing.” 

They ended up switching back to the paper forms where they felt more comfortable. The result was that it took several weeks before all of the leads were entered into their CRM.

While it’s tempting to gather as much data as humanly possible, remember your staff are in a busy, highly interactive environment. Make the lead capture process as quick as possible by using the minimum number of survey questions you can.

3: Avoid Manual Entry

Event marketers trying to save on expenses might decide they don’t need to pay for badge scanning. After all, Developer kits usually cost several hundred dollars, and renting devices could break the bank once they add all of their users. Their staff can just type in the contact info, right?

That decision is more costly than you might realize. Just like in my example above, when staff only have manual entry as an option, you can expect them to avoid submitting data on the sales floor. They simply don’t have time to do it when face-to-face with prospects. Instead, they’re likely to collect business cards and upload them later in their hotel room.

However, if users can conveniently scan a badge or business card, lead capture takes mere seconds. Consider that next time you’re thinking of saving a buck on lead capture.

4: Stick to Multi-Select Fields

You’re probably noticing a theme here…

The key to adoption is making it as easy as possible.

The more typing there is, the more time lead capture takes, and the less your staff will want to use your capture form. 

When dealing with surveys, multi-select fields take very little time. Imagine how much longer it would take to type “Lead Management Automation” than to just tick a box.

5: Use a Universal Lead Capture System

Inconsistent experiences are one of the biggest complaints both marketers and booth staff.

Every event and every provider has their own scanners and apps. Some let you add custom survey questions, some don’t. Some only provide badge scanning, others can also do business cards. And, unfortunately, not all are very intuitive.

People are much less likely to invest their time in learning to use an app if they know they’ll probably never use it again. However, if you use a Universal Lead Capture (ULC) system like Lead liaison, users will have the same experience at every event. Most importantly, you have control over what the form looks like as well as the questions asked.

To get the most out of your next event, contact Lead liaison today for more ideas on how ULC can make life easier for your staff.

Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

To see how Lead liaison’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!