Tag Archive for: Event Follow-Up

Lead Liaison

40 Event Marketing Statistics

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Want the executive summary? Download the infographic here.

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Business is changing at the speed of light. As marketers, it seems like every time we feel like we’ve mastered a new strategy, a new one emerges. Advances in modern technology drive marketing organizations at a fast pace. But, just because more and more people are adopting new technology, it doesn’t mean that one-to-one contact is gone. In fact, most of the technology that we create is intended to give businesses the opportunity to automate administrative tasks to make room for more person-to-person contact.

Marketing events are a great way to engage in one-to-one contact. Multi-day conferences, trade shows, conventions, seminars, thought-leadership workshops…these are all great examples of event marketing. They give businesses the chance to interact with consumers who are already 10 steps closer to purchasing, just by the simple fact that they are at the event in the first place.

Perhaps you are trying to decide if your business should invest in event marketing. Maybe you have already started exhibiting at events and you just want to learn more about them. Or perhaps you are a seasoned exhibitor who’s just looking for a few good stats. Either way, you are in luck! We have rounded up 40 important statistics that help shed light on event marketing for business-to-business (B2B) companies.

Why do Companies Invest in Event Marketing?

  • 63% of marketers use tradeshows as a form of lead generation (source)
  • 79% of US marketers actually generate sales using event marketing (source)
  • 81% оf trаdе ѕhоw attendees hаvе buуіng аuthоrіtу (source)
  • 77% of marketers use experiential marketing as a vital part of a brand’s advertising strategies (source)
  • 52% of business leaders say event marketing drives more ROI than any other marketing channel (source)
  • 48% of event attendees say face-to-face interactions are more valuable today than two years ago (source)
  • It takes an average of 4.5 calls to close a sale without an exhibition lead, and only 3.5 sales calls to close a sale with a lead from an exhibition (source)
  • 73% of B2B marketers say events are better than other tactics for customer engagement (source)
  • The three most commonly used B2B lead generation strategies are email marketing (78%), event marketing (73%), and content marketing (67%) (source)

Strategies

Businesses around the world are investing in marketing events. Here’s how those strategies are affecting budgets and goals.

  • Annually, companies spend about $24 billion on exhibiting at events (source)
  • The top three event marketing goals are to increase sales (83%), increase brand awareness (73%), and to enhance product knowledge (53%) (source)
  • Events occupy 14% of budgets, which is the largest share of B2B marketers’ budgets. (source)
  • B2B companies spend 29% of their marketing budgets on events, on average, versus 19% for B2C companies (source)
  • 91% of event professionals stated that increasing engagement at their events was an important priority for their organization (source)

Event Lead Management

Managing the leads from your event is only part of a robust event lead management strategy. An event lead management solution should not only assist you in capturing your lead, but also in properly managing the data, enabling you to follow up quickly, and helping you track ROI.

  • 17% of respondents still use spreadsheets to store information on their leads. (source)
  • Just 6% of marketers believe their company converts trade show leads, contacts and conversations into customer business extremely well, although 27% feel they do so moderately well, and another 41% feel they’re getting better (source)
  • 14% of marketers plan to integrate marketing automation with their events and only 7% currently do (source)
  • 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first (source)
  • The top benefits for event technology adopters are: improved ability to track and measure their events (40%), increased process productivity (31%), and a better attendee experience (30%) (source)
  • 76% of marketers say their event and experiential marketing initiatives are integrated with their other marketing campaigns (source)
  • 22% of brands do not have a way of measuring their events (source)
  • 91% of event planners say that adopting a mobile event app has provided a positive ROI (source)
  • The top 5 metrics marketers feel are best for quantifying event value are: new referrals and introductions; quality and quantity of leads; deal closure; value of sales; and upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Yet, only 34% use those 5 metrics to assess trade show and event ROI (source)

Looking into the Future

  • The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics stated conventions and events are expected to expand by 44% from 2010 to 2020 (source)
  • 40% of marketers say they’ll increase spending on hosted events in the year ahead (source)
  • Companies are spending on event marketing at a growing rate, with 54% boosting their event activity over the past three years, and only 17% cutting back (source)
  • 43% of marketers believe the value of face-to-face interactions will continue to increase over the next 2 years (source)
  • 85% of executives say the number of exhibitions will stay the same or increase over the next several years (source)
  • 75% of marketers believe that in the upcoming years, live events will become increasingly important to their organization’s success (source)

Conclusion

You get the picture, right? Event marketing holds a significant position in the future of growing businesses. It’s never too early to start mapping out your strategy – whether you are a seasoned event marketer, or you plan on trying it out for the first time. Below is an infographic that summarizes all of these important stats. 

Luckily, we have many resources to help companies make the most out of their marketing events. Here are a few we think you might like:

And, to learn more about our enterprise-level Event Lead Management solution, click here.

Ryan Schefke

Creative Strategies for Your Next Trade Show or Marketing Event

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Want the executive summary? Download the infographic here.

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Looking for creative strategies to use at your next trade show or marketing event? Look no further! We’ve gathered lots of ideas that can help you before, during, and after an event.

Before an Event

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

Planning for an event is the most important part of your process. If you don’t get the right tools in place, you’re bound to make mistakes.

  • Do your research and see what your biggest competitors’ booths look like. Track competitors in your CRM so that you know if any competitors stopped by your booth.
  • Invest in a great display, so that prospects will want to invest in you. If your display looks pathetic, so will your company.
  • Send 1:1 emails and offline marketing pieces, such as direct mail, ahead of time offering people a chance to schedule a meeting at your booth.
  • Send a marketing email (or a series of emails) announcing your presence at the event and what you’ll be showcasing. Offer educational content in these emails to establish yourself as a thought leader at the event.
  • Send a reminder email (or text, if possible) to stop by your booth.
  • Engage with conference attendees prior to the event – ask for attendees to vote on what swag they’d like best. This is a great excuse to reach out to attendees and an easy way to get them to engage. Lists of registered attendees can usually be found by contacting the event manager.
  • Speaking of swag, reconsider your definition of swag. A few ideas are: headphones, socks, or a free t-shirt with a offer for a free beer if they are seen wearing it to networking parties after the convention.
  • Post to all of your social media accounts. Choose a different image or message for each platform to keep readers’ attentions and reduce redundancy.
  • Consider how you’re going to capture leads at the event (badge scan, business card transcription, upload registrants, manual form fill, etc.). Some event lead management solutions offer all of these!
  • Do all of these things in your marketing automation platform to track key engagement prior to the event. Find one that does it all.
  • Extra Tip: Ensure consistent lead follow up by setting up an automated process to segment, tag, distribute, and follow up with those leads. Create a nurture campaign in your marketing automation platform to distribute leads, assign tasks call tasks, follow up with educational content, and more. (LL)

During an Event

You already believe in your product or solution. Now, it’s time to show off! Make sure you’re the star of the show.

  • Keep your display clutter-free. Don’t distract visitors. Clean lines and a simple, sleek design allows your message (and the experience) to play center role.
  • Don’t list features on your banners. Keep your message simple. Answer “How will your product make their lives easier? What makes you better than your competitor? What problem does your product solve?”
  • Host a wireless charging station at your booth with a fun activity, or snack, for people waiting.
  • Place devices in front of your booth and run them as a kiosk for leads to self-service (watch videos, submit an inquiry to learn more).
  • Use an event lead capture app, such as Lead Liaison’s GoCapture!™, for all representatives to use in place of outdated badge scanners. (LL)

After an Event

Evaluate & measure ROI. This is key to growth and future success.

  • Evaluate your process. What worked? What didn’t? Did your team run into any issues? Did your technology support your properly?
  • Measure ROI of your event using Cost Per Prospect (CPP), Revenue Generated, and overall ROI metrics. Some event lead management solutions offer an Events Dashboard to compile and report these key metrics, which makes things really easy.

Hopefully you picked up some great tips today. We’ve included this infographic below for you to download and/or share with your colleagues. And, if you’re interested in our home-grown event lead management solution, request a free demo here.

Ryan Schefke

Infographic: Post-Event Lead Nurturing Strategy

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Want the executive summary? Download the infographic here.

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Marketing events can be a very costly effort. There’s the booth rental, the booth design/display, travel and expenses for your employees working the booth. Service costs like electricity, cleaning, or wifi can sneak up on you. Badge scanners are expensive (have you looked into other options?).

I think you get my drift: marketing events cost a lot of money. Return on investment (ROI) is paramount. Once your team has captured hot leads at an event, you should be prepared to follow up with those leads quickly and effectively. There’s no time to waste – don’t let your competitors beat you to the punch.

We are often asked for examples of how a business can (and should) nurture leads post-event. Below is an infographic that examines a tried-and-true post-event lead nurturing strategy. 

Technology to Support Lead Nurturing Strategy

The first step in determining your post-event lead nurturing strategy is to make sure you have the technology in place to automate it. Don’t count on these things being done manually – it’s just not realistic. Companies are busier than ever these days, usually with multiple people wearing multiple hats – stretched thin. There’s also tons of room for distraction at (and after) marketing events. The more administrative tasks you can automate, the better. Let your employees spend their time building relationships and making connections.

There are lots of options out there, but we recommend a wholistic approach. Look for technology that works together, so you don’t have to spend time exporting and importing. For example, our event lead management solution allows businesses to create and customize lead capture forms, prepare intelligent post-event workflows, quickly capture leads onsite, instantly sync with a CRM, and then place them into those previously mentioned workflows. No additional technology is needed.

Of course, we love our solutions. But, there are lots of options out there! Just make sure you have something in place to be able to effectively execute your plan.

Lead Management Strategy – Instant Tasks

Create a list of all the actions you want to take once you’ve captured the lead’s information, and separate them into groups based on the time of the outreach. Here are a few examples of what you might want to do instantly:

  • Tag the Prospect with the Event Name
  • Add the Prospect to the Event Leads list
  • Assign a grade or score to the Prospect based on your ideal buyer criteria
  • Distribute the lead (Prospect) – based on round-robin, geography, or product interest
  • Sync the Prospect Record with your CRM

Side Note – Lead Scoring vs. Lead Grading

Let’s talk more about lead score versus lead grade. You may want your reps to call a Prospect if their score is high and their grade is high. Or maybe just one or the other. To make that determiniation, you should know the differences. 

Lead scoring is a way to measure engagement, and it happens over time. Even before your event, a Prospect may have already been to your website, scanning a few of your webpages, which would increase their score. It will continue to increase as they continue to interact with your website or your content.

On the other hand, grading is a way to measure how well a Prospect matches your ideal buyer criteria. Your reps can qualify and assign a grade onsite at the event. With our event lead management solution, reps can collect lead data quickly and either grade them in the moment, or they can go back later and grade them when they have a lull in booth traffic.

Lead Management Strategy – Starting Your Nuture

Once those organizational actions have been completed (usually within seconds), what do you want to do next? Let me answer that for you…you want to follow up. Insidesales.com conducted a study that found 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. That means that the timing of your follow up matters.

If at all possible, reach out to your leads within an hour of them visiting your booth. A great example of this kind of outreach is with a text message. If you’re capturing a lead’s mobile phone number, use your marketing automation platform to send a text message saying, “Hi Jane, it’s Bob. Thanks for stopping by our booth! We’ll be in touch soon – but in the meantime, here’s my number if you have any questions…” That is sure to make your company stand out.

24 Hours Later

Send an email. Even though you already sent a text message, send an email 24 hours later. Give your Prospect time to filter through messages from other booths, but not enough time that they forget who you are. Remind them of a product feature that sets you apart from other exhibitors at the trade show.

Pivot

At this point in the game, you may want to consider customizing your lead nurturing strategy based on the previously mentioned lead score and/or grade (depending on what matter most to your business) and how the Prospect interacts with your outreach or content. Your marketing automation platform should have the capability of customizing the workflow using this kind of criteria. If the lead score is high, assign a task to a rep to make a call. If it’s low, continue to nurture via email.

Don’t disqualify leads with a lower score or grade. They may be hesitant because they are taking this decision more seriously. Offer a piece of educational content, like an infographic or a case study. Try to be their source of education in the industry, so they begin to see your company as a thought leader.

If they download the content, you may want to pivot further based on that. If they downloaded it, offer another link to an informative blog post with a powerful call-to-action (CTA). Make the decision to reach out to you easy.

If they didn’t download the content, perhaps they need the same information as the lead above, but rather they need it summarized within the email itself to reduce effort. Include your CTA within the email itself, to make it even easier.

In Summary

Continue nurturing your Prospects for several weeks until they are ready to buy, or place them into your newsletter list so that you can continue your educational content without being too pushy.

It’s all about creating a sense of authority and innovation within your industry. Those that actively attend trade shows, conferences, or other marketing events are not passive. They are engaged, and their presence at an event will make them hyper-aware of you and your competitors.

If you decide to exhibit at an event, be prepared to make it count. Here’s an infographic that you can save for when the time comes. And, good luck!  

event strategy
Ryan Schefke

Event Strategy: How to Properly Manage Leads from a Trade Show or Other Marketing Event

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Want the executive summary? Download the infographic here.

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Does your company do marketing events, like trade shows or conferences? Whether you’re just dipping your toe into marketing events, or you’re a seasoned pro, it doesn’t hurt to learn more about how to perfect your event strategy. When preparing for an event, there are two main focuses: getting your “gear” ready for the show, and setting up a process for managing the leads you get from that marketing event. We’ll save the “gear” topic for another day…today we’re thinking about LEADS!

What do marketing and sales always have in common? The answer: leads (duh). Marketing teams generate leads, and sales teams pursue them. Marketing events, and the like (conferences, trade shows, etc.) are incredibly effective ways to generate leads. But there’s often a lot of prep work that goes into these events.

The first step in planning for a marketing event is to come up with an event strategy, which should include a well-thought-out lead management process. Without this, you risk losing a lot of potential leads – leads who have seen your booth, spoken with your sales rep, and shown real interest in your solution. What a waste that would be! Here’s our guide to coming up with the perfect lead management process as a part of your overall event strategy:

Do Your Research

Find an event lead management strategy that works best for your business. Do you prefer to just order a lead scanner and do the rest manually? Or, do you prefer to use a lead capture app that already integrates with the rest of your marketing and sales technology (ex: marketing automation platform and CRM)? We prefer to use our lead capture app, GoCapture!™, as it integrates seamlessly with our marketing automation platform and our CRM. We can easily connect the dots between our event-specific marketing campaigns and the end results. We can also customize our forms so that we capture all of the information that we want/need, and we have limitless options for lead capture (not just badge scanning!).

Map Out Your Lead Management Process

Meet with your team (marketing AND sales) and lay out a plan for how you wish to follow up with your leads. A quick text saying, “Thanks for stopping by our booth!” goes a long way – especially considering the amount of email follow-ups those folks will probably have the next morning. Are there any special offers or messages that you should incorporate into your follow-up? Get to the drawing board (quite literally, if you have to!) and map out how you will nurture those leads (your “nurture campaign”). Part of a thorough event strategy is making sure that everyone is on board and knows what kind of messaging that lead will receive.

Here are a few things you’ll want to consider, when laying out your post-event lead nurture:

  • Determine the proper lead score for this event and incorporate that into your post-event lead nurture plan. Either manually, or automatically if you’ve got the technology, add that number to Prospects’ overall scores.
  • Ensure proper lead distribution. Many marketing automation platforms will allow you to automate your lead distribution based on specific rules, or round-robin. Make sure everyone is on the same page about how those leads will be distributed so there is no confusion later.
  • Incorporate omnichannel marketing in your nurture campaign. Sure, emails are great – of course those should be included. But text are powerful, postcards are unique, and handwritten letters give a personal touch.
  • Set up your post-event nurture in your marketing automation platform prior to your event, so that once that lead is captured, it is automatically tagged, segmented, scored, and placed into an automation.
  • Keep in mind that you can usually clone your nurtures (aka automations). Put the proper legwork into creating a killer nurture campaign, and then rest easy knowing you just have to edit a few minor things (like event name, etc.) next time around.

Train Your Team

Okay, now back to your event strategy: Don’t assume that your sales reps (or other team members attending the event) are up to date on lead capture technology. Although there will probably be some complaining, try to get your reps into a room to refresh them on the process or train them on new tech. If you are using an event lead management app, you can have your reps install it on their devices (or the company’s devices) ahead of time so they can get some real-life practice.

You want your sales team to be on board with your process. If they are not, you maby be less successful than you could be.

Ensure Attendance

More often than not, trade show organizers will provide an email list of people who plan to attend an event. Put some thought into your plan for encouraging attendance at your booth and start building those relationships early. Gone are the days when attendees just show up and wander around. With more and more millennials attending trade shows, conferences, and other live marketing events, we find that attendees are doing more research ahead of time so that they know who they want to visit and can plan accordingly.

Make it easy for them; properly distribute and advertise your location and booth number through marketing emails, social media, and 1:1 communication (like Lead Liaison’s Sales Enablement). And don’t forget to include past attendees in your communication (based on location).

In Summary

Marketing events can be costly, so it’s important to ensure you are getting the most out of it. Properly managing your leads is essential. Include team members from both sales and marketing through as much of the process as you can, so that everyone is on board with (and will follow through with their part of) “the plan.” Below is a quick graphic you can print out and stick on your desk, so that you’re ready for trade show season!

Event Strategy: How to Properly Manage Leads from a Marketing Event

Ryan Schefke

How to Prepare for a Marketing Event

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There are various types of marketing events to attend; traditional marketing events like trade shows, corporate events, social gatherings, and more. Regardless of the event, a marketer must go through some checkpoints before the event. In this article we’ll cover how to prepare for a marketing event to make your event as successful as possible.

Prepare your Booth

We’re assuming your next event will require you to showcase your brand a bit. Companies typically do this with a booth. If you don’t have a booth contact your local print shop and inquire about trade show or event displays. Lead Liaison uses a three (3) panel display with plenty of images. As a tip, keep your text to a minimum. Yes – you do want people stopping by your booth to engage in conversation with you, but you don’t want them blindly staring at your display struggling to read the text. You’d rather tell them what you do and converse with them, right? Try to think of adding only broad headings and key bullet points (no more than three per panel) to your display. If you don’t already have a graphics artist on your team, hit up a site like upwork.com and hire someone. For us, we used the graphics person at the print shop so we got a bonus. We got a graphics artist to help us out without having to shell out more money.

Once your display is ready, consider how to prepare for a marketing event that focuses on your audience. You can run a drawing where you have your booth visitors drop a business card into a fish bowl. You can offer some candy (in another fish bowl or tray), or you can give away some company swag. Here are some other ideas if you want to take a more creative route:

  • Talk to a handful of local companies in the area and have them sponsor services to run an auction. Hotels, restaurants, nail salons, etc. should all be happy for you to promote their services while visitors bid on each service. It’s a good interactive idea.
  • Do something off the wall such as a wheel for people to spin to win a prize of some sort. Most people will like playing the game and see that as a nice break to the monotony of the event.
  • Have a raffle for your services. For example, if you’re a software company give away a subscription to your software for a period of time. If you’re a professional services company offer a complementary version of your services (free consultation, free training, etc.).

Lead Capture

One of the most important things to consider when thinking about how to prepare for a marketing event is how you will capture your leads. Marketers must think through how they’ll capture leads at the marketing event. There are varying levels of lead capture. You could do what many companies do and only collect business cards from each person. If you did that, it would take a while to get the leads into the system, you risk human error losing cards or entering in information, you rely on the sales person to enter in the data, and even after all of that’s done – you’ve got to merge all the leads together, get them into your system, and properly distribute them.

An alternative method is to contact your trade show organizer to see what system they suggest. Most event organizers will contract a company for their lead retrieval system. The lead retrieval system will likely be a handheld barcode scanner or a mobile app. Choosing a system from the lead retrieval company will still limit you though. For example, the forms that are provided are limited. They are designed to only capture certain information, such as name, email, phone, etc. Even if you’re using their barcode scanner, only select information gets pulled in. If your company prefers to capture key information from your booth visitor, too bad – you’ve got to cram that information into the notes section, making lead capture even more cluttered when it’s time to get that data into your system. Moreover, you’ve got to get the captured leads into your system. Lead retrieval companies will put your leads into a central repository for you to download, or give you all of your leads while you’re at the show. Once you obtain them, they still have to be curated, uploaded into your company’s CRM, and distributed. This is just the capture part, and doesn’t include any follow up with attendees.

The last, and best option, is to use a professional-level event lead capture system. These systems have a backend and frontend to help you manage the end-to-end process for your event leads. On the backend, marketers can build and provision forms with custom fields and information relevant to the company. Marketers can also electronically roll out forms to different sales people and fellow marketers who might be attending the event. The forms can be pushed out to each user’s Android, iOS, or Windows device as the application should be cross platform (HTML5). The mobile event lead capture application will provide multiple lead capture methods. We’ve listed a handful of lead capture methods present in leading event capture apps:

  1. Barcode / QR code scanning
  2. Manual entry
  3. List pre-fill
  4. Business card scan

Leading event lead capture solutions will also work offline as most events could be in the basement of a hotel or in a crowded area where internet or cellular connectivity is limited or not available at all. The device should work seamlessly, whether offline or online, and hold the leads on the device or automatically pass them to the backend once the device connects. This leads us to the backend aspect of these systems. The backend should be sophisticated enough to help the marketer qualify, communicate, distribute, and nurture leads automatically. Here’s a short summary of each of these areas of the workflow on the backend:

  1. Qualify: Leading systems will use scoring or grading as a way to qualify leads. Scoring is a way to measure engagement or interests. For example, if the prospect chose a specific value on the form then give them more points. Similarly with grading, if the prospect has a title that contains “Chief” then consider automatically giving them an A+ for their grade. Scoring and grading will help your sales reps separate out where to focus first, as they should look for the highest graded and scored leads from the event.
  2. Communicate: Responding to the lead right away is important. Text the visitor back after an hour or so thanking them for their time and visit. Alternatively, send them an email, postcard, or handwritten letter shortly after meeting them.
  3. Distribute: Make sure you route the lead to the route sales people as soon as it is submitted. Use various rules such as geography, demographics, or any information you collect on your form to determine where to send the lead. Getting the lead in the hands of your sales rep as soon as you can is critical for success.
  4. Nurture: Build stronger relationships with your leads by running them through multi-step nurture processes that intelligently sends out touch points across traditional and digital marketing channels.

Coordinate your Team

Gather your sales and marketing team members together and do a recap of your upcoming event. If each person is using a lead capture app like Lead Liaison’s GoCapture!™, make sure each user is in the system and their device is authenticated to receive the event form. Your team might also benefit from having one or two devices around the booth and putting the GoCapture!™ app into Kiosk Mode to more easily manage lead collection. Whatever your approach, make sure you have a documented process for capturing the leads and make sure your reps are fully trained on this process.

Distribute your Leads

The final, and possibly most crucial step, in thinking through how to prepare for a marketing event is to nail down how you will distribute your leads. As noted above, it’s critical to have a sound lead distribution plan following your marketing event. Make sure your reps are not taking their business cards back home with them or losing them in transport. To avoid this, leverage the OCR or business card transcription services offered by your event lead capture service. With Lead Liaison, we provide a transcription portal as a component of the backend lead capture system. Businesses can manage the portal themselves by transcribing their own cards. Alternatively, Lead Liaison’s transcription team could transcribe the card for a nominal fee. Either way, get those cards out of the hands of your reps and into the system in digital format for prompt lead distribution.

Lead Liaison provides the perfect solution for event lead capture, called GoCapture!™. Get a free demo of this solution today to see how you could make your next marketing even a smash hit.

Request a Demo

Lead Liaison

The Importance of Event Follow-Up: Part 1

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Your organization just attended a big marketing event. There was a lot of planning that went into your organzation’s participation at this event. You spent lots of marketing dollars trying to make an impact, and hopefully creating a lot of leads. And it worked! Your onsite representatives collected tons of leads! You probably already know that your event follow-up is important, but did you know just how important it really is? And, how rare it is?!

Why is the timing of your event follow-up important?

According to recent research from Certain published on MarketingProfs, “some 73.5% of respondents say their firm takes four days or longer to follow up with event leads. Just 2% of respondents say their firm follows up with event leads on the same day.” Most respondants to this research said that the reason they do not follow up quickly is because of how long it takes to prepare the outreach and that they do not have the tools to speed up the process.

Prompt event follow-up is critical. It allows your organization to stand out from the competition because it shows that you care enough to make that follow-up a priority.

Event lead capture methods, like our app GoCapture!™, are an important part of any marketing automation platform. This functionality allows companies to streamline thier event follow-up in a way that is personal, instantaneous, and repeatable. Our app allows onsite representatives to collect lead information quickly (without losing any valuable information), by scanning a badge, a business card, by manual entry, or even syncing with a registration list. Then, once that information is captured, it can be automatically uploaded to our database, segmented, and placed into a nuture campaign.

That nurture campaign can contain releveant event follow-up information in the form of email, text message, postcard, or even a handwritten letter (our personal favorite!). Whatever the method of outreach, the message should be well thought-out.

What kind of message to you send in your event follow-up?

First and foremost, your event follow-up should identify the specific show by name, within the first paragraph or even in the subject line. This immediately validates your outreach, which should encourage recipients to read further. And, don’t forget to include the information from the onsite representative that the prospect came into contact with. That will help create a personal connection with your outreach.

The conversations that onsite representatives have with leads can be breif, or very surface level. Your event follow-up messaging should offer a range of options for further engagement – also known as your call-to-actions (CTAs). You really want to appeal to a range of prospects at various stages of the selling cycle. You could offer a free download of a high-performing white paper, offer a free demonstration, or simply encourage your prospect to sign up for your company newsletter. These clickthrough options will help sales prioritze which leads should be called first and will also allow for further segmentation.

If you are interested in a better way to manage your event lead capture and your event follow-up, let us help you! Check out our event lead capture app, GoCapture!™ and our marketing automation platform, Lead Management Automation (LMA)™. If you like what you see, don’t hesitate to ask for a free, personalized demonstration.