Tag Archive for: Gamification

Lead Liaison

How to Create a Touchless Scavenger Hunt for your Trade Show

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How to Create a Touchless Scavenger Hunt for your Trade Show

If you’re looking to gamify your trade show with a scavenger hunt, you’ve come to the right place.

It’s easy to build a touchless scavenger hunt that operates in a live and virtual environment. In this article we cover why touchless is important and how to truly implement touchless, what you need for your scavenger hunt, and why you should consider a scavenger hunt for your next event.  

How to Implement a Touchless Experience

Bring Your Own Device (also known as BYOD): Attendees can use their existing mobile devices for the experience, whether they’re at the live event or participating virtually. Attendees don’t have to download an app either. They can use the built-in, native features included with most modern smartphones to scan QR codes to collect prizes/points. 

QR Codes: QR codes keep the experience completely digital. QR codes (what Lead liaison calls Waypoints) can be positioned in stands or stuck to equipment anywhere in your booth, or displayed on a computer screen for virtual attendees. 

Digital Leaderboards: A digital leaderboard keeps track of collected points to tally winners. Digital leaderboards can be displayed on a large screen at your event or accessible in your virtual platform. 

By allowing attendees to use their own devices, deploying QR codes, and leveraging digital leaderboards organizers can create a truly touchless scavenger hunt experience. 

7 Things you Need for your Scavenger Hunt

To pull off an amazing contactless scavenger hunt experience you’ll need to prepare the following artifacts and strategies:

  1. Directions: Think about how you’ll lead attendees to different clues and/or what clues you’ll give them. Engage exhibitors to understand what item/object they’ll want to draw the attendee too to come up with clues. Since we’re aiming for a touchless experience, post your directions to the scavenger hunt on a landing page for your event and consider distributing it via email to attendees. You can also create a PDF with instructions and use a QR code to access the PDF. Lead liaison provides a pre-event marketing platform if you need assistance.

  2. Exhibitor Buy-In: Depending on your setup, you might need participation from exhibitors. Your exhibitors might offer a treasure, prize, or artifact for visiting their booth. Keep in mind though, you don’t always need a booth as one of the stops on the scavenger hunt. You can use different areas of your event (live or virtual) that might need more traffic or eyeballs. When working with exhibitors, understand what they want to offer to ensure consistency with your clues. Since the scavenger hunt will drive traffic to each stop, consider monetization opportunities with your exhibitors. In summary, make sure you’ve got your exhibitors lined up and in support of your program.

  3. Rewards / Prizes: Consider what, if any, prizes you want to offer attendees at each stop or for your scavenger hunt winners. Exhibitors could also offer prizes at each stop on the attendees journey. Depending on how you configure your winners, you can also provide prizes to winners once they complete the scavenger hunt. Consider offering digital prizes, such as digital gift cards to keep the experience touchless and to appease virtual attendees. Digital gift cards will give you a homogenous experience across live and virtual. Also consider offering a digital gift card cash value, where winners can spend their cash at 100s of different locations, ranging from Starbucks, Foot Locker, AirBnB, lululemon, and many more coveted brands.

  4. Waypoints: Each “waypoint” is a stop in the scavenger hunt journey. The waypoints are displayed via QR codes. Think about where you want to place each Waypoint. Waypoints could be used at exhibitor booths, anywhere in your virtual environment, at the registration desk, lobbies, cafeterias, social events, on a human beings shirt, and more. Each Waypoint can be assigned a different number of points. Waypoints that are harder to find might be worth more value to the attendee. Once a Waypoint is scanned it instantly reveals points, an optional game to deepen the experience, or a smart form to collect custom data. Data collected might be of value to your exhibitor, and another upsell opportunity for you.

  5. Global Leaderboard: Consider where and how you’ll display winners, if at all. Leaderboards should be customizable to position a sponsor (a monetization opportunity) or include branding to match your look/feel and message. Leaderboards are accessed via a web browser link. They can be displayed on the big screen at your event or iFramed into your virtual environment. Leaderboards refresh in near real-time to provide instant gratification. Some advanced leaderboards have the ability to trigger certain actions when leaders surpass point thresholds, so give some thought into how you want to handle that.

  6. Winner Strategy: Well, you’ve got options! With a customizable scavenger hunt platform you’re able to announce winners in multiple ways. For example, you could announce winners at the end of each day (or for the first X days), which would encourage attendees to complete the scavenger hunt quickly. You could also announce winners at the end of your event, or give the top X winners on the leaderboard a reward. Instead of having an equal amount of points for each stop, consider varying your point system. Harder to find items might be worth more value, whereas easier to find items might be worth less.

  7. Monetization Strategy: Your scavenger hunt could be a revenue line item driver for your event, resulting in increased profit. Exhibitors will find value in being a stop on the scavenger hunt. They might want to invest as well.


    Here are a few ways you can monetize the scavenger hunt:

  • Exhibitor fee for participation
  • Additional exhibitor fee for a gamification experience that retains the attendee at the booth for a longer period of time
  • Sponsorship opportunities within games that play behind each Waypoint
  • Sponsorship opportunities on the global leaderboard
  • Sponsorship opportunities as the “host” of the scavenger hunt
  • Sponsor-endorsed or provided prizes with their branding
  • Custom branded Waypoints with sponsor logos 

Why Use a Scavenger Hunt

If you’re contemplating the use of a scavenger hunt at your event, consider the benefits of having one. Here’s a summary of the 12 reasons why it’s great to host a scavenger hunt:

  1. Used in Hybrid Environments: Modern day scavenger hunts are built to work in a hybrid world, with both live events and virtual events. 

  2. Networking: Scavenger hunts can be a great ice breaker for exhibitors. It helps connect people with one another. Consider adding a Waypoint to a human! A key person or host at your event to foster more interaction.

  3. Passive Experience: When attendees arrive exhibitors aren’t necessarily interrupted, but they have an option to engage with the steady flow of attendees visiting each Waypoint. This non-intrusive way allows attendees to further engage with an exhibitor’s services where they see fit, and exhibitors to engage with attendees as time permits.
      
  4. Brand Promotion: Whether you’re promoting your event, sponsors, or exhibitors there are plenty of ways to do so across each Waypoint, stop in the scavenger hunt, leaderboards, games, and more.

  5. Taps into Innate Desire to Win: People love to win. People love to compete. It’s in our nature. They also love to get rewards and prizes. All of the innate concepts are presented with a well orchestrated scavenger hunt.

  6. Nothing to Download: With a touchless scavenger hunt there’s nothing to download or come in contact with. Attendees use their own devices to access Waypoints and clues/instructions. This reduces complexity which fosters adoption and ease of use at your event. Your goal is to maximize participants.

  7. Attendees Spend More Time: You’re setting up your event to provide value to exhibitors, attendees, and sponsors. With a scavenger hunt, participants spend more time on the show floor or in your virtual environment searching for artifacts. That means more time spent and invested with event constituents.

  8. Monetization Opportunity: This ones pretty simple, you can make more money!

  9. Deepen Education: Each Waypoint can have a tailored experience behind it. The experience could be entertaining, simple, or educational. Educational opportunities include trivia, a version of Jeopardy, a swiping game, and much more. Educational experiences help reinforce messaging and give exhibitors additional opportunities to increase brand awareness while transferring knowledge.

  10. Collect Data that Matters: After attendees scan a Waypoint QR code, they might be prompted to enter a brief amount of information into a form, such as name and email, to register their points. Alternatively, exhibitors could leverage smart forms to collect meaningful data that’s important to their business. That data could easily flow into their CRM or marketing automation system and be used for targeted marketing and sales.

  11. Normalize Traffic: Instead of developing clusters of people at your event (not a great idea on the heels of a pandemic), your scavenger hunt can be used to spread out foot traffic (or online traffic). Place Waypoints around the event like honeypots to attract attendees to less common areas and better normalize traffic.
     
  12. Increase Awareness: Having a unique experience at your event will give you something to market, thereby increasing awareness while delivering a better experience. Your attendees will have fun and love the competitive aspect of your event. 

How to Put your Scavenger Hunt Together

You can certainly try to piecemeal your scavenger hunt together; however, for an all-in-one scavenger hunt with great customer support, let Lead liaison do it for you. Our packaged scavenger hunt has everything you need including Waypoints, customizable QR codes, a vast library of digital games, leaderboards, and digital rewards all packaged up and ready to go. Our out of the box solutions are highly customizable to adapt the scavenger hunt to your event and overall goals. 

Our award winning customer service team will help you deliver an incredible touchless scavenger hunt at your next event. Contact us for more information.

 

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!

Lead Liaison

6 Ways to Generate More Leads at Trade Shows

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6 Ways to Generate More Leads at Trade Shows

We’ve compiled 6 of the best ways to generate leads at trade shows based on our own experiences, our customers’ experiences, and feedback from the market. Here they are:

1: Equip Every Staff Member with Mobile Lead Capture

Exhibiting at a trade show, is when show organizers provide exhibitors with what’s commonly called “lead retrieval”. For the most part, the show appointed lead retrieval system will be very basic, lack customization, and not support integration with your sales and marketing system(s). Moreover, they usually charge per person. Costs can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars up to five hundred dollars per person. 

Restricting use per user limits your company’s ability to collect leads.

Instead, get a solution that allows you to put lead capture in every staff member’s hands. Industry leading solutions work online and offline (so you can collect leads anywhere on site or off site, or heck – in the basement) and capture leads in different ways. Popular mobile apps can scan business cards, badges, and manually collect leads through form fill. These solutions are commonly referred to as universal lead capture apps. Regardless of where you’re at, and who you are, you should be able to collect leads for your company and have them funneled into one centralized database and instantly sent into your CRM or marketing automation system. 

2: Stand Up a Kiosk Inside Your Booth

This self-service approach is a great way to not only advertise your services but complement mobile lead capture. There might be times where all your staff members are tied up in meaningful conversations with show attendees. A kiosk allows attendees to enter their information and/or scan their badge to fill out a kiosk form. The kiosk can be locked so attendees don’t get lost in the lead capture app or start messing with your tablet settings.

Another neat benefit of using a kiosk is advertising. Retailers commonly refer to this feature as an “attract loop”. It’s essentially a screen saver that can rotate through images and calls-to-action on your kiosk. When the attendee taps the screen, they’ll see the lead capture form to fill out, request literature or more information, and be on their way.

Instead of missing leads because nobody is there to help them, use a kiosk and maximize lead capture!

3: Host a Game

Instead of hauling large, expensive, physical activations to your event, use digital activations that you can run on a tablet. I know, you might be a bit perplexed by the word “activations”. It’s essentially a way to engage your audience. An example activation would be a Spin the Wheel game. Instead of bringing the physical wheel to the event, bring a tablet and customize your own wheel game. The concept of gamification will help draw in your audience. 

4: Hold a Competition

Innately, everyone loves to compete. It’s a quality we all inherited . The thirst for competition doesn’t curtail at trade shows. In fact, competition is usually heightened at live events as attendees typically travel with coworkers or friends. Who doesn’t like to compete with their friends or look awesome next to their fellow cohorts! 

Industry leading event gamification platforms also have prizes and leaderboards to help you build a competition. When your competition is solidified, market it with your pre-show efforts. This will help drive more leads to your booth. Also, gift card rewards and prizes provide a reason for your sales team to follow up – resulting in more touch points with your leads. Run your leaderboard live at your event by mounting a small TV in your booth. As attendees play your game, their scores will populate on the leaderboard. 

Want to take the competition to a new level? Have a team-based competition where teams are automatically formed around an attendee’s company. For example, every attendee that works at Microsoft would be on the “Microsoft” team. This will help your company capture more leads as participants will recruit their coworkers for you!

5: Create an Experience

Another way to generate more leads at trade shows is to hold an experience, such as a photo booth or treasure hunt. These interactive experiences help attendees have fun while collecting lead data. This puts your prospect in a better mood and primes them for a good conversation. The attendee also wins as they get a souvenir, can share their photos with friends and colleagues, and have a chance to win something – should you go that route. 

6: Touchless Lead Capture

Touchless lead capture technology was a neat innovation that came from the pandemic. With touchless, or contactless lead capture, companies can set up a custom branded QR code on display inside their booth. Attendees scan the QR code with their personal cell phone. Once scanned, a lead capture form opens up on the attendee’s device. They can fill in their information instead of touching anything, getting close to a staff member, or shaking hands.

Combine games and experiences with custom QR codes to deliver a unique touchless experience that drives lead capture!

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!

Lead Liaison

14 Ways Show Organizers Can Increase Attendee and Exhibitor Engagement at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events

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14 Ways Show Organizers Can Increase Attendee and Exhibitor Engagement at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events

We’ve been working with show organizers as they navigate changes in the events industry. We understand the challenges they face putting together live, virtual, and hybrid events. Many show organizers have different needs; however, when you search for the common thread across all organizers, we found engagement to be the number one need. The other need is creating additional revenue streams (see our other blog post titled “15 Ways Show Organizers Can Create New Revenue Streams at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events”). 

If you’re a show organizer reading this article, you’re in the right place! We decided to consolidate the top 14 ways show organizers can increase engagement with attendees and exhibitors. Here’s the list:

1. Digital treasure hunt

In the “olden days” show organizers would hand out physical, paper cards that attendees would bring with them as they searched for key items throughout the event. When they found an item, a staff member would use a rubber stamp to stamp the card. When the attendee filled in the entire card, they’d return the card to the front desk to claim their prize. Modern technology has eliminated the need for paper. Now, attendees use their mobile phone to scan QR codes, reducing reliance on resources required to staff the station and the use of raw materials. Attendees can traverse the event floor or virtually hosted environment to find the treasure hunt items. When found, the attendee scans the QR code on their phone, receives points, then proceeds to search for the next item until all items are discovered.

2. Exhibitor tour 

This concept is similar to the digital treasure hunt; however, exhibitors are the treasure. When we attended ExhibitorLive, our main event, it was interesting to see their “Tech Tours”. As an exhibitor, we paid $1,500 to be part of the tech tour. Exhibitors would pay a premium to be a stop on the tour. A QR code posted in their booth could have a uniquely branded message or look on the QR code, indicating the stop number on the tour. For example, there might be a total of 10 stops on the tour, one for each exhibitor, and the signage with QR code represents “Stop #2” on the tour.

3. Experience getaway

Waypoints (stylized QR codes) represent a way to get attendees to do what you want them to. This might include a visit to a specific location, downloading a brochure, a conversation with a particular representative, attending a presentation…just about anything you can imagine. Consider having pavilions or zones at your event. To get your attendee to visit all the pavilions/zones, use Waypoints!

4. Speaker polls

With all your educational sessions, keynote speakers, or anything similar consider having a poll / survey for your attendees. Speakers, or an assistant to the speaker, can control what questions are asked and when they are displayed. The audience can launch the questions via a QR code and view / answer the questions on their personal device. Data is collected on the backend to give show organizers a better understanding of what the audience thinks of whatever it is that is being presented.

5. Live photo booth

Show organizers can present a photo booth at live events running in a few modes. The photo booth can be launched on an attendee’s personal device from a branded QR code, or displayed in the lobby on a physical device. A customizable Gallery can be displayed on a computer screen or on the wall using a TV or projector.

6. Virtual photo booth

Similar to the live experience, a photo booth used on a virtual platform can work in combination with a live event (hybrid events). The photo booth can be embedded in a virtual event platform, such as Bizzabo, Swoogo, etc. or accessed via a customized QR code (for mobile). Using the attendee’s web browser or mobile device, their photo can be posted to a Gallery, which they can share with friends and team members.

7. Touchless attendee gamification using QR codes

In an environment where safety is a concern, games can be launched via customized QR codes spread out throughout the live or virtual event. Instead of hauling hardware with you, attendees can play games on their mobile device.

8. Educational opportunities

Trivia and Quetrix (spin off of “Jeopardy”), among other games, present great educational opportunities for show organizers. Attendees engage with these activations by being challenged with questions that can also deliver specific messages about your event.

9. Participation awards

Encourage attendee participation on initial attendance or at individual sessions. The more sessions an attendee joins, the more “points” they get, resulting in higher participation levels and a chance to be atop the leaderboard.

10. Digital prize drawings

The various types of attendee engagement that we’ve alluded to above can be scored using points. Points can be rolled up into a master leaderboard. Winners can be selected at the end of the day or at the end of the event. Winners can be rewarded with digital gift cards. I like to think about this like an online shopping spree. For example, if the first place winner (the attendee who was the most engaged) won $500, then they can spend the $500 across more than 150 brands such as Nike, Dunkin’, Airbnb and many more.

11. Fundraiser for charity

Many events enjoy raising money for charity… and why not? It’s all for a good cause! Attendees like to be part of these giving opportunities, and it often serves as a breath of fresh air outside of the pandemonia of the event.

12. Casino-based networking event

Use a suite of casino games, such as roulette, spin to win, three cups, blackjack, roll doubles, and more to create a unique experience that like-minded attendees can participate in. Create a leaderboard dedicated only to this experience to connect attendees to others with similar interests.

13. Hold team competitions

Break audiences into groups or use companies to automatically create teams. Companies and groups can compete against each other for a chance to be placed atop the leaderboard.

14. Clue

Use Waypoints with tips to create a game based on clues. Who killed who? With where, and what? Waypoints support the clues as each attendee scans the Waypoint and receives a clue for where they should look next.

If you’re a show organizer looking for ideas to increase engagement at your event, let us know! We’re happy to ideate with you to increase engagement at your next event. Contact us and schedule a meeting today!

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!

Lead Liaison

Case Study: Event Activations with Universal Lead Capture

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Case Study: Event Activations with Universal Lead Capture

In this case study, we discuss some common pitfalls in event preparation, participation and execution. We’ll also take a look at how Event Activations with Universal Lead Capture can add layers of protection to these types of investments, and increase ROI at any virtual, live or hybrid event such as a webinar or trade show.

It’s important to do some research on the event organizer before the event. Do you have a history with them? Have they delivered consistently? What do other participants have to say about their experience with this show organizer as show sponsors or exhibitors?

What if the organizer has a great sales team but delivers a poor marketing or event management experience?

We’ve all been in a conversation with a salesperson who promises the moon and stars to get us to sign on the dotted line… And many have signed-up based on expectations implied from a conversation with sales. Unfortunately, the sales team isn’t responsible for delivering goods and services… Marketing and event management are however, and there can be a great divide between the pitch and the delivery!

Document Your Expectations Prior to Paying

Documenting your expectations from verbal agreements at the beginning of the process can be difficult, especially if you’re in a hurry to meet submission, material, or payment deadlines. Remember, if you don’t get it in writing, then you can’t enforce expectations or seek reparations.

In this case study, conversational expectations were:

  • The webinar would have a maximum of 4 sponsors.
  • This would be a single-day webinar event.
  • The expected turnout for this event would be 400-600 live attendees.

We paid top dollar to participate, with those expectations. In fact, the organizer forced another year of paid participation in their online directory (which netted us zero leads during the previous 18 months) in order to be eligible to participate as a sponsor in this webinar, and we agreed to the terms so we could participate in this opportunity to demonstrate our solutions to our ICPs for 8 minutes.

In preparation, we:

  • Produced a 3 minute video demonstrating the benefits of our platform and solutions, plus interview Q&A to showcase the solutions that would benefit our ICPs the most.
  • Developed marketing strategies, multi-channel campaigns, follow-up campaigns & workflows.
  • Incentivized event participation with $350 in gift card rewards.
  • Established business development processes for post-event follow-up.
  • Held meetings with the event organizer, event host, and sales representatives, as well as multiple internal planning meetings.

Delivery, however, wasn’t quite as expected. What we actually received was:

  • An event overpacked with 10 sponsors
  • A two-day webinar series
  • A last place position on day one
  • 192 live attendees on day one

The webinar organizer was raking in money from 10 sponsors, so why stop at 4? Unfortunately, from a sponsorship perspective, too many conversations just diluted all our messages and undermined the value of participating.

As one of the first interested sponsors who prepaid and submitted materials by deadline, surprised us by asking, “which day” we wanted to participate in after we had already established, and paid for, a particular date. It was like they were hinting that they wanted to push us to day 2, which they never mentioned from the beginning… So we stuck to our guns and chose day 1, and they placed us last in line for day 1. 

At this point, we were committed to an event. We had seen no email promotions go out from the organizer, and decided to take success or failure into our own hands…

Ensuring success despite under-delivery

Prior to important events, good team members will be at high alert and hoping for the best. But what if the event organizer under-delivers on expectations?

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

  • Involve partners to help boost campaign reach and share costs.
  • Market the event as if you are the only voice promoting the event. Success is your responsibility, not the event organizer’s, even if they are disorganized or fail to meet your expectations.
  • Employ solutions that give you control and flexibility in case the worst case scenario becomes a reality.

Pre-event marketing from the webinar organizer was not strong. 

The organizer promoted the event in their newsletter a week before the event to 27,149 recipients.

They sent a dedicated email promotion out four days later to 41,772 recipients.

They sent the same dedicated promo to an additional batch of 14,113 recipients 2 days after the first.

As a single sponsor, Lead liaison sent email and social media promos to over 80,000 recipients and drove just over 1,500 page visits to the organizer’s webinar registration page. We partnered with two virtual event platform leaders, providing them with email, social media and graphical assets to further boost messaging and share costs as well as brand exposure.

How many people registered? 306

How many attended? 192 live attendees

Attendee demographics – what type of attendees? 

55% Corporate Marketer / Event Professionals (our ICP)

29% Industry Supplier (partnership opportunities)

16% Other

Distinguishing your experience from the competition:

Realizing we were up against 4 competitor sponsors late in the game didn’t really phase us, because we knew our solutions would speak for themselves, and we had a secret weapon none of the others had: live event activations with universal lead capture.

We were going to present our solutions, then let attendees participate in our experiences, saturate them with our brand and messaging, entice them with instant gift card rewards, and capture them with universal lead capture – before they could finish hyperventilating from all the fun they were having.

Lead liaison’s event activations increase engagement

On average, marketing and event professionals see a 35% increase in engagement in the form of booth visits, virtual experience visits, and campaign conversions.

How we distinguished Lead liaison from the competition:

  • Promoted opportunity to win up to $200 in gift card rewards at the end of the event to encourage people to stick around for our presentation
  • Invited live participation from all attendees by offering a game they could play.
  • Invited the host to play live while participants watched.
  • Offered instant e-gift card rewards to the leaderboard top 3 winners.

Yes, we were last in line to present that day, but the innate desire inside people to win kept the crowd around to discover what Lead liaison was all about.

Lead liaison’s event games and rewards drove the participants into an instantly immersive experience. As the last of 4 sponsors of an event with 192 live attendees, analytics reported 135 game plays. At the end of the experience, 82 unique leads submitted contact information to learn more about Lead liaison Games, Gift Card Rewards and Universal Lead Capture.

That’s nearly 43% of all attendees present and 61% of all who played our branded game experience.

Lead liaison’s Universal Lead Capture retrieved the leads and delivered them immediately into our CRM.

Before anyone on the webinar clicked the “Leave” button, our lead management solutions were busy scoring and assigning our new leads, adding them to customized, well thought out follow-up workflows. Prospects were getting personalized emails from our Business Development Director along with information that they requested to help them in the decision making process.

Unfortunately, because of a system glitch, the organizer’s lead capture solution failed to collect any leads for the other sponsors. In an effort to recover vital lead data for the other sponsors, the organizer was forced to send out another email communication asking event participants to respond to a survey to indicate which sponsors they were interested in receiving information from.

This process cost 2 additional days, and while 4 other sponsors were relying on the organizer to send them their lead data, we were deep in conversation with our new leads.

Lead liaison Universal Lead Capture gave us the data we wanted, when we wanted it, and the first mover advantage.

Days later, we received an additional 44 leads from the organizer’s follow-up survey (about half compared to our gamified lead capture experience) from the webinar inquiry, which we were able to compare with our own lead capture list and follow up with immediately.

Follow up with incentives and offers

In addition to personalized email and telephone outreach, follow up days ahead of the competition.

We earned the right to land participants’ inboxes by announcing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners, offering free downloadable resources, and opportunities to get started with an exclusive discount on our solutions.

What sort of ROI would we have seen if we had trusted the show organizer with promotions & leads?

Ask the other sponsors…

Important Takeaways

NEVER:

Trust your event data with someone else.

Wait days for your precious lead data.

Miss an opportunity to follow up – FIRST!

Pay per-user fees for lead capture.

Lead liaison promises to save you from all this, plus:

The ability to OWN the first-mover advantage at every event.

Drive significantly more traffic to your booth, presentation, or digital experience.

Provide you an ALL-IN-ONE SOLUTION to run your events.

Empower your entire team with Universal Lead Capture that works anywhere – any time – all the time.

 

For information about Lead liaison for your next event or marketing campaign, or to get started with Lead liaison: CLICK HERE.

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!

Lead Liaison

15 Ways Show Organizers Can Create New Revenue Streams at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events

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15 Ways Show Organizers Can Create New Revenue Streams at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events

Digital activations, leaderboards, and reward systems open up better revenue streams for show organizers. Below are a 15 revenue-generating opportunities for show organizers running live, virtual, and/or hybrid events. 

Sponsorships:

1. Sell sponsorship branding on games

Companies such as Lead liaison provide an interface to build your own game. Many areas in the game such as backgrounds, logos, game elements, etc. can be easily customized. Offer sponsorship opportunities on an entire game or dissect a single game into individual sponsorships. One of our favorite examples of this is Whack-A-Mole. Instead of the stock game, show organizers could build a Whack-A-Microsoft, assuming Microsoft was the sponsor, and change logos and elements popping out of the hole. 

 

2. Sell sponsorships at a photo booth or other digital experiences.

The photo booth presents a dual opportunity to create additional revenue between the photo booth and gallery. Inside the photo booth there are customization opportunities for “stickers”, which are elements that can be placed on top of your photo, as well as logos and custom frames. Let’s assume Microsoft was again the sponsor. Have a Microsoft shirt or hat as a sticker that attendees can add to their photo and share on social media or in the gallery. Inside the gallery, more revenue opportunities exist. Logos and backgrounds can be customized in the gallery. The gallery can be displayed live on a web page, posted to social media, or projected on a wall during your event.

3. Sell sponsorship on a digital gift card portal

Lead liaison provides a digital gift card catalog with over 250 gift card options. The portal that attendees visit to redeem their gift cards can be customized with a sponsor’s logo and colors.

 4. Sell sponsorship on leaderboards

Similar to games, leaderboards have their own builder. Every element of the leaderboard can be customized. Show organizers can generate revenue from a sponsor-backed leaderboard that displays their images, logo, and color.

 5. Sell sponsored digital experiences in lobbies 

Think about the main lobby or concierge area of your event as another opportunity to generate revenue from sponsors. Inside these areas you can run educational games, entertaining games, or deliver unique experiences such as a treasure hunt or photo booth. Use as much space real estate as you can to garner additional revenue.

 6. Sell sponsorships with branded Waypoints 

Waypoints are QR codes that can be customized with colors, style, and logos – making them a great opportunity to sell to one or more sponsors.


7. Sell sponsorships on the QR code used to launch poll answers

Host a poll inside educational sessions. Poll answers are launched from a QR code, once again presenting a revenue opportunity for show organizers. Attendees scan the branded QR code to start answering poll questions on their mobile device.

 8. Sponsor a prize

The sponsor can offer a prize to one or more winners. The prize could be one of the sponsor’s services or something more generic, like a vacation that’s offered from the sponsor. All digital activations provided by Lead liaison have a prize system built into them. Whether they’re prizes such as vacations, or digital gift cards, the options to generate incremental revenue are numerous.

 9. Rotating advertisements on digital activations 

All digital activations/games in the Lead liaison library include optional screensavers. Generate revenue from sponsors by offering them an opportunity to display their company’s products or services on the rotating ad. Ads can be displayed on kiosk-hosted games or games running on any mobile device.

 

 

 Exhibitors:

10. Sell digital activations to exhibitors 

Show organizers can generate additional revenue from exhibitors by selling them activations. Providers such as Lead liaison work with show organizers on special rates. These services can be sold for additional revenue to exhibitors or included with premium booth space purchases. Exhibitors get more value than just standard lead retrieval, as games attract and engage attendees at the event.

11. Sell universal lead capture to exhibitors 

Universal Lead Capture, also known as ULC, is a premium lead retrieval option over standard lead retrieval services. ULC enables an exhibitor to capture custom questions, qualify leads, send data directly into their CRM or marketing automation system, and so much more. A ULC also works outside the booth space, allowing exhibitors to capture leads throughout the entire event, beyond exhibiting hours, inside and outside of the show venue.

12. Sell exhibitors access as a stop on a tour (tech, startup, etc.) 

Create tours for your event, such as a tech tour, startup tour, or tour of solutions in a specific category relevant to your event. Exhibitor booths can act as one stop on the tour. These stops can yield $1K+ from each exhibitor. Attendees get value from having the tour organized into stops that they particularly care about while participating exhibitors get the increased foot traffic they want from the event. 

13. Sell kiosk terminals with “attract loops” to pull in attendees 

A kiosk with rotating calls-to-action (kind of like a screensaver on your computer) is an upsell opportunity for show organizers. Kiosks present an alternative or additional opportunity over standard lead retrieval for exhibitors to better showcase their services. 

14. Sell branding opportunities on leaderboards 

Exhibitors can also grab paid spots on the leaderboard with background imagery, logos, and more. 

15. Sell enhanced product tours 

We had a client that sold large tires. They attended an event where multiple exhibitors were showcasing their own products (tractors, machinery, etc.) that had the manufacturer’s tires on them. The manufacturer spoke with the other exhibitors and created a product tour where attendees would walk around the event, inspecting tires, looking for QR codes. When an attendee found a QR code on a tire, they scanned it and were identified as a new lead. The tire manufacturer got increased exposure of their tires, while exhibitors generated additional booth traffic – resulting in a win-win. Show organizers can offer certain exhibitors these paid opportunities to participate in their own product tour. 

For more information on how to get started with our digital activations, leaderboards, and reward systems. Contact us here.

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!

Lead Liaison

5 ways to increase lead capture adoption at events

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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!

 

Lead Liaison

CASE STUDY: Lead Capture for Speakers & Conferences

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CASE STUDY: Lead Capture for Speakers & Conferences

I once attended a hybrid conference. It was an opportunity for me to learn from the experts, find out what is new in our industry, and connect with colleagues I have not seen in a long time. I also wanted to see one speaker in particular (a client) that was using Lead liaison lead capture games to engage the audience. Here is what I observed.

There were 8 sessions, which I attended over two days. Each session was 1 hour long. Of these 8 sessions, 6 of the speakers were simply talking and showing a few powerpoint slides. One speaker did send out a poll to their virtual audience and shared the results with both the virtual and live audiences to discuss. But the one speaker who was using Lead liaison engaged both the live and virtual audience in a completely different way… plus, walked away with 59 leads! Here is what they did.

  1. PREPARING THE AUDIENCE: When we entered the session room there was a slideshow running as we waited. It explained that this would be an interactive session as well as to have our phone ready and that prizes would be awarded to the most engaged participants. It also gave us a QR Code to scan to play a fun game while we were waiting and get comfortable using our phone. (I crushed this game by the way!)
  2. ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE IN LEARNING: The speaker’s presentation was broken down into 3 parts. Each part had 1 image on the screen when the speaker was teaching, followed by a QR Code for us to scan. The QR Codes led us to different learning games designed to test how well people were paying attention to the content and reinforce the key takeaways.
  3. CREATE A COMPETITIVE ATMOSPHERE: We were sitting at tables so, before we played, we were asked to identify which table we were sitting at. (This was great as it created a competitive atmosphere AND anyone who would normally not participate would have to jump in and not let their team down! The virtual audience was put on teams too! Our table played a total of 3 educational games.
  4. REWARD YOUR AUDIENCE: Towards the end of the session, the speaker announced that they would be giving away prizes to the top 3 individual players with the highest combined score from all 3 games AND the team with the highest combined scores! BUT, we had one more challenge which was a super fun game! You could literally feel the energy in the room heighten as it was “game on” and everyone was ready to play! Once we played, the speaker announced they would be showing us a Master Leaderboard that was gathering all of our individual and team scores. When it was revealed, the room cheered and celebrated the top players and team. In the end, my team did not win, but there were 3 individual winners who received $100 eGift cards (electronically fulfilled by their Lead liaison Gift Card Rewards system) and a team of 8 at table – 4 that were excited to win bluetooth earbuds! The speaker also invited everyone to visit their booth to meet their team and pick up a small gift. SMART!
  5. THE RESULTS: That last fun game we played was tied to a lead capture form where attendees could request a copy of the presentation, product information, or a meeting. When the event was all over, I met with our client and here is an overview of their results:

There were 10 tables of 8 in the room. It was almost sold out with 63 people attending in person. Online, there were another 30+ attendees attending. Of all attendees, 61 participated in person and 22 participated online. Of the 83 who participated, 59 became leads! (44 requested more information and 15 requested a follow up meeting after the show with their sales team.)

As for the attendees… We got to engage with their brand in a fun and memorable way! I could not have been more proud of how well our client utilized Lead liaison Gamification and Universal Lead Capture. They really took our advice to heart and stood out over the other sessions, created an engaging, fun and memorable brand experience, and they were the only speaker to actually capture leads! It was an amazing success story that I had to share.

Now, if only the event organizer had Lead liaison’s Event Engagement Studio setup, they could have gamified the entire event! Attendees could have scored points for engaging in every session, and earned points for meeting with exhibitors and sponsors too!

Contact Lead liaison today to learn more about how we can help your team prepare for event success by partnering with the leader in Universal Lead Capture and Engagement solutions.

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!

Lead Liaison

Demystifying APIs & Dev Kits for Event Lead Capture

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Demystifying APIs & Dev Kits for Event Lead Capture

When Event Organizers & Exhibitors work together, everyone wins!

You’ve set up your Universal Lead Capture form, your documents are ready to go, and your team is trained. Now the important question:

have you figured out how your team will actually be capturing contact data at your event? 

For most events, especially in the US, you can get contact data by scanning name badges. Universal Lead Capture apps like Lead liaison can pull in data from badges. To do this, however, you’ll typically need an API, or developer’s kit. 

This is where things go off the rails sometimes. You email the show management, and they have no idea what you’re talking about. How do you navigate these events and get your scanner up and running?

How to Retrieve API / Dev Kit Info

1: Check the order form

Many lead retrieval providers will have the API kit on their order form. This is a best case scenario. It might be listed as one of the following:

  • API Kit
  • Developer’s Kit
  • Third-Party Kit

If it’s on the form, then that’s all you need to buy. No need to rent scanners or license the provider’s app. If it’s not on the form, it’s time to contact the provider directly.

 

2: Identify the lead retrieval provider

Show management rarely has much to do with lead retrieval. You can ask them about badge scanning and APIs, but more often than not they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about. They will usually contract out to a lead retrieval provider. 

Oftentimes the provider will be listed in your Exhibitor kit. It may even be listed directly on the show’s website. If there is an order form for lead retrieval, it will often reveal who the provider is.

If you’re having trouble identifying them, contact show management. Be very careful with your wording. If you throw around terms like “API Kit,” they’re probably going to get confused. If you have to contact show management, we recommend the following wording:

“Hello, we’re trying to set up lead retrieval for EVENT NAME. Could you please let us know who is providing lead retrieval services? We’d appreciate it if you could either connect us or give us your contact’s details.”

If management is still unsure, you can ask them if the badges will have barcodes on them and who is providing the name badges. Note that this is not always the lead retrieval provider.

Contact the provider directly

Once you know the provider, contact them directly. We’ve had the most success by asking questions like this:

“Hello, we understand you’re providing lead retrieval services for EVENT NAME. We use a Universal Lead Capture app and would like to set up badge scanning. Do you have an API kit or developer kit so our app can scan the badges at EVENT NAME?”

On rare occasions, the provider might misunderstand what you’re asking. They may send you an order form for their app at the event. Make sure they understand you want to use your Universal Lead Capture app.

 

What if there is no API Kit?

In some cases, there may be situations where the provider does not or can not offer an API kit. Depending on the situation, there are still a few things you can try.

1: Ask for post-show reconciliation

With post-show reconciliation, your Universal Lead Capture app will scan and save the badge ID. Once the event is over, you can send the list of badge IDs to the lead retrieval provider. They will return a list of contact details that apps like Lead liaison can use to complete your submissions. While it isn’t instant like with an API, the end user experience is the same. Your users simply scan the lead, add notes and qualifiers, and submit. 

2: Ask for a sample badge

Sometimes providers don’t offer an API because the contact details are embedded in the badge. If you can get a badge to your Universal Lead Capture provider, they may be able to read the data without the need for an API. Lead liaison, for example, has a team of experts that check badges for you. 

3: Talk to show management

If all else fails, let show management know how important it is for you to use your Universal Lead Capture app. Many show managers aren’t even aware that these sorts of apps exist, and as a paying exhibitor, you can make a difference. We’ve had managers make changes by sending messages like this:

“Hello, we use a Universal Lead Capture app that we normally use at the events we attend. Usually the lead retrieval provider has a developer kit which allows our app to scan the badges. We understand that PROVIDER does not have this option.

Our app is configured for our needs. It has all of our questions and documents set up for our organization, and our booth staff are used to it. We would rather not have to train on a new app and figure out how to fit it within our data flow. Please consider finding a provider that offers this in the future.”

4: Take a Picture of Badges & Business Cards

Lead liaison can easily transcribe the data and send it to your CRM or Marketing Automation platform.

In some rare cases the provider may have an API kit, but show management has specifically told them not to offer it. In those cases, we suggest sending a message like this:

“Hello, we use a Universal Lead Capture app that we normally use at the events we attend. Usually the lead retrieval provider has a developer kit which allows our app to scan the badges. PROVIDER has informed us that you will not allow them to offer the kit. This is disappointing.

Our app is configured for our needs. It has all of our questions and documents set up for our organization, and our booth staff are used to it. We would rather not have to train on a new app and figure out how to fit it within our data flow. Please consider allowing this option.”

Premium lead capture solutions like Lead liaison empower teams to collect custom event data, collect and distribute that data instantly, and begin the follow up and meeting scheduling process long before the competition. Lead liaison provides event teams with resources to make every event a success such as in-app lead rating, meeting scheduling, team communications and more, and event engagement solutions that will increase activity and engagement at your booth!

Click here to explore Lead liaison’s award winning, premium lead capture and event engagement platform and view testimonials from event professionals who use the app.

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!

 

Lead Liaison

Sessions Tracking Solved!

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Sessions Tracking Solved!

How to accurately scan attendees into sessions when hundreds to thousands of people could be flowing through the door when it opens. Many organizations have the need to track and record which attendees are attending sessions so they can award continuing education credits and other meetings just want to track who attended which session. Problem solved using one of Lead liaison’s latest feature updates:

Rapid Scan!

When Rapid Scan is enabled in the app a door monitor is able to quickly scan the badge of everyone who enters without any additional steps like hitting submit or answering questions in the normal lead retrieval screen. Simply focus the camera on the badge, beep and move on to the next badge. The app will continue scanning until the submit button is pressed at which point all of the scanned data will be uploaded into the system. Quick and accurate! 

Need to report if an attendee stayed for the entire session?

Event managers can also scan badges using rapid scan as they exit the room and the system will time stamp both the entrance and exit of the attendee. 

The system makes it easy to report which attendees were in which sessions because the Lead liaison software OneFocus creates an “attendee journey” in their profile so an event manager can easily see and export each session attended. We also integrate with many different software platforms if you want to have an automatic sync of the data. 

Short on staff?

The app can also be configured for kiosk mode which will allow an attendee to scan as they enter the room. If the attendees are trained that they need to scan in and out to be awarded the continuing education credit then rest assured they will make sure to scan properly. 

Contact Lead liaison today to learn more about how easy it is to track your session attendance using rapid scan in the Lead liaison app.

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 2,000 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!

Lead Liaison

Get The Most From Rhythms & Cadences

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Get The Most From Rhythms & Cadences

What is a rhythm?

Give me 50 seconds of your time and watch this 1980’s video of the song YYZ. Begin at about 3:20 in:

YYZ is a seven minute showcase of musical talent composed and created by musicians who harnessed and refined their talent, forging it over time with discipline and practice.
Much like Neil Peart’s drum solo, a rhythm is a pattern or sequence of sounds (or events in our case) that combine to create a beautiful symphony.

The Symphony of Rhythms
By combining all the automations and the rhythms and the calculations that the SaaS Platform Lead liaison is executing for us and our customers every day, you will not just have a mishmash of noise or actions; you have a showcase of synchronized talent that originates with your thoughts, plans, and words, and then launched out like an arrow to strike at the heart of who? Not just people, but unique individuals who just so happen to be called prospects to us. 

This is why when we sit down to create a rhythm, we don’t just bang drums. We focus on the uniqueness of the individual and we try to reach them with solutions that accomplish their goals… Because honestly, every corporation wants their products to be SuperNova stars like Neil Peart…

And so when we sit down to create, or dream, or design a rhythm, we take the same position as an artist. We want to create something that reaches the heart of the reader. This process is the process of keeping it relevant to the person that we’re communicating to.

Just as we all watched Neil play and we all may recognize his talent, there are some of us to whom RUSH just is not relevant and in the same way, your message, as finely crafted as it may be, is not going to be relevant to everybody without focusing on their unique traits, their needs and their affinities. So focusing on the individual means we are searching for the unique factors that make Lead liaison relevant to the people that we’re reaching out to.

Pulling Prospects from Data Sources
When I pull new prospects, I have a large list of criteria that can include geography, experience or position within the company, and so on. Prospect companies can be filtered by employee headcount, annual revenue, and so on. I want to tune these search criteria to make sure we’re always in the butter zone when we pull lead lists.
Once we download our leads, we further cull them until we have a list that says, “These are the people we need to talk to.” Always pull lead lists based on criteria that allows you to communicate to the right people, right where they are.

 Personalization
How can I further drill down from here and really communicate to a specific segment of people?
For certain rhythms, we pull lists of people based on job changes or professional transitions. If data indicates that they were hired at a new job with titles matching our ICPs, and within a one year period, then we send them to a rhythm called, “The New ICP Less Than One Year Rhythm.” 

 This rhythm is really cool and unique. We’re actually sending an email straight from our CEO, Ryan Shefke, congratulating these people on their recent new position, which is highly relevant to them. It gets their attention and it does something else for us too… It gives us a reason to incentivize them for a conversation.

Because these rythems are  focusing on a professional life event, we get much higher response rates than other more broadly targeted rhythms

And these rhythms are the basis of our Ghirardelli Incentive campaigns, or in the UK our Hotel Chocolat campaigns. So in marketing we offer incentives whenever we feel it’s right to do so, and Ghirardelli / Hotel Chocolat have been some of our all time high performing campaigns in terms of getting new demos. From the very inception of Capello, Ghirardelli incentives have really helped us to introduce our brand to people out there in the events industry.

Let me flip to a different rhythm in which I have targeted event professionals…
I was browsing social media one day and I noticed that there was a post in the UK where they were congratulating people for making the corporate A-list, and they were listing all the top winners; some 20 winners were all total event professionals who made it on C&IT corporate list.

So I created a special rhythm that spoke directly to that experience and congratulated them for their achievements. I wished them a wonderful stay in Scotland, the destination all the winners received a free trip to. I offered all of them a complimentary gift card and a fun gamification experience as our way of saying congratulations.

So now these winners are winning even more free stuff! They know Lead liaison is benevolent and appreciates their professional development. And guess what? This approach with only 12 ICPs in the rhythm eventually led to a deal with AstraZeneca.

Adding Value to Build Relationships
If you’ve done everything you can to get information about people and you’re still falling a bit short in your personalization, rather than just solicit them with a straightforward approach, you should earn your right to approach them. Try to romance it some. Earn the right to approach them.

How do you do that?
Offer something they find value in, like a case study, video, or blog article that speaks to their interests and needs. As a general rule, don’t be pushy in your outreach emails. Keep it to a few carefully planned steps.


In this rhythm, we have a day-1 email scheduled first. Then we have a day-7 email, then day-10. We’re not going Day-1, Day-1, Day-1, Day-2, Day-5.

TIPS:

1: Keep your messages spaced out. Give your prospects a little time to breathe. Don’t be too salesy, and don’t be selfish in your outreach.

2: On the other hand, don’t be shy or passive. People want to know: why are you contacting them? You can let them know that you care and how you can help them, and you can do it in short and concise words or sentences.

3: Make your second message a follow up (reply to) to the first email you sent to keep the conversation alive. If you’re trying to reach out to somebody, would you create a brand new email each time and compose a new message every single time? No, you would go into your sent box, find the message you already sent, and build a history with a reply-to message. Build on that communication.

 

4: In your final email message, it’s ok to be less formal. This indicates you’re going to discontinue bothering them unless they show interest. You can even add a notice instead of a signature at the bottom: sent from my iPad. It’s obviously a little trick, but you want to come across as very human.

Important Note:

Rhythms are not marketing emails. Rhythm emails should be composed as if you had drafted them from your Gmail inbox or your Outlook inbox.

5: Another thing that has proven to be very effective in final messages is to offer choices to the recipient so they can quickly provide you with feedback, such as:

Choose one of these options:

1: I’m interested. Let’s talk soon.

2: I’m interested, but too busy right now.

3: I’m not interested at all.

Look to get closure on that last message, and keep it very brief.

A quick question came up during this session:
1: How does GDPR privacy law affect outreach to leads imported from LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
GDPR allows for cold email outreach if it is directly related to a business opportunity that is relevant to the recipient. So they need to be your ICPs, and it’s important to check that box before sending out any rhythm emails. These messages are going one to one, so it’s not sending in bulk like a marketing list. Rhythms are that totally personalized approach.

What happens if they haven’t responded?
Since you know your prospects best, it’s totally up to you how you deal with them. But I would give them a cool down period and then add them to a nurture campaign that educates them more about the brand and the offering so they can begin to understand their need for your solutions.

What we want to do in marketing is to create a reality for them. In order to create a new reality for a person, you have to present a relevant message to them from multiple different channels. They have to recognize that message coming from your brand within a specific timeframe. For example, within a one week period they hear your ad on the radio, then they see it on TV, and a few days later they receive a postcard… Now it’s becoming real to them.

This is why it’s important to add calls as part of a step in your rhythm. Ideally you would send an email, make a call, send an email, reach out with a handwritten letter… You’re mixing it up.

“People that send an email and call a few days later or a day after and say, “Hey, I sent you an email,” and they leave me a little message. Holy cow, it feels so much more real. I realize they’re human. I feel like they’re taking the time to prospect me, which I appreciate. And then if they send me another email, I might reply to that email, but mixing it up is very important. And I’m saying that as a recipient.” Ryan Schefkle, CEO – Lead liaison

 Merge Fields:
Use merge fields to get more personal, to get more specific. In this example, we’re reaching out to event organizers who had recently had an event and we populate the merge fields with their show data. So it speaks directly to the organizer about the recent show and congratulates them on having a successful show. This one has been successful:
1:  Because merge fields allow us to speak specifically to their situation.
2: Our sales team is great at following these up.
I’ve seen some real conversations come from these outreaches, and to get an entire organization or event on onboard is a huge win. That’s gonna take time.

 Email Formatting
You’ll notice that the formatting in the email on the right is extremely simple… It is very basic with minimal formatting at all other than the signature at the bottom of the email, which makes it appear as a hand typed one-off email.

In the example on the left,  you have considerable formatting:

1: The use of sections and dividers to create a professional look and feel.

2: Prominent placement of the company logo.

3: The use of bullets

4: Appropriate bolding. Never over do it on the use of bolding. You’ll eventually slip into spam just as you will if you use too many capital letters in your emails.

5: Make sure you have good paragraph spacing to break up your content.


6: Hyperlinks. Please don’t use more than three hyperlinks, especially if they’re unique hyperlinks, per email as a general rule.

7: Graphics are fun to include, but always keep ’em under 400 kilobytes. Less than that, if possible.

8: If graphics link to a video, make sure you’re adding an image hyperlink and a play button indicating that they should play the video.

Both formatting approaches are perfectly acceptable depending on the image and approach you use. Just make sure you have thought this part through prior to committing.

Testing:
Add yourself. So how would I do that? How would I add myself? I would click Actions, then Add Prospects. I’m going to add myself to the rhythm and the system is going to send rhythm content to me within the next 24 hours.
I’m gonna to review how that email looks in my inbox. I want to send it to my Gmail and my Outlook inbox… multiple platforms so you can  compare how the formatting looks across platforms.
Outlook is just known for ruining good emails. You can have a beautifully formatter email and Outlook will ruin it. So be careful there.

Get another set of eyes on your email before you send it, because we all need an objective point of view to catch errors that we might have missed. You can really get creator’s fatigue where you think you’ve proofed it 400 times and it’s perfect, but there’s a glaring error and you just can’t see it.

Frequency:
In a rhythm you have to carefully plan out your timing between steps. Here are a few statistics about the best times to send out emails for good open and click through rates:

  • Emails that are sent on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday get the most engagement. 
  • Statistically, marketing emails sent between 9:00 AM and noon on Tuesday get the most engagement, followed by Monday and Wednesday at the same time.

The weekend is a bad time to send business related emails. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday have the lowest open end click through rates on the calendar. So, even on Fridays when I’m still anxious to send out my marketing campaigns, I usually send about 50% of the volume that I normally do on weekdays.

  • Monday, remember everybody gets to work and deletes the first 400 emails in their inbox that look like spam. So for Mondays I will typically wait till after they’ve cleaned their inbox and send emails late morning or in the early afternoon, or even sometimes after they get home at 5:30pm. Sometimes people will recheck their work emails real quick before dinner.

I hope you found these tips helpful. For more information about sales enablement solutions, marketing automation, CRM, universal lead capture and user-customizable activations, reach out to us here at Lead liaison

We can help you make the most of your events through all stages of event planning and execution.

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!