Following Up Post-Event
You recently attended a trade show for your company. You may have purchased a lead scanner, collected some business cards, or had an email sign-up list with all of the people you came across at the show.
“Now what?” you may be wondering.
Well, the “now what” can easily be solved while pre-planning for the event. This is rule #1 of post-event marketing – always have your follow up plans solidified before the event kicks off.
As for following up, you can’t have a follow up plan if you have no one to follow up with! To drive more activity to your booth, it’s a good idea to consider a give-away or raffle drawing. It’s also helpful to email all of your customers and prospects to let them know you’ll be attending. To properly capture data at your booth, consider investing in a lead scanner if you have not already. Most events will give you the option to buy one, or you can get one for your own personal use and scan business cards and other information. You can also collect business cards from people stopping by the booth and enter the information into a CRM or spreadsheet later. It is important to keep some notes, whether mental or physical, on all or most leads you receive to better help you understand how to approach them later.
After the show, consider entering your leads into an email nurture campaign. A nurture campaign is a series of personal emails that are meant to be conversational in nature and follow a sequence. Crafting 3-4 emails that can drip into their inbox, once weekly or once bi-weekly, will help to remind your leads that you are glad that you met at the event and prompt them to email or call if they require your services. What you don’t want to do is saturate their inbox with the same information over and over. Be sure you stay front-of-mind without being annoying or repeating yourself.
You may also consider entering your leads into a newsletter campaign. If you do not already have a newsletter, this influx of new leads is a perfect time to build one to send out monthly or quarterly. Be sure to outline an introduction to your company and think to include personal introductions of yourself and your staff. This will help new leads gain a better sense of who you are and who your company is, making them more likely to be intrigued to learn about your services. The rest requires your creative freedom – engage your audience appropriately, and be sure to provide value in each newsletter you send!
Here are some more quick Do’s and Don’ts of post-trade show marketing:
DO:
- Have an easy way to track leads
- Create incentive for people to leave their information with you – via giveaways or raffles.
- Take notes on leads that seem like they could be special-case or have specific follow-up instructions.
- Create an easy to read sheet with all lead information, whether that is in Quip, Google Sheets, or Excel.
- Have an email nurture campaign ready to go, 3-4 emails with varying content to keep your brand and services fresh in their mind after meeting you. If you had a giveaway or a raffle, now is the time to mention the winner.
- Offer the leads relevant assets in your emails like the link to your blog, special offers, white papers, or anything else that will help them to learn more about you.
- Be personal, but not creepy. Show your leads that you value their business and want the opportunity to work with them.
Post about the event on social media and your blog. Boost social posts and link to a landing page to learn more.
DONT:
- Email or call cold leads the day(s) after the event. Give them at least a few days to get back and settled.
- Forget your promises you made at events, like giveaways, raffles etc. Follow through!
- Send emails or calls more than once a week unless a lead has reached out and otherwise instructed you to.
- Use inappropriate channels of communication. If you only have a phone number for a lead and no email address, you may want to consider giving them a week and then calling them to see if they are still interested.
- Forget the people who did not attend. Provide them a way to get in contact with you about the same information even if they did not attend the show.
KAITLYN FARMANIAN
DIGITAL MARKETING ASSOCIATE
