How to Ensure an Effective Post Trade Show Follow-up
Attending a notable industry event such as a trade show takes up a significant share of any company’s marketing budget. While a successful trade show is marked by your ability to gather hundreds of leads, the ROI can be maximized only with diligent follow up. To achieve that, it is important to have a post-show follow-up plan well before the actual event occurs.
An email outreach campaign is an ideal post-trade show follow-up strategy. It is important for your emails to stand out with clear, concise, and compelling content since your audience will be bombarded with dozens of emails from others. It is advisable to do the following:
- Timing is critical, don’t delay kicking off your email campaigns
- Keep your pitches conversational as opposed to a cold one since you have built a certain degree of familiarity with them at the trade show
- Don’t spam their inbox with too many follow-ups if you don’t get a response. Share some interesting content instead of like case studies, whitepapers, or latest industry developments
Post Trade Show Follow-up Tips
Immediately Reach Out to Your Attendees
Ensure that you email your leads on the first working day after the trade show concludes. It will serve you well if you add a couple of lines about the conversation they had with your booth staff. Sharing images of your booth will help refresh their memories. The timing and quality of your follow up has a bearing on your prospects’ inclination to respond. So be swift and sharp in sending that first email.
Use Catchy Subject Lines
An email subject line is a door opener for further conversations to occur, it should be compelling and easy to read. Most digital marketers agree that subject lines should not go beyond 41 characters in length, so keep it short. Mentioning impressive figures, receiver’s names or any industry-recognised accreditation you may have received will drive your email open rate up.
Prioritise your leads
Not every trade show lead might be relevant for your business. You should segregate leads into hot, warm, and cold leads and if applicable, industry too. The idea is to create email templates for each of your lead buckets. You should email your potential customers within two business days after the event occurs. If you have their contact numbers then call them for better results. Don’t let a hot lead become a cold one, by not approaching them on time.
Create and Share Articles
You can write content that provides highlights about the trade show and share it with your leads. It will keep the spark alive and serve well to have a better brand recall. In addition, you can hire experts or influencers from your niche to talk about you. They can further amplify your brand communications.
Drive Engagement
Engagement is the key to keep your leads interested in your business. Remember to share links to your social media profiles when you email them. Contests, insightful updates, engaging posts, and polls will keep your growing network further engaged. You can also invite them to subscribe to your company’s newsletter. Maintain a social media and content calendar focusing on engaging your new followers from the trade show to keep them interested.
Call To Action is a Must
A compelling email is one that has a relevant call to action. A clear call to action is necessary to let recipients know what they should do next, for example, subscribe to a newsletter, download the white paper, etc. Ill-conceived CTAs will disrupt your email follow-up strategy.
Conclusion
A lot of effort goes into planning and executing a trade show. But the real sales pipeline generating efforts begin after the trade show ends requiring you to build up on dozens of face to face interactions. Follow up is critical since the business cards you collect at the trade show may either belong to decision makers or those who can influence decisions. Put our follow-up tips in action to maximise your trade show ROI.
