Customer A major US based professional organization hosts two (2) major conventions on an annual basis; the annual meeting for all members and a smaller one focused on specific disciplines. Each event includes a trade show floor that attracts major suppliers to the industry. Challenge The organization offers an Exhibitor to Attendee Communication Program that enables a small number (10%) of the event’s exhibitors to purchase the right to send pre-show and post-show emails to the registered attendees. The program provides exhibitors with a vehicle to connect with potential buyers prior to them finalizing their…
Fred Tremblay
Implementing an email marketing program that enables your exhibitors to reach out to the registered attendees to build floor traffic provides added value to both you and the exhibitors. However, the program can be a little more complex than sending out normal email blasts. Here are a few tips from our three years and a million plus emails worth of experience. 1. Bad things can happen if you don’t keep your email list confidential. Fortunately the number of shows that “give the list away” is on the decline, primarily because of attendees concerns about data…
Attendee trade show badges with 2D bar codes containing demographic information and printed with the attendee’s name have been around for a long time but are gradually being replaced by ones with a QR code and a lot less data. Whether planned or by accident the current trend is helping to address a growing concern voiced by trade show attendees – DATA SECURITY!!! In 1996, as a founding member of one of the early companies providing third party “lead retrieval” systems to the trade show industry, I viewed the efforts of registration companies to encrypt…
Successful trade show exhibitors will tell you that a key factor for their success is to increase the number of quality attendees that visit their booths. In an effort to increase their ROI, and therefore the odds that they will return to the event, they turn to the organizer to increase the number of exhibition hours, not schedule key sessions in competition with exhibiting and to co-locate the food or beverage service in the hall. While all are helpful there is one area that is sometimes overlooked – access to the registration database to support…
If your company hosts trade shows and exhibitions, exhibitor retention is a very important part of your strategic plan. The cost of exhibitor attrition is high with estimates from Competitive Edge placing the cost for a show with 450 exhibitors and a retention rate of 75% at well over $250,000 on average. The cost goes up dramatically if the attrition rate approaches 40% as in some events or if the departing companies are the large anchor exhibitors. Whatever the show organizer can do to enhance the exhibitor retention rate will have a significant impact on…
We hear from many trade show organizers that their attendees are growing increasingly wary of exhibitor email blasts. Some have given up altogether and simply do not allow exhibitors to send any emails to the registered attendee list. Recent technological advances have given rise to a number of alternatives organizers are using that include social media mentions, listings in the trade show APP du jour and one-on-one meeting scheduling systems. The latter offers a lot of benefits for the attendee who knows who they want to see but also requires effort on the attendee’s part.
When I first exhibited at a technology trade show in 1987 it was not uncommon for the show organizer to give exhibitors access to the attendee list to send direct mail to attendees before the show. In fact exhibitors without household names who did not use direct mail, use telemarketing or hire some expensive traffic builder to reach out to the registered attendees usually had disappointing results. Magicians, Harley Davidson drawings and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders were big draws at the technology shows back then. Then came email and it opened up a whole new…