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 the show’s bottom line.
While you do all you can to attract the right attendees and provide a great environment, the successful exhibitors will tell you that a key factor for their success is to increase the number of quality attendees that visit their booths. So in an effort to increase exhibitor satisfaction, and therefore exhibitor retention, you increase the number of exhibition hours, don’t schedule key sessions in competition and co-locate food or beverage service in the hall, which are all helpful but there is one area that is sometimes overlooked – access to the registration database.
According to CEIR’s research, 76% of attendees arrive at a trade show or event with an agenda. In addition, attendees spend quality time with 26 exhibitors at a show and half of these 26 exhibitors scheduled appointments in advance. CEIR also commissioned a study by Deloitte & Touche that concluded exhibitors who conducted a pre-show campaign raised the quality of the audience they were able to attract by 46% and their conversion of booth visitors to qualified leads rose 50%.
Based on these facts the conclusion is clear – the successful exhibitor has to get on the attendee’s agenda.
Competition for the attendee’s limited time on the exhibit floor is fierce and experienced exhibitors know they don’t just rent space, show up and hope people find them. They use targeted pre-show marketing programs to get on the attendees’ agendas before the show opens. While not all exhibitors think this way it is important for the organizer to assist those that do in their efforts.
Perhaps the three (3) most effective of these are; direct mail, email and telemarketing and all require access to the show’s registration list for the mailing address, phone number or email address of the attendee. Therefore, without the organizer’s participation these programs cannot be implemented.
While some organizers still give this information freely to all their exhibitors, most do not. In an effort to protect the privacy of their attendees, avoid list abuse and prevent spamming, many organizers simply refuse exhibitors access especially to email addresses. While this helps the attendee and protects a valuable organizer asset, it does nothing for the enthusiastic exhibitor or exhibitor retention. The smarter approach taken by many organizers that helps the exhibitor and protects the data is to offer the exhibitor access through “bonded” third parties who perform the work and control the data.- the best of both worlds.
For sure, not all exhibitors grasp the benefit of pre-show marketing but for those that do, access to the attendee data is extremely important. Working with the organizer they can utilize the following vehicles to reach prospective buyers before the show opens in an effort to get on their agenda. What follows is a successful exhibitor who returns year after year.
Direct Mail – direct mail remains an effective pre-show marketing vehicle. Sending prospects and clients an invitation with a VIP registration ticket will help get the exhibitor on these attendees’ show agendas. Directing potential visitors to the show-specific page on the exhibitor’s website also works well. According to CEIR, companies that send multiple pre-show invitations see 50% more traffic in their booths than companies that don’t. However, direct mail can be very expensive for shows with several thousand attendees. If organizers do not want to distribute the attendees’ physical addresses, they can contract a third party vendor such as AmazingMail® (www.amazingmail.com) to control the list and work with the exhibitors.
Email – used wisely, email is an important part of an exhibitor’s pre-show promotion. Personalized emails with links to company web pages for demo sign ups or scheduling appointments can be extremely effective. Unfortunately, after years of complaints from attendees about getting SPAMMED or the attendee data being used for non-show purposes , a great many organizations no longer distribute attendee email addresses under any circumstance. However, there are third party services like eShowMail™ from Event Technologies (www.eshowmail.com) that can solve this problem by sending emails on behalf of the exhibitors without ever revealing the attendee contact information. eShowMail™ controls the database, creates and sends the emails, manages the “opt outs” and maintains the analytics. This approach not only provides great benefit to the exhibitor but can also be a significant source of additional revenue for the organizer.
Telemarketing – adding telephone calls to other marketing efforts will increase the chance of getting on high priority attendee agendas especially starting one month before the show. However, personally calling thousands or even hundreds of attendees is labor intensive, costly and will result in a lot of voicemail messages, which might be done less expensively with an automated approach such as that provided by Boxpilot (www.boxpilot.com).
Regardless of the approach taken it is clear that using the registration database to assist selected exhibitors in getting on the agenda of the busy attendee well in advance of the event can be important to a successful trade show experience. When you look around the show floor take note of the booths with the most activity. Odds are good that they worked as hard if not harder getting the word out as they did on their graphics and booth staff. They are also the ones who will most likely be receptive to your exhibitor retention efforts.
