From March through June we were contracted to work with roughly 25 events providing pre/post show email services for their exhibitors. All of these events have now been postponed, cancelled, or moved onto virtual platforms. For the last couple weeks, we’ve been working with some of our customers to create sponsorships and programs they can use to:
- Help their exhibitors reach out to their attendees
- Generate revenue
- Hold onto sponsors as they move to virtual platforms to offer continuing education.
Here are a few examples:
We have one customer whose goal was to have their exhibitors refrain from taking a refund on their exhibit fees. Instead they wanted them to apply their 2020 payments to the 2021 show. To do this, we worked with them to put together a program that would give their exhibitors 2 options:
- The exhibitor can take a refund. OR
- If the exhibitor applies their fees to the 2021 event, they we will help them to put on a webinar and promote it to the show attendees from the last 2 years of the event (using our email service).
They are having a lot of success with this. They started offering this about a week ago, and they have more than half of the exhibitors committed to 2021.
Another one of our customers is trying to convert their Diamond and Platinum Sponsors over to their virtual educational event. However, the majority of their sponsorship benefits are no longer applicable. Lanyards, tote bags, digital signage, advertising on the show app, reception sponsorship, drink tickets, and charging stations don’t exist in the virtual world. We worked with them to put together a program that combines a targeted email blast to the attendee list (using our service) with digital advertising on the virtual site, and advertising on the shows website in an effort to encourage their sponsors to not withdraw their sponsorship and apply it to their virtual educational event. Out of 7 of the top sponsors, they were able to retain 6 and are waiting to hear back from the last one.
The idea we are working on now with another customer is to try to figure out how you can simulate the live booth experience in the virtual world. We’ve found that virtual events typically give you a floor map and allow the attendee to click on a booth on the map to see additional information about the exhibitor. This is lacking and doesn’t have much incentive for the exhibitor to pay anything if they can’t interact with attendees.
The basic idea revolves around providing a Show Sponsored Webinar as a sponsorship opportunity and promoting that to the attendee list with a targeted email blast to attendees. We’re working with the organizer to add another layer of interaction that would enable the exhibitor to setup individual meetings with attendees during and after the webinar via Zoom. The goal is to implement a program that will encourage one on one meetings between the sponsors and attendees as a replacement for the interaction on the show floor.
