Trade shows are a great way to generate targeted leads for your business. However, trade show leads require careful management because they’re often hot leads. You don’t want to drop hot leads into a generic email sequence you normally send your cold leads.
To keep hot trade show leads engaged, consider the following tips:
1. Make your brand interactions memorable
Trade show attendees will be excited when they’re visiting your booth, but will they remember you when they receive an email from you three days later? Getting leads is easy. Convincing them to stay on your email list requires creating a memorable experience with your brand.
For example, three factors will contribute to a memorable brand interaction: a professionally designed booth, a positive interaction with staff, and the experience of value.
Your booth design will influence potential leads. Skip the card table and folding chairs and invest in a professional display with a custom design that represents your brand to attendees. Make sure your staff members genuinely interact with visitors and provide some kind of value at no cost to the visitor. Make your interaction memorable so your leads will remember you in a positive light when they receive your first email.
2. Track all lead sources specifically
Hot leads should receive a sequence of emails specifically designed for them. To make sure hot leads get their specific email sequence, you need to track the specific source of each lead. Say you visit multiple trade shows within your industry. Those leads might come from different micro-niches. In marketing, the more specific you can get with your messages, the better. Therefore, it’s important to segment each niche so you can speak directly to each niche.
Be specific when labeling tags and segments
Avoid lumping all trade show leads into one segment called “Trade Shows.” Be specific with lead source tracking. All leads generated from a trade show should be tagged/segmented with the specific event and date. For example, if you generate leads from the 2019 Biotech Showcase, those leads should be tagged/segmented with something like “2019-Biotech.” You can add the phrase “Trade Show” if it helps you remember the event was a trade show. In that case, your tag might be “2019-TS-Biotech.”
To send out email blasts to all of your trade show leads at once, you won’t have to select all groups each time. Most CRM software will allow you to add multiple segments to one master list of leads to receive your email sequence. You just need to add each new group to the master list, which brings up the next tip.
3. Create a protocol for managing leads in your CRM
Once you tag your leads, you need a protocol for making sure no leads slip through the cracks. Tagging leads won’t automatically send them emails until you program the system to send emails to your new tags. For example, you need to make sure each new segment gets dropped into the proper email sequence. Never drop individual leads into a sequence – always drop them in by tag/segment.
Create a written protocol for this process that everyone can reference. This will be especially helpful when you have multiple people working inside of your CRM.
4. Create a custom email sequence for each micro-niche
There will be times you’ll want to send the same set of emails to all trade show leads. Other times you’ll want to speak directly to a micro-niche within your pool of leads. As long as you’ve segmented your leads specifically, it will be easy to send targeted messages to individual micro-niches.
For example, if you’re a business coach with multiple types of clients, you might want to set up separate email sequences for specific types of clients. You may want to send unique email messages to fellow coaches, solo entrepreneurs, and business owners in the food industry.
Specific messages aimed at a niche will be more effective than generic messages aimed at an industry.
Keep moving leads along in your funnel – nurture your leads
As leads receive your emails, click links, and make purchases, keep moving them along your sales funnel. Set up your CRM to automatically drop leads into new email sequences once they’ve made a purchase or expressed interest in something by clicking a link. According to Hubspot, leads nurtured with targeted content see an increase in sales opportunities by 20%.
Managing a lead generation campaign requires hard work, but it’s worth investing your time and energy. Once you get it running, it will work like a well-oiled machine and you’ll close more sales.