Trade shows are a unique tool for generating leads and ROI.
When used right, they can put you in contact with high-quality prospects, give you the chance to strengthen your relationship with loyal customers, as well as allow you to meet suppliers, resellers, and clients face-to-face.
Although trade show marketing brings a lot to the table, it's not without considerable effort.
Only planners know the time, energy, and dedication it takes to organize a successful trade show that drives revenue and how nerve-wracking it can be minutes before your event finally goes live.
This is why in this article we'd like to talk to you about automation – or the number one resource you need to make your life so much easier as an event marketer.
Why your trade show needs automation
One of the most effective ways of improving your tradeshow attendance, quality, and output is automation.
There are many avenues you can take when it comes to automating your trade show. You can automate emails, lead nurturing, invitations, feedback forms, follow-ups and so much more. All of these not only make your life much easier when it comes to planning but they also free up a lot of time for you and your team to focus on other core issues that need to be solved urgently before the big event.
There's never a wrong time to use automation. Whether it's before, during or after your event, you can find routine yet impactful tasks that you can automate in order to streamline your whole process.
So, how can you take your trade show strategy to the next level using automation?
Here are 6 simple yet powerful ways:
1. Collect valuable data on your leads
Instead of using the traditional paper forms to capture leads for your trade show, using automation can really pay off. It not only streamlines the entire process, but it also gives you the opportunity to gather valuable insight on your customers that you can later use to improve your campaign.
The more you understand your target audience, the easier it’s going to be for you to improve everything – from event invitations to call-to-actions and feedback forms – so that it meshes well with what your client base wants, expects and is more likely to respond positively to.
2. Reduce errors and wasted time
By automating marketing (emails, registration forms, follow-ups, ads, and A/B testing) for your trade shows, you lower the risk of letting faulty or incomplete data go unnoticed. You also free up a lot of time for your marketing team that they’ll no longer be wasting with manual data entry that can easily be done by a specialized software.
3. Make it easier for your team to close deals
84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number, is the key to winning their business. If your team has hard data to work with, they’re much more likely to make relevant recommendations that drive sales.
Equipping them with information on what their customers want, need, and expect allows them to offer personalized guidance and a unique experience to prospects that ultimately boosts your bottom line.
4. Gather feedback from leads that don’t convert
When a prospect declines your CTA, you can have an integrated follow-up email so you can find out what went wrong. Review forms can also be automated so that you create a feedback loop with your leads and find out what you’re doing right and where you can improve.
Sometimes, the most valuable information you can get is from the leads that don’t convert – which is where an automated template comes in handy.
5. Experiment to maximize your conversion rate
If you want to improve your trade show attendance, automation should be your go-to. Here are just a few of the ways that it can help you boost attendance rate:
- Reduces errors and makes sure that your marketing team has the right data on-hand.
- Ensures that all your business cards are collected and organized in your CRM.
- Prioritizes personalized follow-ups that increase the quality of lead nurturing.
- Measures how efficient your campaign is and shows you clear-cut areas where you can improve.
- You can use on-site information capture when prospects enter your booth so you can send information directly to your lead database.
6. Increase the quality of lead nurturing, engagement, and retention
This is one of the most powerful implications of trade show automation. It not only increases the number of leads that you’re drawing in but also the quality of the leads and the interactions your company has with them. It’s a win-win system that requires very little maintenance once it’s been set up.
Automating your emails is going to save you so many headaches when planning for your trade shows. With that being said, we all know pesky notifications in your inbox that look like they're a carbon copy of an ad you've seen hundreds of times before is not going to make you excited to click on that link.
Instead, you want to use data in order to offer a personalized experience. This means that you collect and interpret customer data and use it to draw valuable conclusions on their likes, interests, dislikes, and overall buying and online behavior.
You then use this information to craft personalized emails that are sent automatically (different versions for different groups of customers would be ideal). This will guarantee a much higher response and engagement rate than sending a boring, standard email that your prospect's likely to roll their eyes at and skip over something more interesting.
The point here is that you want to mix automated solutions with personalization to get the best results.
But don’t take our word for it. Here is what the research says:
- 70% of brands fail to use personalized emails
- personalized emails deliver 6 times higher transaction rates
- 82% of marketers report an increase in open rates through email personalization
- segmented, targeted, and personalized emails generate 58% of all revenue
- 52% of customers say they’ll find somewhere else to go when emails are not personalized
Automation is here to stay
If you want to stay ahead of the game and keep your competitive edge, then it’s time to consider making an investment in the right technology that can help you streamline your trade show strategy.
Interest to learn more? Head over to PLEXKITS and you’ll find additional tools, tips, and tricks on everything related to tradeshow planning, marketing, and boosting lead generation.