Lead Liaison

Here’s Why You Should Consider Text Message Marketing in Your Post-Show Follow-Up

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Thinking about how you will manage your post-show follow-up, after a trade show or other marketing event, is a critical step in finding success with event marketing.

There are several methods of communication that you’ll probably consider using in your follow-up, but have you considered text messages?

Text Message Marketing in Post-Show Follow-Up

You want an omnichannel approach before, during, and after the trade show. In addition to email marketing, you want to harness the power of social media. You should consider the often-overlooked channel of direct mail marketing. And here’s a channel you might not have thought about—text message/SMS marketing.

Used wisely as part of your well-provisioned “marketing toolbox”, before and during the event, and as part of your post-show follow-up, text message marketing can help you reap major dividends.

Before your trade show, text/SMS marketing can help you build name recognition for your brand, not to mention the kind of curiosity and anticipation that guarantees attendees will gladly go the extra mile at the show to seek you out and discover more about what you can do for them.

When you are at a trade show, you can use text messages to notify attendees of agenda items you do not want them to miss, like an after-hours party you are hosting, or an intriguing product demo that will answer many of their questions and lead them to eagerly engage with you and go further into your pipeline. You could also send a text blast to announce a drawing or fun contest you are hosting.

How About After The Trade Show?

After an event, life for them, and you, is hectic. You are back at work. You are trying to get back into a normal routine. So are the leads you met at the trade show. At this point, you are at a marketing “fork in the road”. They have a lot on their minds and their plates. They could get distracted and easily forget about you. You could get complacent and forget to follow up with them.

This scenario happens a lot. Many marketing and sales teams struggle with post-show follow-up; their lead generation and nurturing efforts fizzle out. Please don’t let that be the case for you and your team. You have put in too much time, effort and financial investment to not enjoy a substantial return.

You captured the leads. You and your staff met many of them face-to-face. It’s critical that you now build Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) and nurture them with an omnichannel post-event follow-up campaign. Text message marketing can help you.

A Huge Benefit Of Text Message Marketing!

With almost any marketing initiative or channel, you face a big challenge: it’s difficult to grab and keep your audience’s attention. It can be a major uphill battle to get your busy, distracted leads to stop what they are feverishly doing, focus their limited attention on your message, open and read it.

Text message marketing helps you overcome this challenge. Think about it. When they receive a text, almost everyone stops what they are doing, opens it up and reads it immediately. I do this. Chances are you do too. The engagement rate with text messages is off the charts. The open rate for SMS marketing messages is huge – as much as 82%!

What other marketing channel has that kind of open rate? As effective as they are, certainly not email or direct mail.

Bottom line: your post-trade show text message is very likely to get opened. And if it gets opened, it’s likely to get read. And if it gets read, assuming you wrote it well (more on this in a moment), it’s likely to help your post-show follow-up by leading to a conversion where the reader takes the step you want them to take.

Text Message Marketing Use Cases. The Sky Is The Limit!

There are a multitude of potential use cases for text message marketing. You can notify your subscriber list of your latest blog article. You can send a Happy Birthday greeting. You sales team can send reminders of upcoming scheduled phone calls…

You are limited only by your imagination!

To show you that we “practice what we preach”, here is an example of how Lead Liaison recently harnessed the power of text message marketing as part of our post-show follow-up. 

At a recent trade show, we asked our new leads if they were comfortable sharing their mobile phone numbers with us. 90% said “Yes”.

We told them to expect a text message that would include their Lead Liaison Representative’s contact information, so they could save it in their phones, in case they thought of more questions after our in-person conversation. 

On the backend, our post-show follow-up included a text message, personalized with the lead’s first name. That text was triggered within minutes of submitting our lead capture form, meaning that we were most definitely the first to follow up with them.

Avoid “Shiny Object” Syndrome

This is true for any marketing channel or tool, including text/SMS: don’t use it just because “it’s cool”, or “it’s popular and everyone else is using it”. Plan out your marketing strategy and objectives. Then plug in the tools to help you reach those objectives. There’s a great likelihood that text message marketing should be one of those tools; after a trade show, and in general, it can be a valuable part of your lead capture and nurturing efforts. 

A Couple Of Text Message Marketing Best Practices

Although a detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this article, it’s important that you follow all relevant laws and regulations related to text message marketing. Don’t spam anyone. Only market to those who have specifically given you permission to. And make it super-easy for them to opt-out of receiving your messages.

Even though your text message is likely to get opened, it won’t get the response you want unless you follow good copywriting and content marketing practices. So make your text personal. Use the word “you”. Make your message “conversational” and lively, not stiff, formal and “corporate”.

When they are reading your text, readers are wondering “What’s In It For Me?”
So tell them what’s in it for them. Tell them how they stand to gain by clicking the link in your message. Keep it brief, and build curiosity in your readers’ minds and hearts; use the text to “sell the click”, that is to persuade them to click through to a landing page or website where you can include a lot more copy and marketing content.

Do You Want To Win At Text Message Marketing? Lead Liaison Can Help You!

Are you beginning to see how text message marketing can boost your lead generation and nurturing results before, during and after your trade show? Do you want to take full advantage of this powerful marketing channel to help you gain more leads and sales from your next event?

Lead Liaison can help you. We offer text messaging automation through our drag-and-drop, cloud-based interface. So when you are looking to a text message marketing platform that is super simple to use, turn to us. We will help you create new possibilities and opportunities as you pursue success with trade show lead generation!

Lead Liaison Press Release
Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Releases Trade Show Success Kit: How to Prepare For, Execute, and Evaluate a Successful Trade Show

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Lead LiaisonDallas, Texas – Ever since Lead Liaison launched their event lead capture solution, GoExhibit!™, in 2017, the company has been hyper-focused on helping businesses achieve greater success at marketing events like trade shows and conferences. They achieve this by offering the most flexible lead capture solution on the market, as well as a copious amount of educational content they produce around trade shows and events. 

This week, they’ve released a kit containing their most popular trade show-related content which they’ve dubbed the Trade Show Success Kit. 

The Trade Show Success Kit contains a checklist to help marketing event managers stay organized when planning exhibitions at upcoming trade shows. The checklist gets down to the nitty-gritty with reminders for when to finalize lead retrieval, how to structure post-event workflows, and more. The checklist even includes a sample packing list and sample itinerary, because as Lead Liaison Director of Marketing Jen Worsham says, “It makes it so much easier to have all of those things in once place – especially during pre-event team meetings.”

Lead Liaison’s Trade Show Success Kit also contains a step-by-step guide to implementing an independent lead capture solution. “We wanted to include this because this always seems to be the biggest hurdle to cross when considering the use of lead capture outside of what the show organizer provides,” says Worsham. “There’s so much to benefit from when using a consistent lead capture method across all events, so we wanted to remove the only real obstacle: the unknown.”

For marketing event coordinators wondering what their role looks like during a B2B event, Lead Liaison also includes a list of 10 things event managers should be doing at the trade show. This list includes suggestions like, “find the show organizer contact to collect booth feedback” and “take a photo of your team at the booth for more personalized follow-up.” 

Post-event strategy is not missed in the Trade Show Success Kit. It also contains a Post-Show Questionnaire intended to assist in collecting feedback from team members after a show. And, if the return on investment (ROI) is a consideration (hint: it should be), then the resource, How to Evaluation ROI from a Trade Show, will prove to be extremely helpful. 

“Because of our hands-on approach to supporting our GoExhibit!™ clients, we live and breathe marketing events,” says Worsham. “Sure, using our lead capture solution aids in success. But, we know that’s not the only thing to consider when planning and executing a successful trade show. This kit covers it all!”

To access the Trade Show Success Kit, click here. 

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that help businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and sales automation to boost sales effectiveness. Additionally, Lead Liaison is the global leader in event lead management, enabling companies to capture and manage leads from trade shows and events. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible architecture, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237). To access our Press Kit, visit www.leadliaison.com/press-kit.

post-event marketing
Lead Liaison

Why Direct Mail Should Be Part Of Your Post-Event Marketing

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So your trade show was a big success! You and your team had fun. The event helped you capture a lot of leads. Great! But your journey is just beginning. Now is the time to consider your post-event marketing strategy.

You captured leads at the trade show. Now, post-event, you need to nurture those leads. For that, you want an approach that involves multiple marketing channels. You have already harnessed the power of connecting with your leads face to face.

Now it’s time to leverage email, social media and content marketing.

Why not use another channel that has proven to be very effective at post-event marketing: direct mail?

Direct Mail Is Dead! Or Is It?

I have a pretty good idea what you are thinking: “Direct mail? Are you kidding me? Everyone knows that digital marketing is the way to go. Direct mail is dead!”

Is direct mail really dead? That’s what the digital marketing “conventional wisdom” might tell us, but maybe it’s not true. Plenty of B2B marketers like you are successfully harnessing the power of direct mail to help them nurture leads and boost sales results.

Direct mail marketing works!

According to one study, “direct mail proved the most effective advertising media. It outperformed digital channels consistently – and, in some cases, significantly. These findings suggest that while the digital space provides essential platforms for customer interaction, physical media is better suited to close the marketing-sales loop, or the gap between interaction and action.”

To quote marketing strategist and author, Elaine Fogel, “According to the Rain Group, half of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted by direct mail, 3rd out of a list of nine outreach methods.”

And…surprise, surprise! Apparently, even tech-obsessed millennials love direct mail:

“It’s been found that millennials who spend more time with physical ads have a stronger emotional response, leading to better memory of them. You could be on the list of the next generation’s most-loved advertising campaigns by optimizing your use of direct mail.” 

Direct mail can indeed be a powerful addition to your post-event marketing. Combine it well with digital marketing channels such as email and social media, and you can enjoy a powerful synergy that drives your results even higher.

But you have to do it right. So let’s talk about how to do direct mail right.

Omnichannel Post-Event Marketing: Be Everywhere

A Proven Way To Fail With Direct Mail. Hint: Don’t Do This

We’ve all received direct mail marketing pieces we threw in the trash without even opening them. Why didn’t we? For one thing, they probably had a very generic, bland, “corporate” look to them. They were obvious solicitations, and in addition to looking like they came from a big, impersonal company that cared nothing about us, the envelope gave us little incentive to open it.

If we did read it, we were not impressed. The letter’s content was focused on the company and how wonderful its products were, instead of where attention needed to be placed – on us! It did not empathetically focus on our problem and helping us solve it. It merely peddled a product.

“Letters From Grandma”

So what should you do instead? How do you make your direct mail stand out in a positive way from the onslaught of corporate “junk mail” your leads are receiving? Choose a marketing service that supports adding handwritten letters to an automated post-event marketing workflow. Then, take additional steps to make your letter personal. Make it look like a “letter from Grandma”.

Think about it: any letter or piece of mail that looks personal, that appears as if it came from an old friend or family member, is almost guaranteed to get opened.

What do these letters have in common? A handwritten address on the envelope. A “real” stamp, not one from a postage meter. When you open it, you read a conversational message written to an audience of one. You see a word you love: “you”! We all love to hear or read the words “you” and “your”. 

“Great To Meet You!”

Want to give your post-event direct mail an even more personal touch that will help you nurture your leads better? Mention your shared experience, the event itself. Talk about how much you enjoyed meeting and visiting with them. Reference something specific from your in-person conversation, especially as it relates to their problem and how you can help them solve it.

Don’t Forget About Postcards 

Why not consider using postcards in addition to, or even in place of letters? Postcards get attention. They are a visible, tangible reminder of your brand and your products to your trade show leads. Here’s a great benefit of postcard marketing: it’s easier for you to get your message to your readers. Why? They have to open a letter. But, a postcard catches a reader’s attention from the moment it comes into view.

A big part of post-event marketing success is building Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) in your audience. Done right, postcard marketing can help you do this. Postcards catch attention at the mailbox. Your message is likely to get read. There’s a good chance your leads will hang onto your postcard and leave it on their desk.

The result? Every time they see your postcard they think of you. If they think about you often enough, who will they most likely contact when they are ready to buy? You!

What’s Your Ultimate Goal With Direct Mail?

Remember that your ultimate goal with post-event marketing and lead nurturing is to convert your reader into your customer. So keep moving them through your marketing/sales pipeline. At the end of each direct mail piece, have a call to action that encourages them to take the next step in the buyer’s journey.

This may be directing them to make a phone call. It may be telling them about a personalized URL where they can join your email list and download your latest whitepaper. It may be a big announcement about an exciting live event you are hosting.

With direct mail or any other marketing communication, your call to action is crucial. It pays to discover more about this fascinating and potentially profitable topic.

Bottom line: always remember that your goal with direct mail is to drive the lead nurturing process forward and convert your reader into a paying customer.

Your Post-Event Marketing Toolbox

As with all of your marketing initiatives, think of the lead nurturing you do as if it were a construction project. It’s absurd to think you could build a house with only one tool, right? You need a well-equipped toolbox. The same thing goes for your trade show-related lead capture and nurturing.

Think omnichannel marketing, rather than one-channel marketing. As we’ve discussed today, direct mail can be one of your most effective post-event marketing channels.

You can win at direct mail marketing. Lead Liaison’s marketing automation capabilities can help you. We’ll make designing your next mail campaign easy. Want to find out more? Get in touch today!

B2B event
Lead Liaison

10 Things Event Managers Should Do During A B2B Event

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They say that event planning is one of the most stressful jobs. B2B event planners, do you want to know a secret that might make your job slightly less stressful? Repeatable processes! 

We’re all about processes here. If you can outline the process for your various tasks, then you’ll greatly reduce the time and energy that you’ll have to put into those tasks because you won’t have to reorient yourself with the operation each time you start. 

We’ve created several process resources to help B2B event planners, like our Trade Show Preparation Checklist, Questions to Ask When Integrating Independent Lead Capture, or our Post-Show Questionnaire. Today, we will focus on the tasks that you might want to consider during your B2B event. Download the infographic here, or read below for more details about each item. 

10 Things Event Managers Should Do During A B2B Event

B2B At-Event Checklist

B2B events are fast-paced, but there is a lot of value that your company is going to want to squeeze out of it. Every item in the checklist below may not apply to your company, but we recommend that you take this list and modify it as needed. Then, use this as a part of your “trade show kit” going forward. Your team will be impressed with how well you manage the event, from start to finish.

  • Test your lead retrieval on each other. Scan each other’s badge and make sure the information is collected correctly, and that it feeds into your existing backend systems (CRM, marketing automation, etc.) in a timely manner. If you’ve set up a post-event workflow, this would be the final time to test and make sure all applicable actions are triggered upon form submission. While you should have tested this already, make sure nothing has changed by testing at the event. 
  • Set goals for your booth staff. In our experience, salespeople are born competitors. Surprise your booth staff with a special prize for the one that captures the most quality leads, and let them know in your morning get-together on day one. If they haven’t had their coffee yet, this will grab their attention and kick their competitiveness into high gear. 
  • Establish a central point of contact for any unexpected circumstances. This person might be yourself, but make sure to communicate this to your team. This will simplify your event more than you realize. Many times people like to “be the hero” but end up just muddying the waters. You planned the event. You have all the order forms. You know the process. You should manage the unexpected. 
  • Take a photo of your team in front of your booth. Use this photo in your event follow-up to remind prospects of who you are, and why they are getting the email. Most people need the visual reminder, so this will assist your company in standing out from competitors. 
  • Schedule a post-event meeting with your team. Go ahead and give everyone a heads up that you’ll want to have a quick recap meeting after the event closes for the day. Don’t surprise them towards the end of the day – set expectations early. This meeting will give you a chance to take your team’s temperature. How is the event going? Is there anything they needed today that you can prepare for tomorrow? Bonus points for scheduling this at a nearby watering hole. 
  • Ensure that any pre-purchased elements are in working order prior to the event start (ex: power, wifi). The ideal time to do this is during setup. You’ll likely know if a power source isn’t working right off the bat. But, don’t assume the wifi will work once the event starts. Test it during setup. 
  • Walk the floor. Take at least a half-hour to walk the trade show floor. Bring your cell phone and take pictures of booths that inspire you, and of your competition. You’ll come back to these photos later – I promise. Take the time to orient yourself and note where might be a better booth location next show.
  • Find your show organizer contact and ask for their input on your booth. This person could provide an unbiased opinion of what’s working and what’s not, especially in direct comparison to the other booths. You can take that information and build on it for the next show.  
  • Invite customers in attendance to your booth. Lure them with a special treat, like donuts or a snack basket. The goal is to keep them in your booth long enough to possibly provide testimonials to new potential clients. There’s nothing more convincing than a living, breathing advocate for your product or solution. 
  • Make notes on how to tweak your lead capture process. If you are using a mobile lead capture app over the antiquated badge scanners, you likely built your own lead capture form. What questions are your team skipping? Are there any parts of your lead capture form that could use fine-tuning for next time? We recommend using an independent lead capture solution across all of your events, so you can more easily clone your process from event to event. This also makes it infinitely easier to make minor tweaks to the lead capture and post-show workflow, based on experience. 

With each event that you manage, you’ll find more items to add to this list and discover which ones don’t really apply to your company. The key is to let your trade show experiences build off of one another. They should not be compartmentalized, but rather a cumulative effort to overall B2B event success. 

To learn more about Lead Liaison’s B2B event lead capture solution, request a personalized demo here.

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Lead Liaison

How to Evaluate Event ROI from Your Trade Show

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How can you execute an event, spend the money, and not know what you got out of it? Let’s say you are the CEO, and someone comes to you asking for a budget for an event. You’ll likely want to know your previous event ROI so that you can make the right decision. 

Did you know that 23% of marketers can track event ROI (source)? That means 77% of marketers cannot. Yikes.

To download this infographic, click here.

Top Challenges for Tracking Event ROI

  1. Calculating Cost is Difficult – With expenses coming from every direction, it’s hard to keep up with it all. You’ve got to consider the cost of your booth space, travel and expenses of the team, sponsorships, and any other miscellaneous costs. 
  2. Deals Don’t Happen on the Show Floor – To calculate the ROI, you need to know the return you got. That’s from the deal itself. The average sales cycle in business is 102 days (source). It might be a while before you can give an accurate event ROI.
  3. Too Busy to do the Math – There is a lot to do immediately following an event; the first of which being executing the necessary follow-up. 
  4. Nobody Asks! – There is so much work leading up to an event, during an event, and after an event, that the biggest considerations are easily overlooked. 

Popular Ways to Measure Return

Here are some popular ways to measure return, in order from most helpful to least helpful. 

  • Revenue
  • # Meetings Set
  • Engagement
  • Forecasted Revenue
  • # Opportunities

After calculating success, consider these important numbers:

  • Cost of event
  • Cost per lead
  • Cost per opportunity

Software Systems Help Calculate Event ROI

Software systems help connect the dots between your campaign efforts and your end result. For example, in Salesforce.com you have a lead that starts as a contact, then onto an opportunity, then to closed/won. When that deal closes, for $10k for example, you should be able to tie that revenue back to the campaign (and more importantly, the cost of the campaign). Where did that lead come from? How did they find out about you? Having software in place that either tracks all information within one system, or having a few that integrate (communicate) with one another, can help you attribute those deals and make better decisions for your organization going forward.

Hard Event ROI vs Soft Event ROI

Don’t forget to consider both the hard ROI and the soft ROI. 

Hard ROI is more about the direct benefits to your company. This can include how many leads you were able to collect, or how many deals you were able to close. The concept of hard ROI is more about financials.

But, there’s also a Soft ROI that you shouldn’t overlook. Indirect benefits like facetime with customers, increasing awareness of your brand, and any success you had networking should all count for something when evaluating the success of an event. Just because you didn’t close a deal, it doesn’t mean that you weren’t able to familiarize the industry with your product or solution. The more they see you and hear about you, the more likely it is that they will come to you when their need arises.  

In Conclusion

Calculating event ROI can be tricky, but is an essential part of the event process. The process of calculating your event ROI will be specific to your business and your goals. There is no magic equation. What might be helpful, though, is setting yourself up to be able to easily track as much of this data as possible so that answering the question, “What was our event ROI?” is achievable. 

Choose a software solution that helps you build event campaigns, captures exactly the data you need onsite, supports immediate follow-up, and tracks ROI. Lead Liaison’s event lead management solution, GoExhibit!™, does all of this. To learn more, click here.