Lead capture is one of if not the most important aspects of events and tradeshows, and it could be argued that it is in fact the main point for driving revenue. Why else are you there, if not to create brand awareness, share your products, educate people about your offerings, and gather leads that lead to new relationships and revenue? The most successful trade show exhibitors create successful and memorable experiences that attract, engage, and ultimately convert leads from prospects into customers and hardcore brand loyalists.
How can you affect audiences positively and leave an unforgettable impression? Start by setting realistic goals and communicate them to your team. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Managers often overlook team motivation, or they might not realize that their team lacks some motivation since they’re so focused on other things such as setting up the booth to their standards, checking up on the hardware, the kiosks, their lead capture software, making sure that everything works, stressing about time, and the list goes on. Establishing and maintaining goals for the team can easily be overlooked. In this article we will highlight the importance of 2 things:
1- Setting Goals
Setting goals and objectives is vital to track and measure the success of your company, event, booth, team, etc. you name it… And a lot of managers either set up goals that are perceived by team members as unachievable, or that don’t fit best with the situation.
When setting goals, be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. To elaborate: Be specific so that there is no confusion. As mentioned before, you have to be able to measure specific goals to identify strengths and weaknesses. You also have to be reasonable in goal setting, placing goals within reach so your team can achieve them without them being too easy. Keep the competition spirit up, and make goals relevant to your company’s goals. Be crystal clear about deadlines to which the goals should be met.
2- Motivating Your Team
When it comes to motivation, there are 2 points we want to address. Going back to the second paragraph, I mentioned something important “positively affecting your audiences.” How do you expect to leave a good impression on audiences if your team is unmotivated, or not on their best behavior? How will you convert audiences to prospects, and prospects into leads and loyal customers? Team motivation is very important to the process, especially when it comes to dealing face to face meetings with potential customers, because in their eyes the team member that they’re talking to is the representation of your company. Ultimately, team motivation directly reflects on the brand that you’ve spent so much time and money over the years building.
Before your events, spend some time setting goals and developing a plan to motivate your team. Take the time necessary to motivate your team, talk to them, and ensure that they’re on full alert, equipped with all the knowledge they need to communicate your brand values and solutions to audiences at trade shows. Offer incentives and challenges to keep them motivated to win… which takes us to our second point:
Create corporate loyalty reward programs for team members to spark up a sense of achievement and competition between the team. Lead liaison has a rewards center with a broad selection of e-gift cards, in which Team members receive their own personalized profiles with progress reports indicating milestones they have achieved. This allows them to track their own progress and keep an eye on the big prize to fuel up their performance.
In that way you’ll make them feel like they have a bigger part in the success of your company, which they do! This also fosters a fun, competitive environment, a way for your team members to prove themselves, compete, and gain rewards which they achieve by their dedication and hard work. In the end, Loyalty & Reward programs are a win-win situation for you and your team. They will be motivated to work harder achieving the goals, engage new prospects, build relationships and leave a good impression on your audiences! Basically, everybody wins.
In conclusion
If you want to build a successful brand loyalty, gather good leads, and build a strong relationship with your audiences, start first with your team! Set SMART goals and communicate them to your team. Make sure they’re on board with all the necessary information needed. Motivate them by awarding them when they achieve goals, and give them the choice of rewards to boost performances.
To learn more about Lead liaison’s corporate loyalty reward programs, contact us today!
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
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Determining ROI on events: Why are you operating blind?
One of the biggest challenges event managers seem to have is determining the return on investment for the events they participate in. The reason for that is because they are consistently lacking one piece of crucial information. In fact, it is a piece of information that is readily available to them if they would just ask this simple question of their CEO, CFO, CMO, or owner of the company. It’s a magical question that opens up all sorts of possibilities and releases your creative energy once you have the answer. It causes all aspects of your business, and the company’s short and long-term goals to become crystal clear. So, what is this question?
What is the value of a new customer or client to the company?
I am continually amazed at how many event managers from both small to medium-sized businesses, all the way up to fortune 100 companies have no idea what the value of one new customer is to their company. Now, one of the most common reasons I have discovered for this lack of information on the part of event managers is that no one ever told them the importance of the question, you can’t ask a question you don’t know you should ask.
A lot of companies view events as just another line item on their overall marketing budget, and as long as marketing is producing results, then hi-five! But, that doesn’t mean event managers and their teams don’t benefit from knowing what a customer or client is actually worth to the company. Just as the Sales team needs to know what the value of one new customer is in order to determine salaries, commissions, and bonuses, the event team needs to know this information if they want to put together an effective strategy, and/or evaluate new technologies and tools that can help them achieve their goals.
In so many cases, event teams are left to rely on the show organizer to provide them with their leads, and then it’s up to them to try and qualify them or send them onto sales to qualify and pursue. This makes it even more difficult to determine whether what you are doing at these shows is effective. But, when you know exactly what a new customer is worth, you then begin to look at your budgets differently and can make a case to those within the company who have the final say on approving your budget that investing in a more effective lead capture system will be worth it because you can justify the return on investment. Imagine no longer needing to rely on the show organizer to provide you with a lead list that is also being distributed to your competitors as well. But, because you know the value of a new customer, your ability to move your events team forward with an effective strategy for growing the company will give you the upper hand.
As live events come back, and with the increased implementation of hybrid events, knowing exactly what you’re aiming at will make all the difference in the world when it comes to planning which events will be the most profitable for you, and creating a strategy to CRUSH IT at those events.
We sincerely hope that this will inspire you to dig a little deeper into what each new customer actually means to your company, rather large or small, and will help you become more empowered to make impactful decisions for your team and the company as a whole.
For information about Lead liaison for your next event or marketing campaign, or to get started with Lead liaison: CLICK HERE.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
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5 ways to increase lead capture adoption at events
With in-person and hybrid events coming back in full force, it’s time to think in-person lead capture again. For many exhibitors, this usually involves scanning a name badge or business card through an app or scanner. These apps are great for quickly getting contact data from your event and into your marketing automation or CRM system of choice.
But in order to get contact data from a scan, booth staff have to actually use them.
Many organizations struggle to get staff to adopt new lead capture methods. After all, taking someone’s business card and scribbling a few notes worked before, why shouldn’t it work now?
Event marketers know exactly why that doesn’t work. People fall through the cracks and don’t receive follow up, and you have a delay in processing your data.
How event marketers can help increase staff adoption:
1: Set Expectations
This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many event coordinators pay good money for lead capture without setting expectations. Who should booth staff be scanning? Here are a few different responses we’ve gotten from our partners:
Scan everyone who comes to the booth, no matter what.
Only scan potential customers (exclude vendors, sales people, etc).
Only scan qualified potential customers.
Only scan potential customers with a sales opportunity.
Different people will have different opinions. Many marketers usually favor gathering as many leads as possible and qualifying later. Sales teams, on the other hand, are mostly interested in hot leads, seeing potentially unqualified leads as time wasters. Make sure everyone knows what you need from them.
2: Keep it Simple
We all know it’s important that follow up is targeted for the attendee. You can’t just send a giant email blast with generic content and expect people to engage. You can’t either send personalized content if you don’t know anything about the person.
Having said that, we’ve seen a tendency to ask a lot of survey questions.
A while back, we had a partner who was switching from paper lead capture forms to digital lead capture. They copied the paper form which included 20 survey questions. All of them were marked required and many had follow-up questions. They left their event with only three new leads from the app.
What happened? The sales staff got frustrated. They felt like they were stuck doing data entry while lines built up at their booth. To quote one of the reps, “I look like I’m just playing on my phone or texting friends; it’s embarrassing.”
They ended up switching back to the paper forms where they felt more comfortable. The result was that it took several weeks before all of the leads were entered into their CRM.
While it’s tempting to gather as much data as humanly possible, remember your staff are in a busy, highly interactive environment. Make the lead capture process as quick as possible by using the minimum number of survey questions you can.
3: Avoid Manual Entry
Event marketers trying to save on expenses might decide they don’t need to pay for badge scanning. After all, Developer kits usually cost several hundred dollars, and renting devices could break the bank once they add all of their users. Their staff can just type in the contact info, right?
That decision is more costly than you might realize. Just like in my example above, when staff only have manual entry as an option, you can expect them to avoid submitting data on the sales floor. They simply don’t have time to do it when face-to-face with prospects. Instead, they’re likely to collect business cards and upload them later in their hotel room.
However, if users can conveniently scan a badge or business card, lead capture takes mere seconds. Consider that next time you’re thinking of saving a buck on lead capture.
4: Stick to Multi-Select Fields
You’re probably noticing a theme here…
The key to adoption is making it as easy as possible.
The more typing there is, the more time lead capture takes, and the less your staff will want to use your capture form.
When dealing with surveys, multi-select fields take very little time. Imagine how much longer it would take to type “Lead Management Automation” than to just tick a box.
5: Use a Universal Lead Capture System
Inconsistent experiences are one of the biggest complaints both marketers and booth staff.
Every event and every provider has their own scanners and apps. Some let you add custom survey questions, some don’t. Some only provide badge scanning, others can also do business cards. And, unfortunately, not all are very intuitive.
People are much less likely to invest their time in learning to use an app if they know they’ll probably never use it again. However, if you use a Universal Lead Capture (ULC) system like Lead liaison, users will have the same experience at every event. Most importantly, you have control over what the form looks like as well as the questions asked.
To get the most out of your next event, contact Lead liaison today for more ideas on how ULC can make life easier for your staff.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
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CASE STUDY: Lead Capture for Speakers & Conferences
I once attended a hybrid conference. It was an opportunity for me to learn from the experts, find out what is new in our industry, and connect with colleagues I have not seen in a long time. I also wanted to see one speaker in particular (a client) that was using Lead liaison lead capture games to engage the audience. Here is what I observed.
There were 8 sessions, which I attended over two days. Each session was 1 hour long. Of these 8 sessions, 6 of the speakers were simply talking and showing a few powerpoint slides. One speaker did send out a poll to their virtual audience and shared the results with both the virtual and live audiences to discuss. But the one speaker who was using Lead liaison engaged both the live and virtual audience in a completely different way… plus, walked away with 59 leads! Here is what they did.
PREPARING THE AUDIENCE: When we entered the session room there was a slideshow running as we waited. It explained that this would be an interactive session as well as to have our phone ready and that prizes would be awarded to the most engaged participants. It also gave us a QR Code to scan to play a fun game while we were waiting and get comfortable using our phone. (I crushed this game by the way!)
ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE IN LEARNING: The speaker’s presentation was broken down into 3 parts. Each part had 1 image on the screen when the speaker was teaching, followed by a QR Code for us to scan. The QR Codes led us to different learning games designed to test how well people were paying attention to the content and reinforce the key takeaways.
CREATE A COMPETITIVE ATMOSPHERE: We were sitting at tables so, before we played, we were asked to identify which table we were sitting at. (This was great as it created a competitive atmosphere AND anyone who would normally not participate would have to jump in and not let their team down! The virtual audience was put on teams too! Our table played a total of 3 educational games.
REWARD YOUR AUDIENCE: Towards the end of the session, the speaker announced that they would be giving away prizes to the top 3 individual players with the highest combined score from all 3 games AND the team with the highest combined scores! BUT, we had one more challenge which was a super fun game! You could literally feel the energy in the room heighten as it was “game on” and everyone was ready to play! Once we played, the speaker announced they would be showing us a Master Leaderboard that was gathering all of our individual and team scores. When it was revealed, the room cheered and celebrated the top players and team. In the end, my team did not win, but there were 3 individual winners who received $100 eGift cards (electronically fulfilled by their Lead liaison Gift Card Rewards system) and a team of 8 at table – 4 that were excited to win bluetooth earbuds! The speaker also invited everyone to visit their booth to meet their team and pick up a small gift. SMART!
THE RESULTS: That last fun game we played was tied to a lead capture form where attendees could request a copy of the presentation, product information, or a meeting. When the event was all over, I met with our client and here is an overview of their results:
There were 10 tables of 8 in the room. It was almost sold out with 63 people attending in person. Online, there were another 30+ attendees attending. Of all attendees, 61 participated in person and 22 participated online. Of the 83 who participated, 59 became leads! (44 requested more information and 15 requested a follow up meeting after the show with their sales team.)
As for the attendees… We got to engage with their brand in a fun and memorable way! I could not have been more proud of how well our client utilized Lead liaison Gamification and Universal Lead Capture. They really took our advice to heart and stood out over the other sessions, created an engaging, fun and memorable brand experience, and they were the only speaker to actually capture leads! It was an amazing success story that I had to share.
Now, if only the event organizer had Lead liaison’s Event Engagement Studio setup, they could have gamified the entire event! Attendees could have scored points for engaging in every session, and earned points for meeting with exhibitors and sponsors too!
Contact Lead liaison today to learn more about how we can help your team prepare for event success by partnering with the leader in Universal Lead Capture and Engagement solutions.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
Demystifying APIs & Dev Kits for Event Lead Capture
When Event Organizers & Exhibitors work together, everyone wins!
You’ve set up your Universal Lead Capture form, your documents are ready to go, and your team is trained. Now the important question:
have you figured out how your team will actually be capturing contact data at your event?
For most events, especially in the US, you can get contact data by scanning name badges. Universal Lead Capture apps like Lead liaison can pull in data from badges. To do this, however, you’ll typically need an API, or developer’s kit.
This is where things go off the rails sometimes. You email the show management, and they have no idea what you’re talking about. How do you navigate these events and get your scanner up and running?
How to Retrieve API / Dev Kit Info
1: Check the order form
Many lead retrieval providers will have the API kit on their order form. This is a best case scenario. It might be listed as one of the following:
API Kit
Developer’s Kit
Third-Party Kit
If it’s on the form, then that’s all you need to buy. No need to rent scanners or license the provider’s app. If it’s not on the form, it’s time to contact the provider directly.
2: Identify the lead retrieval provider
Show management rarely has much to do with lead retrieval. You can ask them about badge scanning and APIs, but more often than not they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about. They will usually contract out to a lead retrieval provider.
Oftentimes the provider will be listed in your Exhibitor kit. It may even be listed directly on the show’s website. If there is an order form for lead retrieval, it will often reveal who the provider is.
If you’re having trouble identifying them, contact show management. Be very careful with your wording. If you throw around terms like “API Kit,” they’re probably going to get confused. If you have to contact show management, we recommend the following wording:
“Hello, we’re trying to set up lead retrieval for EVENT NAME. Could you please let us know who is providing lead retrieval services? We’d appreciate it if you could either connect us or give us your contact’s details.”
If management is still unsure, you can ask them if the badges will have barcodes on them and who is providing the name badges. Note that this is not always the lead retrieval provider.
Contact the provider directly
Once you know the provider, contact them directly. We’ve had the most success by asking questions like this:
“Hello, we understand you’re providing lead retrieval services for EVENT NAME. We use a Universal Lead Capture app and would like to set up badge scanning. Do you have an API kit or developer kit so our app can scan the badges at EVENT NAME?”
On rare occasions, the provider might misunderstand what you’re asking. They may send you an order form for their app at the event. Make sure they understand you want to use your Universal Lead Capture app.
What if there is no API Kit?
In some cases, there may be situations where the provider does not or can not offer an API kit. Depending on the situation, there are still a few things you can try.
1: Ask for post-show reconciliation
With post-show reconciliation, your Universal Lead Capture app will scan and save the badge ID. Once the event is over, you can send the list of badge IDs to the lead retrieval provider. They will return a list of contact details that apps like Lead liaison can use to complete your submissions. While it isn’t instant like with an API, the end user experience is the same. Your users simply scan the lead, add notes and qualifiers, and submit.
2: Ask for a sample badge
Sometimes providers don’t offer an API because the contact details are embedded in the badge. If you can get a badge to your Universal Lead Capture provider, they may be able to read the data without the need for an API. Lead liaison, for example, has a team of experts that check badges for you.
3: Talk to show management
If all else fails, let show management know how important it is for you to use your Universal Lead Capture app. Many show managers aren’t even aware that these sorts of apps exist, and as a paying exhibitor, you can make a difference. We’ve had managers make changes by sending messages like this:
“Hello, we use a Universal Lead Capture app that we normally use at the events we attend. Usually the lead retrieval provider has a developer kit which allows our app to scan the badges. We understand that PROVIDER does not have this option.
Our app is configured for our needs. It has all of our questions and documents set up for our organization, and our booth staff are used to it. We would rather not have to train on a new app and figure out how to fit it within our data flow. Please consider finding a provider that offers this in the future.”
4: Take a Picture of Badges & Business Cards
Lead liaison can easily transcribe the data and send it to your CRM or Marketing Automation platform.
In some rare cases the provider may have an API kit, but show management has specifically told them not to offer it. In those cases, we suggest sending a message like this:
“Hello, we use a Universal Lead Capture app that we normally use at the events we attend. Usually the lead retrieval provider has a developer kit which allows our app to scan the badges. PROVIDER has informed us that you will not allow them to offer the kit. This is disappointing.
Our app is configured for our needs. It has all of our questions and documents set up for our organization, and our booth staff are used to it. We would rather not have to train on a new app and figure out how to fit it within our data flow. Please consider allowing this option.”
Premium lead capture solutions like Lead liaison empower teams to collect custom event data, collect and distribute that data instantly, and begin the follow up and meeting scheduling process long before the competition. Lead liaison provides event teams with resources to make every event a success such as in-app lead rating, meeting scheduling, team communications and more, and event engagement solutions that will increase activity and engagement at your booth!
Click here to explore Lead liaison’s award winning, premium lead capture and event engagement platform and view testimonials from event professionals who use the app.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
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How to accurately scan attendees into sessions when hundreds to thousands of people could be flowing through the door when it opens. Many organizations have the need to track and record which attendees are attending sessions so they can award continuing education credits and other meetings just want to track who attended which session. Problem solved using one of Lead liaison’s latest feature updates:
Rapid Scan!
When Rapid Scan is enabled in the app a door monitor is able to quickly scan the badge of everyone who enters without any additional steps like hitting submit or answering questions in the normal lead retrieval screen. Simply focus the camera on the badge, beep and move on to the next badge. The app will continue scanning until the submit button is pressed at which point all of the scanned data will be uploaded into the system. Quick and accurate!
Need to report if an attendee stayed for the entire session?
Event managers can also scan badges using rapid scan as they exit the room and the system will time stamp both the entrance and exit of the attendee.
The system makes it easy to report which attendees were in which sessions because the Lead liaison software OneFocus creates an “attendee journey” in their profile so an event manager can easily see and export each session attended. We also integrate with many different software platforms if you want to have an automatic sync of the data.
Short on staff?
The app can also be configured for kiosk mode which will allow an attendee to scan as they enter the room. If the attendees are trained that they need to scan in and out to be awarded the continuing education credit then rest assured they will make sure to scan properly.
Contact Lead liaison today to learn more about how easy it is to track your session attendance using rapid scan in the Lead liaison app.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 2,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
Give me 50 seconds of your time and watch this 1980’s video of the song YYZ. Begin at about 3:20 in:
YYZ is a seven minute showcase of musical talent composed and created by musicians who harnessed and refined their talent, forging it over time with discipline and practice. Much like Neil Peart’s drum solo, a rhythm is a pattern or sequence of sounds (or events in our case) that combine to create a beautiful symphony.
The Symphony of Rhythms By combining all the automations and the rhythms and the calculations that the SaaS Platform Lead liaison is executing for us and our customers every day, you will not just have a mishmash of noise or actions; you have a showcase of synchronized talent that originates with your thoughts, plans, and words, and then launched out like an arrow to strike at the heart of who? Not just people, but unique individuals who just so happen to be called prospects to us.
This is why when we sit down to create a rhythm, we don’t just bang drums. We focus on the uniqueness of the individual and we try to reach them with solutions that accomplish their goals… Because honestly, every corporation wants their products to be SuperNova stars like Neil Peart…
And so when we sit down to create, or dream, or design a rhythm, we take the same position as an artist. We want to create something that reaches the heart of the reader. This process is the process of keeping it relevant to the person that we’re communicating to.
Just as we all watched Neil play and we all may recognize his talent, there are some of us to whom RUSH just is not relevant and in the same way, your message, as finely crafted as it may be, is not going to be relevant to everybody without focusing on their unique traits, their needs and their affinities. So focusing on the individual means we are searching for the unique factors that make Lead liaison relevant to the people that we’re reaching out to.
Pulling Prospects from Data Sources When I pull new prospects, I have a large list of criteria that can include geography, experience or position within the company, and so on. Prospect companies can be filtered by employee headcount, annual revenue, and so on. I want to tune these search criteria to make sure we’re always in the butter zone when we pull lead lists. Once we download our leads, we further cull them until we have a list that says, “These are the people we need to talk to.” Always pull lead lists based on criteria that allows you to communicate to the right people, right where they are.
Personalization How can I further drill down from here and really communicate to a specific segment of people? For certain rhythms, we pull lists of people based on job changes or professional transitions. If data indicates that they were hired at a new job with titles matching our ICPs, and within a one year period, then we send them to a rhythm called, “The New ICP Less Than One Year Rhythm.”
This rhythm is really cool and unique. We’re actually sending an email straight from our CEO, Ryan Shefke, congratulating these people on their recent new position, which is highly relevant to them. It gets their attention and it does something else for us too… It gives us a reason to incentivize them for a conversation.
Because these rythems are focusing on a professional life event, we get much higher response rates than other more broadly targeted rhythms
And these rhythms are the basis of our Ghirardelli Incentive campaigns, or in the UK our Hotel Chocolat campaigns. So in marketing we offer incentives whenever we feel it’s right to do so, and Ghirardelli / Hotel Chocolat have been some of our all time high performing campaigns in terms of getting new demos. From the very inception of Capello, Ghirardelli incentives have really helped us to introduce our brand to people out there in the events industry.
Let me flip to a different rhythm in which I have targeted event professionals… I was browsing social media one day and I noticed that there was a post in the UK where they were congratulating people for making the corporate A-list, and they were listing all the top winners; some 20 winners were all total event professionals who made it on C&IT corporate list.
So I created a special rhythm that spoke directly to that experience and congratulated them for their achievements. I wished them a wonderful stay in Scotland, the destination all the winners received a free trip to. I offered all of them a complimentary gift card and a fun gamification experience as our way of saying congratulations.
So now these winners are winning even more free stuff! They know Lead liaison is benevolent and appreciates their professional development. And guess what? This approach with only 12 ICPs in the rhythm eventually led to a deal with AstraZeneca.
Adding Value to Build Relationships If you’ve done everything you can to get information about people and you’re still falling a bit short in your personalization, rather than just solicit them with a straightforward approach, you should earn your right to approach them. Try to romance it some. Earn the right to approach them.
How do you do that? Offer something they find value in, like a case study, video, or blog article that speaks to their interests and needs. As a general rule, don’t be pushy in your outreach emails. Keep it to a few carefully planned steps.
In this rhythm, we have a day-1 email scheduled first. Then we have a day-7 email, then day-10. We’re not going Day-1, Day-1, Day-1, Day-2, Day-5.
TIPS:
1: Keep your messages spaced out. Give your prospects a little time to breathe. Don’t be too salesy, and don’t be selfish in your outreach.
2: On the other hand, don’t be shy or passive. People want to know: why are you contacting them? You can let them know that you care and how you can help them, and you can do it in short and concise words or sentences.
3: Make your second message a follow up (reply to) to the first email you sent to keep the conversation alive. If you’re trying to reach out to somebody, would you create a brand new email each time and compose a new message every single time? No, you would go into your sent box, find the message you already sent, and build a history with a reply-to message. Build on that communication.
4: In your final email message, it’s ok to be less formal. This indicates you’re going to discontinue bothering them unless they show interest. You can even add a notice instead of a signature at the bottom: sent from my iPad. It’s obviously a little trick, but you want to come across as very human.
Important Note:
Rhythms are not marketing emails. Rhythm emails should be composed as if you had drafted them from your Gmail inbox or your Outlook inbox.
5: Another thing that has proven to be very effective in final messages is to offer choices to the recipient so they can quickly provide you with feedback, such as:
Choose one of these options:
1: I’m interested. Let’s talk soon.
2: I’m interested, but too busy right now.
3: I’m not interested at all.
Look to get closure on that last message, and keep it very brief.
A quick question came up during this session: 1: How does GDPR privacy law affect outreach to leads imported from LinkedIn Sales Navigator? GDPR allows for cold email outreach if it is directly related to a business opportunity that is relevant to the recipient. So they need to be your ICPs, and it’s important to check that box before sending out any rhythm emails. These messages are going one to one, so it’s not sending in bulk like a marketing list. Rhythms are that totally personalized approach.
What happens if they haven’t responded? Since you know your prospects best, it’s totally up to you how you deal with them. But I would give them a cool down period and then add them to a nurture campaign that educates them more about the brand and the offering so they can begin to understand their need for your solutions.
What we want to do in marketing is to create a reality for them. In order to create a new reality for a person, you have to present a relevant message to them from multiple different channels. They have to recognize that message coming from your brand within a specific timeframe. For example, within a one week period they hear your ad on the radio, then they see it on TV, and a few days later they receive a postcard… Now it’s becoming real to them.
This is why it’s important to add calls as part of a step in your rhythm. Ideally you would send an email, make a call, send an email, reach out with a handwritten letter… You’re mixing it up.
“People that send an email and call a few days later or a day after and say, “Hey, I sent you an email,” and they leave me a little message. Holy cow, it feels so much more real. I realize they’re human. I feel like they’re taking the time to prospect me, which I appreciate. And then if they send me another email, I might reply to that email, but mixing it up is very important. And I’m saying that as a recipient.” Ryan Schefkle, CEO – Lead liaison
Merge Fields: Use merge fields to get more personal, to get more specific. In this example, we’re reaching out to event organizers who had recently had an event and we populate the merge fields with their show data. So it speaks directly to the organizer about the recent show and congratulates them on having a successful show. This one has been successful: 1: Because merge fields allow us to speak specifically to their situation. 2: Our sales team is great at following these up. I’ve seen some real conversations come from these outreaches, and to get an entire organization or event on onboard is a huge win. That’s gonna take time.
Email Formatting You’ll notice that the formatting in the email on the right is extremely simple… It is very basic with minimal formatting at all other than the signature at the bottom of the email, which makes it appear as a hand typed one-off email.
In the example on the left, you have considerable formatting:
1: The use of sections and dividers to create a professional look and feel.
2: Prominent placement of the company logo.
3: The use of bullets
4: Appropriate bolding. Never over do it on the use of bolding. You’ll eventually slip into spam just as you will if you use too many capital letters in your emails.
5: Make sure you have good paragraph spacing to break up your content.
6: Hyperlinks. Please don’t use more than three hyperlinks, especially if they’re unique hyperlinks, per email as a general rule.
7: Graphics are fun to include, but always keep ’em under 400 kilobytes. Less than that, if possible.
8: If graphics link to a video, make sure you’re adding an image hyperlink and a play button indicating that they should play the video.
Both formatting approaches are perfectly acceptable depending on the image and approach you use. Just make sure you have thought this part through prior to committing.
Testing: Add yourself. So how would I do that? How would I add myself? I would click Actions, then Add Prospects. I’m going to add myself to the rhythm and the system is going to send rhythm content to me within the next 24 hours. I’m gonna to review how that email looks in my inbox. I want to send it to my Gmail and my Outlook inbox… multiple platforms so you can compare how the formatting looks across platforms. Outlook is just known for ruining good emails. You can have a beautifully formatter email and Outlook will ruin it. So be careful there.
Get another set of eyes on your email before you send it, because we all need an objective point of view to catch errors that we might have missed. You can really get creator’s fatigue where you think you’ve proofed it 400 times and it’s perfect, but there’s a glaring error and you just can’t see it.
Frequency: In a rhythm you have to carefully plan out your timing between steps. Here are a few statistics about the best times to send out emails for good open and click through rates:
Emails that are sent on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday get the most engagement.
Statistically, marketing emails sent between 9:00 AM and noon on Tuesday get the most engagement, followed by Monday and Wednesday at the same time.
The weekend is a bad time to send business related emails. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday have the lowest open end click through rates on the calendar. So, even on Fridays when I’m still anxious to send out my marketing campaigns, I usually send about 50% of the volume that I normally do on weekdays.
Monday, remember everybody gets to work and deletes the first 400 emails in their inbox that look like spam. So for Mondays I will typically wait till after they’ve cleaned their inbox and send emails late morning or in the early afternoon, or even sometimes after they get home at 5:30pm. Sometimes people will recheck their work emails real quick before dinner.
I hope you found these tips helpful. For more information about sales enablement solutions, marketing automation, CRM, universal lead capture and user-customizable activations, reach out to us here at Lead liaison
We can help you make the most of your events through all stages of event planning and execution.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
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Cultivating Quality Interactions on the Event Show Floor
Not all events are the same, but a few attributes all events should have in common are positive community building experiences, conversations that increase knowledge and breadth of opportunity, and positive ROI.
The direct path to ROI is one beset with quality interactions. When preparing for your next event, plan to engage with your prospects. What is your plan for brokering new conversations?
What impression would you like to make as a company?
Here are a few takeaways to help you make the most of your events:
1: Give people a reason to visit your exhibit space.
Is your booth well built? Good! You’re halfway there. Is it interesting and staffed with a well equipped events team? Now we’re getting there…
Let’s talk engagement:
Event activations are becoming the new norm for enhancing interaction at in person and hybrid events. Activations, also known as Gamification, connect attendees with activities that combine fun with education and brand impression. Activations launch anywhere, including on personal devices, so they can go anywhere providing incentives to visit sponsored booths and important locations, attending sessions, reviewing presentations and more.
All this activity and involvement nets increased event revenue, additional intentional interaction, and as a result – more conversations leading to business transactions.Lead liaison’s suite of over 60 event activations helps event organizers and exhibitors drive engagement at their events and provides exhibitors with better lead capture processes. The intuitive Activation Builder makes it extremely easy for anyone to customize games with branding of any kind.
2: Be inviting
Now that you know how to draw additional traffic to your booth, don’t forget to converse with your attendees as soon as they arrive. Smiles and good body language are well received and can increase opportunities for conversations.
3: Flex your customer service muscle
Oftentimes you will have booth traffic that won’t lead to a direct sale. That doesn’t mean you should cut down on your customer service skills. An attendee could have questions that require you to refer them to someone else. Offer a quality experience and they will remember that. If they know how good you are at taking care of them, the positive experience will provide an opportunity for future word of mouth referrals.
4: Listen
Customers come to trade shows for the opportunity to have conversations and understand more about certain products and services offered by exhibitors. The in-person conversation is the most valuable sales tool there is. If a prospective customer is at your event and stops by your booth, they have something to say. FIRST, LISTEN to their questions, understand their needs, and give them your attention. Sales take time, this is just the reality. The more listening you do from the start, the better. Create that positive experience on your first meeting!
5: No PDE (Public Displays of Exhaustion) allowed!
Sit only if you can do so out of public view. When prospects walk by a booth, they expect to see energy and excitement. Nothing is more deflating in the eyes of an attendee than walking the floor to see people sitting behind a table at a booth showing no energy.
6: Have fun!
If it takes an extra cup of coffee or a candy bar, find energy to have fun. Look, staffing a booth at a trade show is tough. Travel, setup, long days, we know it isn’t always glamorous. Why go through all that just to be upset on event day? If you need it, give your booth staff a break or two during the day to recharge. It is so important everyone in the booth is in good spirits when any attendee drops by, even on day three of an event.
During 2020 so many of us missed the in-person experience when we had to move to online events.
Today, in-person experiences are back in full force with tons of attendees excited to make those in person connections again. Appreciate every opportunity, and always look to build upon every handshake or fist bump.
We hope these simple tips were helpful to you as you plan for upcoming events. If you need creative ideas and resources to make your next event more engaging, contact Lead liaison!
We’re here to help YOU make every event a huge success.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000integrationsfor all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
To see how Lead liaison’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!
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Best Practices for Transcribing Business Cards and Contact Information
Companies struggle finding easy and fast ways to transcribe contact information from documents such as business cards, trade show badges, resumes, and handwritten notes. In this article we discuss these solutions and examine the trade-offs for why you would use one method over the other.
Lead liaison invented two proprietary methods of transcription which are far superior than traditional optical character recognition (also known as “OCR”) methods commonly used today. These methods are called:
Human AI and Pure AI
Both are very distinct methods that have their own advantages. Relative to standard OCR, the methods have a 63% higher accuracy rate. OCR is an older technology that does not learn from its mistakes (no machine learning) and uses hard-coded programmatic code that doesn’t adapt. It typically runs inside an app and on a device, making it inflexible. As a result, OCR is hard to update and has quickly become irrelevant when compared to other methods.
“I’ve used OCR apps from the App Stores and they always frustrate me. I tried dozens of them, over and over, really looking for the right solution. I determined they’re not very accurate, constantly require fixing and tweaking, lack integration with sales and marketing systems, and don’t fit the needs of marketing teams. They’re meant for individual sales people who have time on their hands to correct data – says nobody. Our engineering team pounded the innovation drums giving us industry-leading solutions that fit numerous use cases. We’re super excited to introduce our newest method, which we call Pure AI.”
Lead liaison CEO Ryan Schefke
Lead liaison’s study of 10,687 business cards and documents requiring transcription determined standard OCR was accurate 60.34% of the time. In comparison, Lead liaison’s methods were 98.6% accurate on average. That’s a 64% improvement in accuracy resulting in better quality contact information, more precise lead data, and improved lead management workflows.
HUMAN AI:
Lead liaison’s classic method, known as Human AI, uses an operations team of several hundred people. The workforce transcribes the contact information while artificial intelligence processes the data to find matching information and discards bad information. The result is a highly accurate process ideal for multiple use cases.
PURE AI:
The second, and newest method, is called Pure AI. Pure AI uses a sophisticated process that combines machine learning, image analysis, data intelligence, and artificial intelligence to perform its magic. The best method for your business depends on your use case.
In the tables below we’ve highlighted six (6) use cases for transcribing contact information from documents, all of which Lead liaison supports. If you need help transcribing business cards, badges, or handwritten notes at trade shows or marketing events Lead liaison can help. Similarly, if your company does door-to-door sales or has sales processes that use contact cards in any form, we can help. Whatever you use, ditch OCR as it’s a thing of the past. Use Human AI or Pure AI to leap into the next generation of transcription.
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
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Exhibitor Media Group reports that in 2023 companies expect to exhibit at an average of 47.2 in-person events per year (6% more than in 2019).
As trade shows and marketing events start to fill up the calendar, event organizers need creative solutions to bring in more attendees and drive value to sponsors and other stakeholders. In this article we outline five solutions for event organizers to bring life to their events.
Scavenger Hunts
The classic scavenger hunt, or treasure hunt, was historically run using a piece of paper and stamps. Attendees would visit booths or prime destinations in an effort to complete their card. It’s sort of like playing a lottery ticket or bingo. Tick off all the squares and you win! In an age where digital dominates, organizers have an opportunity to move a scavenger hunt experience from physical to digital, while going green at the same time. Solutions exist that leverage QR codes as the destinations while attendees load a progress report that tells them what stops they’ve completed and where they need to go next. This is an excellent way for event organizers to drive traffic to key areas, exhibitors, or sponsors – getting them to do what you want them to do. Event organizers can also monetize each stop thereby creating additional revenue streams for their event.
Two Truths and a Lie
This event experience encourages attendees to network with each other. I’ve been to many events in my career. Although the events industry is rather “clicky”, it never fails that I’m walking around the show floor introducing myself to people. Sometimes it feels awkward as people are almost suspicious of “nice guys”. Why should it be that way? Event organizers can give attendees a reason to connect with one another . Two truths and a Lie is one of the best ways to do that. Prior to the event attendees answer three questions about themselves, with two answers being truthful and one answer being a lie. Event organizers can program how the experience works, and whether one attendee needs to guess the truth or the lie of another attendee. If they get the correct answer the attendee earns points and a chance to be atop the leaderboard.
Speed Networking
We’ve all seen the popularity of dating websites grow over the past decade. The concept is great. Match people up, have them go on a date, and if there’s a good match then the rest is history. These concepts can also be applied to business through speed networking to help event organizers. Solutions exist where groups of people can join “rooms”, which might be dedicated to common interests. Attendees meet in the room at a specific time and are matched with another person where they have a time limit to network. Once the networking session is over, the attendees are matched to another person. This is a great opportunity to connect buyers and sellers together, like-minded buyers together, attendees with common interests, and more.
Digital Activations
Exhibitors spend lots of time and money hauling in giant spin the wheels, whack a moles, or Plinko to their live event hoping the aid acts like a minno to hungry fish, attracting attendees in swarms. Event organizers have enough to worry about and can’t spend the time bringing in physical activations. Instead, solutions exist for digital activations that can be run on tablets. Event organizers can brand digital activations, sell sponsorships, and use them to deliver a message or preview content. When attendees engage with the digital activations they earn points. Points accumulate over the course of the event as attendees vie for a spot on the top of the event leaderboard. Attendees can be incentivized to participate if prizes are awarded for people that finish in the top X position on the leaderboard.
Session Surveys
Event organizers often offer educational sessions at their event. Although, most organizers miss out on the opportunity to collect data, feedback, and further engage attendees with the use of surveys or polls. Surveys or polls can be displayed using a branded QR code at the beginning or end of a session – or even somewhere in between. Attendees can scan the QR code with their smartphone to take the quiz/poll. Data is aggregated for event organizers to use and provide feedback to the speaker while improving the experience for the following year. When attendees participate they can earn points and get a spot on the leaderboard – encouraging them to participate at deeper levels.
We hope these five creative solutions for event organizers give you some ideas for your next event! Contact Lead liaison at www.Leadliaison.com if you’d like our help in providing any of these five solutions. We can help!
Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
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