Trade shows are a great time to show off your brand. However, if no one knows you’re going to be there, you may not show it off as much as you’d like. Get the most for your money by generating a great trade show email campaign to go along with your expertly put together large trade show booth. With the proper email marketing, you can really get your name out there.

Begin Planning a Trade Show Email Campaign

A good trade show email marketing campaign consists of many different elements. Determining who your target audience is first can help you narrow down all remaining steps of the campaign. Once you’ve picked your target audience, you’ll want to decide when to send out your information that will bring you the most return on investment. There are lots of little details that will help your email campaign help your entire trade show marketing investment, so don’t miss out on any of the following steps.

Choosing your target audience

It’s important to know exactly who you’d like to target with your campaign. Knowing that ahead of time allows you to prepare emails that appeal to all levels of your campaign. We suggest creating a buyer persona or two to help guide your thought process as you narrow down your audience. Having multiple buyer personas may help in adjusting your campaign to a wider audience.

Here are some suggested target groups to focus on making email lists for:

• Current clients and customers
• Prospective leads 
• Past trade show leads

It’s important to note that most trade shows will give exhibitors a free list of people who will be attending the convention. All of these people could be possible leads. However, you’ll want to come up with words, images, and creative ideas to get the people you want from this list to come to your booth. If you are able, the information given may even allow you to narrow down these lists so that you can be more specific with your campaign choices.

Planning incentives

Another step before you plan your emails is to come up with an action plan for what your booth will offer. Will there be giveaways, promotional items, presentations? Using your buyer persona, think of offers your customers will want.

Offering phone charging can be a big draw as convention spaces seem to eat up phone power. Sofas are also a major draw for people walking around all day. In the convention industry, there are a lot of effective trade show trends you can use to help draw people to your trade show display.

Create landing pages

Sometimes an email itself cannot properly say everything you’d like it to say about an element of your booth. Keeping your emails short and to the point is the best way to relay all your information, and in order to do that, you may need to create links to a landing page. Using landing pages to add all the details to your incentives makes your emails breezy and to the point.  A landing page can explain an event, offer sign-up for a giveaway, introduce who is staffing your booth or offer more information on your booth’s location.

Email Marketing on a Timeline

Most trade show marketing may seem likely to come after a trade show is over. With the leads you acquired at the show, of course, you’ll want to follow up. However, a good trade show email campaign starts before the trade show even begins.

Pre-show emails

In the weeks leading up to a show, people will be planning how they will attack the events going on at the convention. It’s important to remind people that you will be there and where they can find you. Not only that, you’ll want to entice them to come to your booth to see new products, participate in giveaways, and take advantage of exclusive trade show offers. If your booth has an interesting element to it or if your company will be giving any presentations, you may want to mention that as well.

Include all your contact information and your booth location. You may also want to link back to your site so that if people become interested in visiting your booth, they can learn more about your brand.

A great plan of attack for pre-trade show emails is to create two to three you can send before an event. When will your target audience start to think about the upcoming show? When will they want to start planning their days? Target those times with emails answering all their questions.

Lure during the show

While a show is going on, most attendees have a ritual of checking their emails to plan for their day. Last minute meetings come up, changes to events happen. In between those emails, you should be reminding people that your booth should be on their list to visit.

Use these emails to define a sense of urgency. Perhaps these emails give them two entries into your booth’s giveaway, not just one. Making more interesting and compelling incentives is a major draw for emails sent during a convention.

After-show follow up

Once the booth has been taken down and everyone has gone home, it’s time to focus on not only your target audience but thanking the leads you made along the way. Create emails that target your audience and remind your show leads why they enjoyed their time with you. Be sure to personalize emails for new leads you’ve acquired. The more personal, the more likely they are to stay connected with your brand.

Other email tips

When creating your email marketing campaign for your trade show attendees, keep these good ideas in mind to cement better lead capture:

• Create engaging subject lines – All subject lines should have a great call to action about the subject of the email. Just stating your booth number for the show you’re at will not make someone check out your email. Personalize the subject line to your target audience, but be sure to include important information about the subject of your email.
• Constantly try new things – Once you’ve got your email addresses from your leads or your trade show, start testing out ideas and keeping track of which email ideas work and which ones don’t. Don’t get down on yourself if sending an email doesn’t work right away. Keep track of what really draws the attention of your audience and build off of that
• Link back to social media – It’s easy to use social icons in the header of your email and call it a day, but if you want your audience to continue to feel connected to your brand before or after a show, directly link to your socials with a call to action. Tell them what you’re doing on Instagram or have an event email that links back to Facebook to sign in. The more interesting the connection the better.

Use Email Marketing to Show Off the Best Booth

At Exhibit Pros, our goal is to create a booth you don’t have to worry about. We want to give you a booth that does what you need it for the best price, so you can worry about your leads and not your booth’s tear down. Contact us today and we can give you a free consultation for your large trade show booth. We’ll get your design done fast so you can concentrate on marketing your trade show.

It’s Time to Generate Your Best Trade Show Email Campaign