Recently while in attendance at Ad:Tech in San Francisco I was amazed the people staffing booths that could not sell their own products. Often I found myself determining how their services could help the business I work for rather than being offered suggestions. It is true that trade shows can be exhaustive, but it’s important you know your product and you know your service. You also need to reflect a high level of energy in order to excite those prospects that are interested in your products and/or services.

If you stayed out too late at an event party you better still have that bounce in your step and leave those hungover eyes in the hotel room. If i’ve paid to attend a trade show and I’ve taken time out of my day to stand and listen to your pitch; don’t make me feel as if I’m disturbing your afternoon nap.

Your booth is reflective of the image and the energy that your company possesses — are you staffing your booth correctly?

About a month in a half ago I attended the Affiliate Summit conference in Las Vegas. It was a productive conference filled with many attendees. The company I worked for had a booth. We did the meet and greet thing and collected many business cards from potential prospects.

It is now nearly the middle of March and I am still on the receiving end of follow-up emails. Today was no different except when I received the follow-up email from a marketing intelligence company, I cringed. Why?

The email had no salutation — it simply stated “Hello,“
The To: field had the senders name not mine.
The ending call to action was: “Please get in touch when you can.”

Let me just say:

Dear Email Sender,

You lost me at Hello! You in no way personalilzed your follow-up with me and by the sight of the To: address I know this was a mass email. I’m all about saving time, but not at the stake of losing a potential client or business partner.

Your call to action left me yawning and I won’t be getting in touch any time soon, because you lost my interest in your poor follow-up.

Please Mr. Marketing Intelligence — do a little research on the techniques in tradeshow follow-up and learn the basics. You will find that you will get much greater results by making me feel special and in some way helping me to remember who you are. Did we discuss something? Would you stand out to me in any way? Did you visit me at my booth or did we have a drink at one of the evening functions? Perhaps you were that guy with the red hair and funny hat?

You’ve lost my interest and unfortuantely you probably lost the interest of 75% of the other recipients of this quick designed follow-up email. It truly wasn’t worth what little time you put into it or the time I took to read it.

Sincerely,

L2