How to Follow Up After a Trade Show

You made it through your trade show — congratulations! You likely met a lot of promising leads, learned a lot of new information, and, hopefully, had a great time. As exhausted as you may be when a trade show ends, it’s important to use the time immediately following the show to get the most benefit from the experience. Follow these best practices in order to optimize your success after a trade show.

Curate your leads

Considering how many leads you likely gathered at the show, it’s important to curate your list of leads as soon as the show ends to determine which ones you want to follow up with. Keep in mind that buyers will be inundated with messages from other suppliers following up after the trade show, so you don’t necessarily want to reach out to any and all leads you gathered — at least, not right away. Pick the leads who you think have the greatest chance of success, based on buyers you had particular interest from, those you were already in contact with before the show, and those who you felt especially connected to.

This doesn’t mean that you have to scrap your less promising or pressing leads, though. Instead, organize your leads by urgency. Very hot leads should be followed up with immediately, while colder leads don’t require immediate attention. Use this information to create a follow-up plan for yourself or your sales team, with the most promising leads getting followed up with first, and then subsequent leads proceeding down the list in order of importance.

Target and personalize your outreach

Once you have curated your leads and have a follow-up plan in place, you then need to make sure your communications are as targeted as possible. Because buyers will be getting so many messages, it’s important to make your brand stand out, so you don’t get lost in a sea of post-show communications. This doesn’t mean you should feel defeated — instead, think of this as a great opportunity to get creative and showcase what makes your brand special!

Do not send the same standard message to all of your leads. Try to personalize your messages as much as possible using information you know about the buyer or the company, especially any information that you learned while at the show. Reference your notes from the show to see if a buyer expressed particular interest in a certain product that you can then reference in your message.

To avoid getting overwhelmed by the amount of follow-up you have to tackle, consider inviting your sales manager or other teammates to RangeMe to assist in your communications. Learn more about Team Access here.

Track your communications

Be sure to Share your RangeMe profile in your follow-up communications to help your brand stand out even more. This will allow buyers to conveniently view all of your products and any relevant information from one place.

Create a custom Sharing link with the name of the trade show that you embed in your follow up emails.This link will take buyers directly to your RangeMe profile, so make sure your page is in tip-top shape before you Share!

After Sharing your RangeMe profile, you can then take advantage of Sharing Insights, our Premium feature that lets you track the activity of your shares. This will allow you to analyze buyer engagement with your RangeMe profile and better understand their activity. You can then use that information to target any further messages you send to those buyers, based on how they’re interacting with your profile and products.

If you want access to RangeMe Premium features like Sharing Insights and Team Access, you can learn more about upgrading here.

Consider your submissions

If a retailer you met at the show is accepting submissions on RangeMe, try to strategically time your submission to them for just after the trade show. This will make the buyer more likely to notice your submission and be compelled by your products, because you will be fresh in their mind.

Evaluate your success

After the trade show wraps up, set aside some time to evaluate how successful the show was for your business. Think back to the goals you set before the show, and determine whether they were met. If they were, think about what you and your team did well that helped you succeed. Make note of what practices worked particularly well, so you can be sure to follow them at future shows. If your goals were not met, think about what prevented you from fully succeeding. What can you improve upon next time?

Use these general questions as a guide when evaluating your success:

• Was the show worth the cost?
• Which team members excelled, and why?
• Which team members struggled, and why?
• How effective were your pre-show communications?
• How successful were your displays, samples, and presentations?
• How did your brand compare to competitors at the show?

Follow these post-trade show tips to effectively curate your leads, stand out when communicating with buyers, and determine your success after the show. With these best practices in mind, you’ll be able to make the most of any trade show experience!