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How To Leverage Your Email Campaign With A Trade Show!

I used a combination of an email campaign and attendance at a
Trade Show recently to get a 14.8% success rate for a client.

Here's how it happened.

The Trade Show
--------------

I attended a major trade show recently, the International
Online Show in London. I wanted to follow up a very
successful email campaign I had put together for a client.

The client is an information consultancy, who wanted to
extend their operations by obtaining a small number of
representation agreements in Scandinavia.

The Online Show, a Business to Business show held in
December, focuses on Online Information and the Internet.

It consists of meetings and seminars, together with an
exhibition which brings together the major information
suppliers from around the World - online hosts, major
publishers, software houses, a few ISPs, and so on.

The Show visitors are information users - 20,000 or so
information professionals, librarians, end users,
consultants, academics and students - from all over the
World.

It's an event where the exhibitors are keen to show their
latest product offerings, to meet customers and to
investigate the possibilities of forging new deals.

I wanted to use the Show as a way of meeting several
companies on one trip, and in one place. The alternative
would have been a number of expensive trips to several parts
of Europe and the USA.

The Email Campaign
-------------------

First, we sent out a mailing shot, by e-mail, to 54
companies , who we thought would be interested in being
represented in Scandinavia.

8 organisations responded to the mailing, all of whom wanted
to meet at the Show. That's a response rate of 14.8% - a
great performance.

8 meetings were held, all of which were followed by offers
of representation agreements.

The client is now following up with the offers of most
interest.

-------------------------------------------------
So, why was this specific campaign so successful?
Here are some of the reasons:
-------------------------------------------------

1)HIGHLY TARGETED
The campaign was highly targeted - at just 54 companies,
from the USA and other parts of Europe, who we knew were not
represented in Scandinavia.

2)SPECIFIC EVENT
It was aimed at a particular event, the International
Online Show, where we knew a number of relevant prospects
would be attending.

3)SOMETHING VALUABLE TO OFFER
It was aimed at companies who had an interest in selling
online information services to the business and academic
sectors, where my client had a wide range of existing
contacts.

4)GOOD TIMING
The timing was good - it was sent out in the week before
the Show, when the exhibitors were absolutely focused on
what they wanted to get out of the Show.

5)MANAGEABLE FOLLOW UP
The number of companies approached was a manageable
number, and resulted in a number of successful responses,
which could all be followed up in the 3 day duration of the
Show.

6)REASON TO SAY "YES"
The two step approach - a mailing, followed up with a
meeting at a venue they were definitely going to attend,
made it easier for them to say "yes" to a meeting.

7)DEMONSTRATION OF CREDIBILITY
The subsequent meeting was an opportunity to demonstrate
credibility and confidence in the client's ability to
deliver the desired result - new business from Scandinavian
customers.

8)POWERFUL SALES LETTER
And the Sales letter was a powerful invitation from an
organisation with access to a customer base that each of the
companies would like to reach, without them having to devote
expensive resources to starting from scratch.

It needed to be good. It was being aimed at business
professionals, who are notoriously difficult to persuade.

You can see it here at http://www.informationcity.com

I highly recommend this combination of trade show and email
campaign. With a little thought, I'm sure many of you can
mould such a strategy to your own business circumstances.

About the Author

Stuart Urwin is a business and internet consultant. He is
also the publisher of "Information City", the FREE
electronic newsletter, which gives specific pointers to the
Internet resources you need to make better business
decisions every day: Grow your company. Sell more. Save
money. Manage your business more effectively.
http://www.informationcity.com
To contact Stuart, mailto:stuarturwin@informationcity.com

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