Email Advertising Techniques to Leverage Your Trade Show Investment

Even though it’s 2013 and people have been predicting its demise for a decade, email continues to be one of the mainstays of electronic communications, especially among businesses. However, as new technologies continue to come out faster than we can adopt them, it’s easy for boring old email to get lost in the marketing shuffle when you’re looking to promote upcoming trade show appearances.

So, let’s talk a bit about how to use email to push your next trade show appearance!

So, why is email still so useful for getting people to visit your expo displays? Here are just a few reasons:

• It’s long-form. Social media may be trending towards ever-shorter and more compact data transmission, but there comes a point in which people still need context. This is a great place to explain the “big ideas” and new products being promoted in your expo displays. Just remember to include a clear summary as well, for those who don’t have time to read it all now. (TL;DR)
• It supports plenty of formatting. You can pretty much cram a full DOC file into an email if you want, complete with fonts, headers, columns, graphics, and more. Granted, such formatting takes awhile, but if you want to create a fancier email, it’s entirely possible. And it’s still virtually free, especially given that you can send the same fancy PDF to LOTS of different people.

I: If you’re sending out to people on your established leads list, personalize the message as much as possible.

If you, hypothetically, had 1000 leads, you might consider segmenting those into four or five different demographic markets, around 200-250 people each, and craft a different email for each group more closely tailored to their individual needs.

II: Regardless of who you’re reaching out to, such as interested media or blogger profiles, focus on what they get out of it.

Some level of wining and dining is acceptable, but especially with bloggers, quid-pro-quo is right out. You’re paying for dinner out of the kindness of your heart, sorry.  Any pressure on them to provide positive coverage will almost certainly backfire.

No, really, then it’s just spam. Rope them in via your social media marketing and calls-to-action on your website. Don’t use email to contact someone until they have explicitly given you permission to use their email, such as trading it on a landing page for a free download.

Trade Show Supplies

If you’re looking for inspiration or additional training on email marketing, Marketing Sherpa and the Hubspot blog are both excellent resources to check out. Focus on crafting your messages to appeal to individuals and get them excited about your next expo appearance! Send people emails that they want to read, and they will.