by Melissa Ruisz Nazario
Gone are the days of collecting business cards in a fishbowl at events and trade shows. Savvy exhibitors now use lead retrieval, or lead capture, a method for collecting sales leads electronically on and off the show floor using an app that runs on their own smartphone or tablet.
How does it work?
Every attendee is required to wear a name badge while walking on the show floor, and it comes equipped with a QR code containing all of their contact and demographic information. Exhibitors using the lead capture app can scan the attendee’s QR code, giving them instant access to a wealth of data, including:
- That attendee’s name, email address, phone number, and job function
- Valuable demographic information, which may include buying authority and what products and services the attendee is interested in
- Company name, address, business sector, number of employees, and annual contract spend
The fortune is in the follow-up
Did you know that research shows that 50% of buyers choose the vendor who responds first?1 With a lead capture app like CompuLEAD, all of your scanned badge data gets saved to an organized, digital master lead list. This means your sales team can focus on being the first to follow up with hot leads from the show, instead of wasting time keying in contact information and piecing together notes.
Lead capture apps have become so sophisticated that they can now also perform additional functions, such as:
- Viewing full lead contact information in real time, so there’s no need to wait until the show is over to start calling on or marketing to prospective customers
- Sending electronic marketing literature, sell sheets, and videos to attendees directly from the app
- Qualifying leads by adding tags and notes about the type of lead, product interest, and what was discussed at the show, enabling a warmer, more personable follow-up call
- Conducting marketing research with survey questions
Not all lead capture is equal
It’s important to note that although there may be other QR code readers and third-party lead capture apps that can obtain a badge’s ID number and first and last name, in most cases only the official app, selected by show management, will give you the detailed contact, company, and demographic information we mentioned.
That is because the data is usually encrypted by the event registration provider, so you would need to purchase additional lead conversion software or APIs to unlock the rest of the lead information, if that is even available for the show. Oftentimes, this process ends up being more expensive and cumbersome than simply purchasing the show’s official lead capture app.
If given the choice between:
- Scrambling after the show to put together a call list for the sales team from scribbled notes and business cards, or
- Having all of your lead information and notes captured digitally in one, done-for-you organized list so your sales team can follow up as soon as the badge is scanned
Which exhibitor would you rather be?
We hope you found this information useful. If you have any questions or comments about this blog, please send us an email at marketing@csireg.com.
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