How To Build Efficient Trade Show Follow Up Emails

During a major Exhibition event like TOSSE, optimism and motivation are through the roof. You talk with lots of people, receive valuable feedback and hear promises of future orders.

But as the trade show ends and you return to your office, what happens?

On an average, it takes 5 working days to follow up on potential customers. . In many cases, there is no follow up at all and the business cards end up in a folder somewhere.

Exhibitions are resources consuming hence, it’s important to maximize gains immediately.

Follow up emails must start with instant follow up – the best way to do this to send a “thank you” message. Just after your discussion, send a short email with basic background information, making sure that your potential customers remember you.

Continue with thorough follow up – send in personalized messages that reminds them of your business and answers their business questions.

Make follow up emails Stand out – leaverage on the conversation you had with your potential customers in the stand, make them know you care.

Record Customer data using the right business tools – this simplifies you email dispatch and helps you understand the chronology of your data. There are various online tools like myfairtool.

All this process will succeed in helping you transition efficiently from trade show setting to daily business schedule and activities.

Related Post

Beyond Events – The Value of Leads

Exhibitions present opportunities for businesses to sell their products, get in the faces of prospective buyers/clients, and network with other competitors. The benefits of getting your business showcased at an exhibition cannot be overstated.

Rather than focus on only making physical sales, attention should also be given to getting leads for the future. In fact, the number of leads that are gained at an event or exhibition should be seen as a metric to measure the success of that outing. While immediate sales might boost business at that moment and possibly morale, it is these leads that will enable the business grow in the future. Therefore, this part of the exhibition should not be taken lightly.

Apply To Showcase Your Product/Service At Africa’s Biggest Education Trade Show And Conference 

Getting The Leads

People present at an exhibition are either business owners like you, or are (prospective) clients and customers. Identify the latter, that’s the group you are looking for. Most likely, the exhibition has a theme and so you do not really have to worry about trying to identify a particular set of prospective clients. For instance, if you’re part of an exhibition for Education, it is safe to say that most person’s that will be available there will be education-based to some extent, and your product should be relevant to most.

Attracting these leads is another thing. I’d like to break it down into two ways:

Direct marketing involves you walking up to prospective clients to begin a conversation. Advance preparation is required here to know exactly what to say and how to act. Note that it might not be necessary to put forth a business proposal at this stage, the main aim is to establish a relationship such that they are comfortable with you enough to engage in further conversation even after the event.

Dress the part, first impressions matter. Visual marketing requires that you set up an attractive booth that would draw people over. Some have found that using colourful banners, catchy copies and catchphrases, and side attractions draw the attention of the public.

Exhibit At TOSSE 2021

Remember the aim of the effort you’re putting in: to generate leads. Therefore, you would need to be able to get the contact information of these ones you meet. Have a viable system of doing this that would not be awkward or make them reconsider. Now you’ve got these leads, what next?

Following Up On Leads

This is the part that should eventually yield results: sales. This is also the tricky part. There are a few tips that can make this process go smoothly:

  1. Separate your leads. Not all contacts you make will require the same level of correspondence. Some might require immediate and constant communication while others might not need so much. Identify these early and strike as necessary so that you don’t get tagged as too pushy or too nonchalant.
  2. Get in contact early. You do not need to wait for too long to get in contact with these leads. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate call, as little as a “thank you” email or text message can do the trick. This will help impress you and your business in their minds.
  3. Personalise your correspondence. Include personal names of the recipients in emails and text messages. Don’t just push out these messages in bulk, it will sound faux and wouldn’t help boost your stock. For direct phone calls, sound friendly on the phone, and engage in conversation rather than giving mechanical responses read off a handbook.
  4. Be consistent. Sales are usually not made at the first contact. This is where consistency comes in. Make sure to always be in contact if you see the prospects of closing a sale on a lead, whether it immediate or not. Persistence would not mean “spamming” these leads as that would be counterproductive. Create a pattern that works.
  5. Know when to abandon a lost cause. Not all leads will become customers/clients. Identify this on time and save yourself a world of stress. To determine this, check for their ability to make a purchase, their motivation, and their level of influence if they stand as a representative for a business. If you determine that they would not be able to patronise you at the time, you’d be better served striking your blows elsewhere. This doesn’t mean you discard their contacts altogether however. Add it to your database of contacts, they might be customers for another product of yours.

Chasing and closing leads might be tedious, but it is usually worth the effort

 

uLesson logo

uLesson: Revolutionalizing the education sector

uLesson is an edtech startup that leverages best in class teachers, media, and technology to create high-quality, affordable and accessible education for African students.

Founded by Sim Shagaya in 2019, uLesson is now regarded as a leader in the African home-tutoring business. uLesson is available in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Sim Shagaya, uLesson founder

The uLesson app has more than 2 million downloads, with more than 12.3 million videos watched and 25.6 million questions answered on the platform.

The edtech startup is focused on delivering affordable, high-quality and accessible education using technology. Speaking in 2021, Sim Shagaya stated how the startup is deliberately looking to design products that will meet the demanded needs of users across Africa.

uLesson is viewed as the startup aimed at revolutionalising the education sector in Nigeria and Africa as a continent.

The platform currently combines the possibility to stream its classes in-app with the choice to receive those lessons on SD cards. This dual option is one big solution to the problem of frequently-unstable and comparatively costly data packages which parents usually complain of.

uLesson helps lower class African parents access world-class curriculum-based schooling that could either work alongside the day school or totally become the tutor to prepare their children for top-level exams.

Looking to gain more ground, The edtech startup has partnered with the organizers of Africa’s biggest education show, TOSSE to be the headline sponsor of the 14th edition of the event holding in September 2022.

How NewGlobe is transforming education systems in Nigeria

NewGlobe was founded in 2007 and opened its first station in Kenya in 2009, opening community schools in the majority of Kenya’s counties, and becoming recognized globally for the Bridge International Academies model.

In 2015, NewGlobe expanded its community school Bridge programming into new territories – Uganda and Nigeria.

NewGlobe Education has been on a journey from proof-of-concept community school programs, to participating in national multi-partner public-private partnerships, acting as technical service delivery partners to statewide programs at scale, and ultimately supporting national government transformation programs.

NewGlobe has supported urgent education transformation for well over a decade. Its broad portfolio of programmes span Africa and Asia. Its model provides a turnkey end to end solution using cloud based technology and advanced pedagogical research that drives rapid improvements across entire education systems, dramatically improving learning outcomes for all students.

A decade of national exam results; independent studies and randomized control trials have proven the efficacy of an approach focussed on improving the development path of communities, states and nations.

NewGlobe has been keen on transforming education systems in Nigeria and have made giant strides in transforming community education across some Nigerian states.

NewGlobe’s achievements in Nigeria

  • In 2017, NewGlobe began a four-year pilot program with the Borno state government; supporting education for internationally displaced persons; and out-of-school children.
  • In 2018, NewGlobe started working at a statewide level in Nigeria; as the only technical partner to EdoBEST, a full-scale government transformation program in Edo State.
  • In 2019, following the transformational success of its inaugural statewide program EdoBEST, NewGlobe took on a second statewide level partnership in Nigeria, supporting the Lagos State Government’s EKOEXCEL program.
  • In 2022, NewGlobe added support of an additional Nigerian statewide transformation program to its portfolio, the KwaraLEARN program in Kwara State.
  • The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID)  contracted NewGlobe—as part of the Developing Effective Private Education Nigeria (DEEPEN) programme—to open new community schools in Lagos and help address the shortage of quality education provision in the area for low income families.

To further deepen its work in the Nigerian education system, NewGlobe are partnering with the organizer’s of Africa’s biggest education sector, TOSSE to showcase its mission in Nigeria.