Form letters to Clients, Prospects and Suspects.
If you are going to invite your clients, prospects and suspects to visit you at your booth you have to contact these people. You need to write copy for regular (snail) mail, E-mail, and if you use it, FAX. Yes, there are phone calls involved as well
No one, especially business people today read long verbose documents, especially letters. Business people today, brained washed by the e-mail revolution expect to read curt, cryptic, bulleted items telling in as few words as possible what they are reading is all about.
Form letters need to be written in such a way so the person reading the letter can “Skim read” and still get the gist of what you want them to do.
E-mails are even briefer. The person reading the e-mail will first look at the Subject line. If the person who sent this e-mail did not articulate effectually what this e-mail is all about, there is a strong possibility that your e-mail will be deleted.
You have to have a plan in place in order to have a successful mailing campaign, which is part of your overall trade show marketing plan. This is true for regular mail and e-mail as well. The ideal way to approach this effort is to analyze, plan and anticipate what you will be doing before the trade show, then what needs to take place during and after the trade show. When I say during the trade show, some company are very organized and structured and with the latest CRM software in place that can be used effectively at a trade show. For example, at a trade show: An attendee come to your booth, the booth personnel qualifies this person, usually using a handheld device. When the qualification sequence is completed, the booth person sends the information to the company’s main computer. The computer enters all of the information into the database and sends either a letter, or an e-mail thanking the person for stopping by the booth. Depending on what the outcome of the qualification sequence will determine exactly what will be sent to the attendee either via e-mail or regular mail. This is all done before the attendee leaves the trade show. What usually happens by the time the attendee returns to his/her office. Either a letter, E-mail or both along with literature will be at their desk.
Very little literature is handed out at the trade show because the knowledgeable trade show exhibitor knows that most of the literature handed out at trade shows is thrown away before they return home, or to their offices. These are great marketing and sales tools, but they can be costly.
Your mailing program should include at least 3 to 6 variations of your basic letter, with certain changes that will still spark the readers’ interest. One client of mine had six letters that focused on one of the six products that were being presented at the trades show. It is not necessary to have multiple products in order to have 3 to 6 different letters. It is important that you develop your letters so that they will stimulate enough interest to insure that the reader will continue to read past the first sentence or first bullet. What you want to have happen is that they will become interested, and they will want to visit your booth. After you feel that you have generated sufficient interest you should consider what you will do after the trade show. The follow is the sequence that has worked for a number of my clients:
- Letters to your clients, prospect and suspects minimum 3, no more than 6.
- After the show letters to:
- Those that came to your booth
- Those that did not come to your booth
- Those who you made appointments to see
- Those that you contact to set up appointment at a latter date.
(Note) Letters, e-mails, Faxes would be treated the same.