Trade Show promotion via E-Blasts and E-Newsletters, Post #4
Ted
in Marketing Management, Trade Show Marketing, Trade Show Planning, Trade Shows
Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes
This is the fourth post in a series on getting the most out of your trade show participation (trade show ROI). If you want to subscribe to my blog, you can chose either an RSS feed or an email subscription. Also, comments and input are appreciated!!
E-Blasts and E-Newsletters – I like E-Blasts and E-Newsletters as a form of pre-show advertising for small companies. They are very economical and effective tactics. You get statistics on how people respond to your effort via click-thru data to your website. And, you can get actionable leads before the show even starts. Print ads don’t give you this kind of immediate feedback.
- An E-Newsletter is usually sent to your in-house email list of customers and prospects.
- E-Blasts for the purpose of our discussion are ads deployed through email via the email list of a medical publisher or marketing company.
Guidance on E-Blasts:
- Advertise early – deploy your E-Blasts before the bolus of large company E-Blasts.
- Use crystal clear and compelling subject lines to motivate the readers to open the E-Blast.
- Utilize medical media in your respective market to deploy your E-Blast. Most surgical publications have an on-line presence and an E-Blast deployment service. Doctors will see that the E-Blast came from XYZ Surgical Publication and will trust that they can open it. Also, if they have opted in to this publication, the E-Blast won’t go into their spam folder. Don’t use marketing list companies for your E-Blasts.
- Repeat the E-Blast – Repetition is done in advertising for a reason. It works. You may not be able to afford 15 E-Blasts leading up to a show, but try for 3 or 4. They should be just a few days apart.
- Correct formatting of content – make sure that the value proposition (offer) is at the top of the E-Blast so it is easily seen by the reader.
- Have a button that leads to a landing page where the reader can fill in a request for information or a quote.
- Always have your exhibit number!
Guidance on E-Newsletters:
- Use an Email marketing service like Constant Contact® or iContact®. They are very inexpensive. They offer clean professional templates you can use. They give you reports on your results. And, they manage the legal stuff like readers that want to unsubscribe.
- It is OK to start small!! If you only have 20 email addresses, start a newsletter! Newsletter content should always be of value to the reader.
- Be consistent. Send out an E-Newsletter no less than once per quarter.
- Include an “Event” section that details the congresses and trade shows you will be attending with exhibit numbers.
- An E-Newsletter isn’t rocket science. Keep it basic and interesting. Toss a little humanity in for good measure. Don’t worry, you aren’t competing with the New York Times.
In a future blog post, I will go into a lot more detail about E-Blasts and E-Newsletters. In the meantime, this guidance will help you and your marketing team move forward to promote your trade show efforts.
