You’ve been to a trade fair or other industry event and now you are back in the office. You’d like to write a follow-up email to the prospects you met at the event. Instead of spending ages trying to create a polished and professional email, simply copy and paste one of these templates. First some basic rules:  

Timing

A few years ago, Salesforce found that around 80% of exhibitors don’t follow up on their leads! That’s crazy, right?

Don’t leave it too late to send your emails. Yes, you’ve got a lot of work to catch up on – but so do your competitors. You’ve probably spent a considerable amount of money on attending the event. Don’t waste it by taking too long to get in touch with the valuable prospects you met there!

Prepare your email in advance

We all know what happens after an event. You get home to an overflowing inbox, you’re pulled into dozens of meetings, and you are trying to catch up on all you missed. That’s why the best tip is to prepare your email – or even better, an email series – before you go to the event.

Personalise your follow-up

After the first day of these busy events, you might find it difficult to remember who exactly you spoke to and about what.  Take a few notes after speaking to each prospect, and write down what you talked about and the next steps agreed upon. In your first email, mention what you talked about to remind the prospect who you are, and provide concrete information on how your product or service resolves their painpoints.

Provide value 

Give your prospect a reason to get in touch with you. Send them an invite to try out your software, or a white paper that helps them with a business problem. Reference your discussions about that issue in your email. Make the prospect feel that you and your company don’t just want to sell them something. You genuinely want to help them.

Don’t forget a Call to Action

‘It was great meeting you. Here’s some information about our company and our products. Get in touch if you want to find out more’.

Has anyone ever made a sale from a pitch like this one? Probably not. What was the next step that you agreed on with the prospect? Follow up on that. Propose a meeting, suggest a phone call, or invite the prospect to a webinar. 

Keep in touch

People often use trade fairs to research options for a new software, product, or service. They might be right at the beginning of their search, and not ready to make a decision. An email nurturing series can help provide ‘nuggets’ of information over a period of weeks or even months.

Your email nurturing series should be written before the event, ready to be sent out to all the people you met there. 

Template Messe Follow-up Englisch #1

This is for cooler leads – you’ve made a note that they were interested but uncommitted. Or they told you directly that they aren’t planning on making a purchase in the near future. Here we’ve referred back to the conversation at the event and provided value to the prospect with a video and an invitation to try out the product.

Mustervorlage Messe Follow-up Englisch #2

This prospect was a lot more interested in your product or signalled that they’d like to move forward in the coming weeks and months. Your CTA is more direct. Just be careful to take a note of the proposed meeting time in your calendar and set a reminder to follow up if the prospect hasn’t responded in a couple of days.