There is a lot that prompt and regular follow-ups can achieve. A timely follow-up can lead to closing deals and forging new relationships that otherwise may never have been pursued. Yet, most don’t like to do follow-ups, or simply aren’t able to. The resistance is because some find it boring and some find it terrifying. This is where sales teams and individual reps need to be taught and be told the importance of follow-ups.
Reasons Why Follow-up is Important
Emails Get Lost
If you think you will come across as being pushy when you follow-up with your leads, then think again. In fact, the truth is that many times the email that you send:
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- Gets lost amidst other important mails
- Goes unanswered due to paucity of time
- Goes into the spam folder
- Is forgotten about because the prospect was busy traveling or managing other important deadlines
Researches show that it takes 8-10 nudges across channels, in a B2B scenario, to get a prospect’s response. This is where your follow-up matters. It shows your prospects how interested you are in continuing a dialogue, and also reminds them of your brand. If you are a good orator, it is likely that a single follow-up might even help you close a new deal if they need a solution urgently, and yours fits in. Whether the outcome is an immediate sale, or a promising prospect, it’s certainly worth the time and effort.
Prospects Like to be Nurtured to See Value
It is not enough to just collect the contact information of leads from various events. You need to be in touch with them and make them feel appreciated.
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- Sometimes a prospect will remember about your product and yet not purchase it. Studies have revealed that usually, an individual needs to hear from the vendor at least seven times before he decides to buy the product. So, if you send an email only once, it will not give you a new client. Consistent follow-ups, without appearing to be too clingy or even trying to over-sale the product, is what will help you to get the deal.
- Even if they don’t purchase your product, if you make them feel valuable, there is always the chance that they will come to your brand when they want to buy the product. You can do this by offering them discounts with your follow-up emails or even by sending them small souvenirs for attending your event
Helps to Improve Before the Next Event
Follow-ups are a brilliant way of finding out what the attendees felt about your event and how you can improve for the next one. Getting feedback, however, is not an easy task. Most want to enjoy an event but not send a revert on it. Here are some ways you can get a response from the attendees.
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- Send clear and focused questions – multiple choice questions work well as they are the easiest to answer. Avoid asking questions where they need to write a lot. With online chatting being a popular mode of communication, you can also send your feedback questions over chat. For this, you can have chatbots who will do the work for you.
- If your event had an issue, accept it and ask them questions on it. For example, if there was a technical glitch, ask the attendees how they feel you can avoid it the next time. Getting frank and asking for pointed feedback makes the participants feel that their opinions are important.
- Gives incentives for participating in the survey. For example, you can give free coupons or give one lucky winner a couple’s dinner.
Gives a Chance to Thank Everyone
If people did not show up for the event that you were hosting or attending, then your event would not be a success. It is thus the guests who purchased the tickets and came to the show that resulted in the success. Hence, you need to reach out to them and thank them – follow-up is not always about sealing a deal. You can do this by following some of these tips:
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- Once you have got your prospects’ contact information, you should follow-up right after the event. If you used ScanBizCards, the best business card scanner app, to scan the contact information from all business cards, and uploaded your leads into the CRM, now is the time to send everyone in your contact list a thank-you email. To this email, you can add information about any forthcoming event or even a link to a page where you upload all photos of the event.
- For speakers, sponsors, and vendors, make the thank-you a little more personal by sending them a gift.
- Reach out to all, in general, on social media. If you are using Twitter, then use a hashtag that will start trending once attendees start responding and retweeting.
Keeps the Buzz Alive After the Event
No host would like people to stop talking about the event soon after it is over. The longer the buzz stays – the more publicity for the brand he will be generating. The more you follow-up with people online, the more they will share their impressions about the event as well. This will get more people talking about the show. You can also thank the guests and hold online contests to keep the buzz alive. If you notice some attendees sharing positive feedback online, you can reach out to them and ask them to give formal feedback. All this will help you build on the audience for your next event.
Find the Right Target Audience
It is likely that you collected a huge number of leads during the event. With a business card scanner app like ScanBizCards, getting all contact information to the database becomes a simple task for you. With the first critical step done, what comes after that is key to winning more business. Once you start your follow-ups and start receiving responses, you will be able to figure out who your ICP or ‘ideal customer profile’ is.
Profiling such people from the list is important because then, in your next event, you will be able to get the right target audience for yourself.
Tips to Make the Maximum Impact with Follow-ups
Follow-Up should be Timely
After you have generated all your leads and have a ready file with their details, you cannot waste time before you send them the follow-up mail. If they are important leads the email needs to be sent within a day and for the rest within 48 hours. After the first follow-up email has been sent, you need to strategize when you will be next reaching out to them. For this, timing is the key as else all your emails will get ignored, will go into spam, or will lead to irritation when they begin to overcrowd their inbox. Remember that both consistency and regularity are the keys here.
Plan Your Follow-up In Advance
You cannot sit and wonder how you will follow-up after your event is over. Follow-ups need to be planned and strategized ahead of the event. It is an important part of any event marketing plan. If you keep it for the last minute you will do a sloppy job and lose all your prospects. Here are some of the things that you need to prepare from before:
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- The email that you will send to your contacts
- The schedule of your follow-ups
- The material that you will be sharing post your first follow-up
- How you will try to reach out to those who don’t respond to your emails even after you have tried 5-6 times
Follow-Ups Need to Have Good Content
You cannot send follow-up emails that only request the prospects to buy your product! Each of your follow-up emails must have good content in them. Remember to add your photo, your company’s logo, and some important photos from the event in the introductory email.
Here are some more ideas of what your follow-up emails can contain:
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- Links to blog posts that you have published on your website
- An analysis of the emerging trends of the market that you operate in
- Fun pictures of various events you are holding in office or pictures from events
- Offers, discounts, and freebies that they can avail of
- General advisory if any issue is affecting your geographical region
- About the new features that have been added to your product or news if you are soon going to be launching a new product
Use Different Mediums to Follow-Up
Follow-ups need not always be via emails.
- You can send them SMS or make phone calls.
- Nowadays groups are also being created on Whatsapp to keep in touch with leads.
- You can organize for an after-party a few weeks after the event to celebrate your success and invite all the important leads that you generated on the event day.
You need to experiment with different mediums and keep a note of which method is working best with which contact.
Follow-ups need Segmentation
Every contact on your list should not be sent the same follow-up email.
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- Go through the list that you generated using the free business card scanner app, ScanBizCards, and segment them based on different parameters like age, professions, geography, and others. In a B2B scenario, use key attributes such as firmographics, technographics and intent data to do your segmentation. Once they have been divided into different groups, send separate emails to these groups. This will make your message more relevant and will engage the guests.
- When the emails are being sent to important leads, make them more personal. Refer to the notes that you took for this purpose. The business card reader app, ScanBizCards, lets you add personal notes for each contact. If required, do some more research on them before sending such emails.
Final Thoughts
The ultimate goal of a post event or meeting follow-up is to turn a prospect into a customer and increase the sales and the revenue of your business. This becomes possible only when then the lead begins to trust you and feels appreciated. Hence the need for regular, consistent, and genuine follow-ups. Try the aforementioned tips and you should be able to get your prospect to sign on the dotted line soon.