One of the main benefits of events like conferences, expos, and tradeshows is to provide networking opportunities between participants like attendees and exhibitors. In this article, we'll discuss how you can build a successful lead-capture strategy for your event and your attendees.
Why capture leads?
Your exhibitors will often need to capture contact information from attendees for a variety of reasons, including:
Lead Generation: Exhibitors can use the captured contact information to generate leads and build a list of potential customers. This information can then be used to follow up with attendees after the event to offer additional information or to promote their products and services.
Networking: By capturing attendee contact information, exhibitors can expand their professional network and connect with individuals who may be interested in their products and services.
Data Collection: Exhibitors can use the captured contact information to gather data about the attendees, such as their job title, company name, and areas of interest. This information can be used to better understand their target audience and to tailor their marketing efforts to specific groups.
Customer Engagement: By capturing attendee contact information, exhibitors can engage with attendees in a more meaningful way, such as by sending them follow-up emails or personalizing their interactions based on their interests.
Lead Nurturing: Exhibitors can use the captured contact information to nurture leads by providing them with relevant information, offers, and updates about their products and services. This can help to build stronger relationships with attendees and increase the likelihood of converting them into customers.
Capturing contact information from event attendees provides exhibitors with valuable opportunities to build relationships, generate leads, and grow their businesses.
Designing a successful lead capture strategy
Designing an effective lead capture strategy for an event means considering the perspectives of all stakeholders involved, including the event organizer, exhibitor, and attendee.
From the event organizer's perspective, considerations include:
Technology Integration: The event organizer should determine what technology solutions are needed to support their lead capture strategy, such as QR code scanning apps or lead capture forms. These days, exhibitors generally prefer to bring their own lead-capture solution to use while on-site at your event. It's important to ensure you communicate your lead capture strategy with your exhibitors early to allow them to test or prepare their lead capture solution to work with your lead capture strategy. For example, if you plan to embed QR codes with vCard contact details on your attendee badges, be sure to communicate this early to your attendees and exhibitors.
Lead Generation Goals: The event organizer should determine their goals for lead generation and the types of information they need to collect from attendees in order to achieve those goals.
Data Privacy: The event organizer should ensure that they are complying with all data privacy regulations and that they have obtained the necessary permissions from attendees to collect and use their personal information. This may often involve updating your event's privacy terms and ensuring that your attendees agree to your event's privacy terms (possibly by adding a checkbox on your attendee registration form).
From the exhibitor's perspective, considerations include:
Technology Integration: Many exhibitors will bring their own lead capture solution that is integrated into their sales tools and pipeline. It will be important to consider how the event will enable lead capture for these types of exhibitors.
Target Audience: The exhibitor should determine their target audience and tailor their lead capture efforts accordingly.
Lead Qualification: The exhibitor should have a process in place to qualify leads and determine which attendees are most likely to be interested in their products or services.
Lead Nurturing: The exhibitor should have a plan for following up with leads after the event to keep them engaged and to continue building relationships.
From the attendee's perspective, considerations include:
Relevance: The attendee should only be asked to provide their personal information if they believe that it will be relevant and valuable to them.
User Experience: The attendee should have a positive experience with the lead capture process and should not feel like they are being bombarded with too many requests for their personal information.
Data Privacy: The attendee should be informed about how their personal information will be used and should be given the option to opt-out of any lead capture efforts.
Designing an effective lead capture strategy for an event requires considering the perspectives of all stakeholders and balancing the needs of the event organizer, exhibitor, and attendee. By considering these factors, you can create a lead capture strategy that is effective, compliant with data privacy regulations, and provides a positive user experience for all involved.
How to capture leads
There are two common approaches to capturing lead contact data:
Embed attendee contact details in a QR Code
One of the simplest ways to enable lead capture for your participants is to display a QR code containing attendee contact details on your attendee badges. Exhibitors or other attendees can then scan these QR codes to automatically capture contact details using their mobile devices.
ClearEvent's registration system is capable of capturing all the contact details needed by any third-party badge-creation software system to create QR codes with embedded contact data. Using ClearEvent's registrant export features, you can easily export all registrant details needed to create your attendee badges and embed the necessary QR code containing their contact details.
The most popular format to embed contact details in a QR Code is by adding a vCard to your QR Code.
What is a vCard?
vCard is a file format standard for electronic business cards that is widely used for exchanging contact information. The vCard format stores information such as the individual's name, company name, job title, email address, phone number, and physical address in a standardized way.
When vCard information is encoded into a QR code, the QR code becomes a digital representation of the individual's business card. When scanned using a QR code reader app, such as BadgerScan, the app can extract the vCard information from the QR code and store it in the app or the device's contacts.
By using a QR code to store vCard information, individuals can easily share their contact information with others without the need for manual entry. This makes it a convenient and efficient way to exchange contact information, especially at events where attendees are meeting new people and exchanging business cards.
In summary, vCard is a file format for storing contact information, and QR codes provide a convenient way to exchange that information by encoding it into a scannable format. When used together and displayed on an attendee's event badge, QR codes and vCard provide a simple and effective way to exchange contact information quickly and easily.
Embed a link to a lead capture form in the QR Code
Another popular approach is to simply embed unique lead capture web form links in your QR Codes.
Here's how this approach can work:
The link embedded in the QR code can be created to pass the attendee's contact details and auto-fill the lead-capture form. For example:
https://example.com/your-lead-capture-form/?firstname=John&lastname=Doe&phone=555555555&email=jdoe@example.comWhen a QR code containing an embedded link is scanned, a lead capture web form will be opened using the device's web browser and then auto-filled with the attendee's contact details.
Additional details, such as attendee category, interests, or conversation notes can be added before the lead capture form is submitted.
Once submitted, the lead-capture form can save this information to a database or sales CRM.
There are many ways to build a lead capture form:
Use an online form builder like Google Forms, Survey Monkey, etc.
Use a form builder integrated with a sales CRM tool.
Use a custom-built web form.
Recommended Lead Capture Apps
To scan and manage contact details, you'll need a mobile device and an app that can scan QR codes and save contact details.
Due to the wide variety of lead capture needs across event types, ClearEvent does not currently offer lead capture tools. However, there are many great third-party lead capture apps available that are capable of scanning QR codes to capture contact details. Here are a few common apps to consider:
Use your device's built-in camera app
Most modern devices, like iPhones, offer built-in camera features to scan a QR code. If the QR code contains contact details (embedded using the vCard standard), you'll be automatically prompted to add it to your phone's Contact list. This simple approach requires no special software or extra costs and works well for simple lead-capture scenarios.
Use a purpose-built lead capture app
There are many popular third-party apps that provide additional capabilities for capturing lead contact details. Extra features may include exporting a list of captured contacts to a spreadsheet, automatically sending captured lead data to a sales CRM system or database, or redirecting to a survey to collect additional details from a lead.
Some common third-party lead capture apps:
BadgerScan (Free)
Scan contact details from QR codes. Integrate custom surveys after scanning. Best for small events and businesses with simple lead capture workflows.CamCard (Paid)
Scan contact details from QR codes and business cards. Offers integration into popular Sales CRMs.iCapture (Paid)
Scan contact details from QR codes and business cards. Offers integration into popular Sales CRMs. Best for larger events and businesses with more sophisticated lead capture workflows.
Still have questions about lead capture at your event? Chat with a ClearEvent event expert for help!