How To Get Email Subscribers At Industry Conferences (Live Events)

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When businesses think of generating larger email lists they often think of online landing pages, social media, links at the bottom of a website – anything to do with online activity. Many business owners forget to include their offline activities as part of their strategy for increasing their mailing list.

Offline activities can be rather productive. There is nothing more persuasive than face to face contact and Industry Conferences are a perfect place to pitch the reasons why people should be signing up to your mailing list.

Here are some of the methods which you can use to increase the number of subscribers to your mailing list with their advantages and disadvantages.

Hand Out Business Cards With An Invitation To Join

This is probably one of the simplest methods in which to encourage users to sign up to your mailing list. Having a stylish business card with a link to a landing page can give a physical reminder for contacts to sign up, but it might not be the best method.

Advantages:

• Easy to implement.
• Physical reminder to sign up.
• Relatively low cost (business cards should be a must for your business).

Disadvantages

• Business cards can be thrown away, lost or forgotten.
• Lack of personal persuasion can limit uptake.
• The card doesn’t include reasons to sign up to your mailing list.

Taking Names And Addresses On A Form To Add Yourself

This is all about the people who walk around a room at a conference and personally speak to their potential contacts taking details of their email addresses to sign up for their newsletter. This can yield large numbers of names and addresses. One of the important issues of this method is that you need to send an email to those who do subscribe this way to say how nice it was to meet them at the event and thank them for signing up to the newsletter.

Advantages:

• Personal contact with a good sales speech can yield high numbers.
• Low cost method.
• Gives a personal image to the brand.

Disadvantages:

• Time consuming entering the information yourself.
• Not sending a confirmation / thank you email can mean your subscribers will unsubscribe quickly or report you as spam.
• Incorrect details may be given / entered, creating problems with your mailing campaigns.

Encouraging People To Sign Up On The Day With The Use Of A Mobile Site / App

Many of those who attend conferences or events are likely to carry with them an internet ready phone. You can use this to your advantage by encouraging users to log into your website while at the event and sign up directly through a custom made app or mobile website.

You could make this request while you are giving a speech, at a time when people can discreetly choose whether or not to take you up on that offer. If you are only attending the event and not a speaker, you can still inform people about the easy way to subscribe and perhaps give them some support in doing so.

Advantages:

• High subscriber retention.
• Time efficient.
• You can go home to see the results instantly.

Disadvantages:

• Development of app / mobile website could be expensive.
• Low uptake.
• Relies on others having the right technology to sign up.

Whichever method you choose, there is also the main problem: how to persuade those you speak to sign up. The answer is the same as you would do online. You need to sell the benefits of being part of your mailing list, what they will receive and how it will add value to their lives / business.

If you can give solid reasons why they should be part of your mailing list, then there is nothing stopping you from generating a longer list.

Take Action:

• Implement one or two of the above methods next time you are at an industry conference / live event.
• Let us know how effective the methods were.

Tagged in: email list, email lists, email marketing, Opt-ins, Subscribers