Now that you have your release form and email marketing set up, you can use this to protect yourself, and to create sales and marketing opportunities.
The benefit of adding these new email addresses to your email marketing list is that you can create secondary touch-points with the people you meet. While we recommend keeping requests to a minimum, this is a great opportunity to close the loop on your interaction with the individuals you’ve met. Here are some ideas for what to include in your first email to them.
Say Thank You. Thank them for providing you with their contact information and for taking the time to say hello.
Give them something of value. Offer the people that you have added to your email list a coupon, voucher, discount code, or free download.
Post pictures from the event. You can make this as customized as you would like. If you only met a few people that day, it might be worth the time to send personalized, individual emails including their pictures from the event. If you met hundreds of people, consider providing a link to a gallery of photos from your event, such as a public Google Drive folder, Flickr photo gallery, or public Facebook album.
Ask for a recommendation. Positive Yelp and Google reviews go a long way in attracting new customers. Humbly, you can always ask those who have tried your product to take 5 minutes to review your business online. You can learn more about Google’s steps to getting reviews here.
Ask for an email forward. By maximizing the reach of your email, you can attract the interest of new customers and grow your email marketing list. Intuitively, people will be most interested in forwarding your emails to friends and family if you include things like photos or coupons that they can share. For example, on the bottom of our newsletter, we write:
Were you forwarded this message? Sign up for our Monthly Roundup.
Good ideas spread through a groundswell of support, please share this email with a friend.
Tell them how to connect with you. Tell those you’ve met where your business will be next (upcoming demonstrations, farmers’ markets, and trade shows, for example). And, if you have one, ask the people that you connected with to post their photos from the day using your brand’s hashtag (don’t forget to check for new posts that contain your hashtag, to like or comment on photos that people have shared).
Ask them to subscribe to your main newsletter. Depending on how you worded your Borden Snaps release, people may have given you permission to add them to your newsletter, or they may have just given you permission to send them photos from the event. If you don’t yet have permission to add them to your newsletter, provide a link where users can choose to subscribe themselves. You may even want to include a disclaimer at the bottom of your email, reassuring recipients that you have not added them to any unwanted lists. For example:
This email message was sent to everyone we connected with at the Vegetarian Food Festival. You are not on any list, and there is no need to unsubscribe.
Follow Up
Of course, every business will have a different schedule for following up; some follow up daily, others may need to wait until the end of an event. Here are some recommendations for when to send emails to your new connections.
Soon after the event. If you plan on reaching out to share pictures and ask for ratings, the sooner you follow up, the more likely the connection will still be fresh on your connections’ minds. Make use of this perfect opportunity to deepen the new connection you have just made, through the gestures above.
1 year after event. If the event is annual, it may be nice to reach out to the people you connected with the previous year to let them know that you will be present again at the same event. Invite them to come by your booth to say hi, or to sample new products you may be introducing.
The beginning of a new year. The beginning of a new year is a great time to reconnect with customers you have met, to wish them and their families well, to tell them about new projects and initiatives, and to let them know where and how to connect with you again this year.
New product launch. Your email list will be one of your most valuable assets when launching a new product, because it contains a concentrated list of people who are interested in your company and what you have to sell (versus your personal social media channels, for example). Let them know about new products that you are launching, and consider offering them a discount code that they can use on the release date.