5 Cost-Effective Tools to Automate Trade Show Outreach & Follow-Ups
With events season in full force there’s no more important task than 1:1 outreach – prospecting, booking meetings, and following up after every event you attend. And with the biggest trade shows and conferences happening NOW—think CPHI, Bio-Europe, SupplySide West, and more—you're likely feeling the pressure to keep up with it all.
One forgotten follow-up can turn into a potential customer or deal lost, and for smaller companies, this is even more critical. But you may not have a marketing team to help with the heavy lifting.
One of the most significant ways we've helped our life science clients is by automating their email process.
These 5 tools are the most common approaches we use, including for our own business:
1. Personalized pre-event emails with an invitation to book a meeting
2. Post-event follow-up emails automatically tailored to each recipient
3. Tailored messages to your list, segmented by industry, product type, service needs, etc.
4. Simple design features to customize messages with your branding
5. Calendar link and booking feature that links to your CRM
This strategy takes the burden off you, as the owner and leader, so that your emails can get to who you need them to get to – without help from designers or IT.
We accomplish this with the help of HubSpot's email marketing tools. These features are available in HubSpot Starter, which is one level up from the free version. What's even better is that, all month long, there's a special deal happening that we want to share with the life science community - new customers can buy HubSpot Starter (the Marketing Hub Starter or Sales Hub Starter packages contain the email features we just mentioned!) for only $20/month (annual plan) or $30/month monthly. If you'd like to try it for yourself, you can create your first email using the Marketing Hub Free Trial.
Creating and sending the emails is a breeze, and you don't need to be a coding whiz or have a dedicated design or IT team. The design can look as sleek as a professional newsletter, or you can opt for a simpler design that resembles a regular email for a personal touch (the latter is our go-to approach - this is how we send emails on behalf of our BD team members).
There are other email marketing providers out there (and we have used many of them in the past), but we prefer HubSpot for the simple fact that it seamlessly integrates with your contact lists in HubSpot, ensuring that your systems "talk to" each other – everything is in one place.
In our experience, personal connections and timely follow-ups can make or break a business deal. So having these tools in your arsenal is a game-changer, especially if you're a small company with limited resources.
Try out HubSpot Starter, and let technology do the heavy lifting so you can focus on building valuable connections at your next trade show or conference.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, so if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission. That said, we ONLY recommend solutions we personally use and trust.
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Sosna + Co is a boutique, outsourced business development partner for the life sciences. From M&A advisory and licensing deals with Fortune 500 companies to uncovering the potential of savvy, new start-ups, the principal is simple: we work meticulously to uncover new opportunities that grow your business. Contact us today to learn more.