Coming back from a trade show, everyone is on a high.  Your team tells you, “it was the best show EVER” and the sales team is ready to get all of those hot leads.  As much as they may want you to, the last thing you should do is just hand over the scans list to sales and tell them to have at it.  Setting up follow-up is key.

We do one big trade show a year, Dreamforce (salesforce.com’s user group conference).  We limit collateral at the show (partly because most of it ends up being thrown away and partly to do our best to be a bit greener) and promise to follow-up with more info in an email.

Most everyone that scanned me sent a follow-up email within days of the show.  Unfortunately almost all of them used the exact same subject line.  Yes, I said exact same subject line – Dreamforce follow-up.  At a show like Dreamforce with hundreds of exhibitors, that just really is not going to cut it to stand out in the crowd.  When I looked back at our follow-up email from last year I was a little disappointed that we had used that same worn out subject line.  I decided I wanted to try something new.

The subject line I ended up using this year is a little on the long side but much more descriptive.  The subject line was: Dreamforce follow-up on data cleansing and contact discovery.  Notice I chose to exclude our company name.  I did this for two reasons, it was already in the from line and it is doubtful anyone remembers who we are or what we do.

But much more interesting were the results I saw.  I grew our open rate from 16% to 36% as compared to the same follow-up email from the year before.  See if you can increase your open rates by adding more relevancy in the subject line for trade show follow up emails.