The Best Tips for Cold Outreach Before Conference: Increase Your Network and Get More Leads

1. Conduct a full conference and attendees research
2. Decide who you want to meet with
3. Add a conference meeting invitation landing page to your website
4. Build a cold outreach email campaign
5. Mistakes you should avoid in a cold email meeting request
6. Cold outreach email templates for conferences
7. Consider cold calls
8. Issue a press release about the meeting conference
9. Be active on social media
10. Use Google Ads
11. Useful tools for empowering your conference cold outreach campaign

Why do people go to conferences? Really, why? Indeed, at most events, advertising reports and boring lecturers consume most of your time. Moreover, in the era of social media, you can connect with people far easier and for less expense than physically traveling to a real-world event. That's probably true, but we have a good counter-argument. Vivid memories often become vivid just because of the unusual context. Of course, there are plenty of good ideas around, but in everyday life, we ​​are forced to filter the lion's share of information in order not to lose our minds. As a result, a great idea seen by someone on a blog may remain unappreciated simply because the context is casual. But if you, surrounded by hundreds of influencers, listen to a successful professional who enthusiastically talks about some idea that worked, you will definitely remember this idea. Also, chances are you will get a huge energy boost and motivation necessary to implement this idea in your business.

Okay, let's suppose you agree that attending conferences or networking events is the thing that really counts. But don't you make the mistake that most people do when they go to such events? Don't you belong to those who believe that they can just show up and hope for the best, and no preparation is necessary? In today’s article, we’re going to share the best tips that will allow you to maximize the results you get from your next meeting conference.

Conduct a full conference and attendees research

To make the most of an event, you need to do a lot of hard work before, during, and after the meeting.  Here is a quick list that may help you conduct the research and accomplish your goals. 

• What the conference is about

Start by checking the schedule for the conference — mark off everything you want to see. Once you understand what is going to happen there, you can plan the time for networking.

source: Websummit

• Who are the speakers

Look through the list of conference speakers. Perhaps, you will want to meet with them. Also, this will give you an idea about the contingent of attendees.

source: Collisionconf

• What companies will attend as visitors, sponsors, or partners

This information will help you understand if your product or service is relevant to them. So, be sure to check out the conference website or app (if it exists) before you go.

• What departments your target audience is from

Are they your potential clients? Can you see some business value in meeting any of them? Attending a conference full of people who won’t be much interested in your business proposals makes little sense.

Read our blog post “Successful Event Email Marketing: Do’s and Don'ts for Your Excellently Crafted Campaign.”

Decide who you want to meet with

The social side of such event meetings is just as important as the scientific content. Ideally, you should know who you would like to speak with before the conference. You can contact these people and ask them to meet with you for a coffee/lunch/dinner. But first, be sure to follow these five important steps:

• Remove competitors from the list

Clean up your list from competitors, as you don’t want to show them all your pre-event outreach strategies.

• Focus on probable decision-maker roles

These can be business developers, CMOs, CEOs, etc. But be careful with such big companies like Google or Amazon where you can find hundreds of people with the same titles. It’s not easy to predict who will attend the conference. And if you are using programmatic ads, remarketing, social, or PPC, you might end up wasting your effort, time, and money.

• Find companies with large infrastructures

Even if such companies use something similar to your software/service, they might want to use something else in their foreign offices/other departments.

• Learn some personal information about your target attendees

If you want to network successfully, you should have something to small-talk about. You can also check Twitter or Facebook search for users talking about the event you are going to attend. This way, you will determine if you want to follow these people and even start conversations ahead of the conference. This works perfectly for those who might be a bit shy. Visit their blogs. This way, you will be able to get a better idea of how things are going in their lives or businesses.

• Look up their pictures

Look for recent pictures of visitors you hope to meet at the conference. We recommend creating a document where you will include names, titles, photos, and a few facts about the person you want to meet (for example, their recent projects, latest awards or personal achievements, interesting publications, etc.)

Add a conference meeting invitation landing page to your website

Make a splash page with the main highlights around the conference. Mention that your company is attending and what you will be talking about at your presentation (if you have one).

source: Newscred

If people are interested in meeting with you, make it easier for both of you to learn more about each other. Let them fill in their names, positions, companies, and why they want to talk with you.

• Automate meeting scheduling with calendar

Add a calendar to allow people to quickly book appointments at your booth, attend your speaking event, meet for a coffee/lunch/afterparty, etc. This way, you won't have to worry about wasting your time or not being able to speak with everyone.

source: googleusercontent

• Track landing page visitors

Check if your landing page has visitors and analyze them as deeply as possible.

Build a cold outreach email campaign

It is also a wise idea to make it easy for your landing page visitors to access your white papers, eBooks, case studies, and other related content. This is an excellent way to get their email addresses. 

With the name, email address, and the right information you collected, you can start creating a perfect cold email for meeting.

• Make emails simple and short

We all know that business people are busy. So, don’t overload your email with a lot of information.  Keep it simple and to-the-point. It is always an excellent idea to mention something personal. For example, “I liked your last presentation at…”

source: Saleshacker 

• Add a personalized and descriptive subject line

Keep in mind that many people check their mail from smartphones, which means that too long subject lines are a thing of the past. However, a good subject line should still be personalized and descriptive.

Make sure the name of the conference and its date are added. Subject: Meeting up at [conference name and date].

• Add a banner to your email signature

Banners in email footers play an important marketing role. They help us promote any piece of information and increase the signature attractiveness. It is an excellent idea to include information about the conference you are attending and link it to a calendar for scheduling appointments in your email signature banner. 

• Follow-up

After the event, don’t forget to reconnect with the people you have met. Write a few kind words, send some photos of you two, and briefly describe what you talked about. Also, you can add them on social media to consolidate your relationship.

Mistakes you should avoid in a cold email meeting request

If you want people to reply to your emails, avoid the following things:

• Sending non-personalized emails

Personalization will help you create a human connection with the reader. Go beyond adding the first and last names. For example, you can mention that you liked the recipient’s recent blog post (say it only in case you did read it!)

• Using sophisticated email templates

Templated emails are often popping up in our inboxes. And we bet you are sick of them too. Your recipients see so many similar, non-personalized emails today that they often ignore them completely. Remember: people are sick of the mass emails! Of course, you can use templates to reduce the amount of work, but keep in mind that you still need to remain sincere.

• Writing huge texts in emails

Never write a huge cold mail piece. Your task is not to provide a ton of information about yourself right away, but merely to get the reader’s attention and spark some interest. You will have an opportunity to tell your story once the recipient writes back to you.

• Being too pushy

Don't make your email look like an ad. It should be human and engaging, so that your recipients want to meet with you in person.

Related: “Avoiding 7 Common Email Marketing Campaign Mistakes - Some Key Tips.”

Cold outreach email templates for conferences

• Cold email template for meeting

• Email after meeting at conference

Consider cold calls

In case the conference organizers can't provide you real names of the event meeting attendees, consider calling the target company and asking for the department you are interested in. Then introduce yourself and say that you are going to the conference and would like to connect.

Issue a press release about the meeting conference

Prepare a press release and post it 3-4 weeks before the event. Also, you can make a short article and guest post it.

source: Slideshare 

Be active on social media

• Keep your followers informed

Let people know that you are attending a conference on social media. Then continue making posts telling your followers where you are and what you are doing at the conference to make it easier for them to find you.

• Join event groups

Make sure you are active in groups about the event or similar ones.

• Create sponsored campaigns on LinkedIn

Consider creating a general campaign about products or services you have to offer. Promote your recent case studies, white papers, eBooks. And make a banner about the speaker (include their photo, bio, the topic they will present, day and time of the event). You can also create an invitation to set up meetings at the conference.

• Advertise on Facebook and Twitter

The approach described above can work well on Facebook and Twitter too.

Pay attention that LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter allow uploading email and contact lists to match with the profiles of professionals registered with the networks.

Use Google Ads

Don’t limit yourself to advertising on social media only. Not all professionals use social networks. But you can use remarketing for those who visited the conference page or your landing page.

source: Ads.google

Useful tools for empowering your conference cold outreach campaign

To help you further on your task to market an event you are attending, we prepared a list of tools you can benefit from.

• Mailshake

It is an easy-to-use tool for creating cold mailings. It offers a variety of templates, automated follow-ups, tracking of clicks & responses, and more.

• Woodpecker

Woodpecker is perfect for human-like email sending, automated follow-ups, campaigns scheduling, and more.

•  Wiza

Built specifically for LinkedIn sales outreach, Wiza is a perfect tool for LinkedIn prospecting, building email lists and exporting the contacts directly from LinkedIn Sales Navigator to a CRM.

• Reply.io

Reply.io is a sales engagement platform that automates personal email outreach, calls, and tasks.

• Autoklose

Developed for entrepreneurs, salespeople, and marketers, Autoklose has a wide range of useful features you can gain an advantage of. The features include automated scheduling of appointments with targeted leads from A to Z, highly personalized and engaging emails, email sequence templates, campaign scheduling, etc.

• Stripo.email

Stripo is an online platform for creating professional email templates and automating routine work on layout and design of emails.

• Newoldstamp

Looking for a solution to add a banner about conference with a link to the calendar to your email signature? Try Newoldstamp. 

• Cogsworth

The tool is convenient for making calendar appointments.

• Canva

With Canva, you can create design posts for social media, make various beautifully-looking posters, menus, business cards, invitation cards, etc. 

• Buffer

Buffer is one of those great tools that allow scheduling posts about the conference in your social media accounts.

Conclusion

Conferences, trade shows, and other networking events can increase profits and sales, improve your brand, spread awareness about your business & what you do, and establish relationships between you and your customers. You can just go and have a good time with like-minded people, but you can also take some extra steps and get the most out of the event.

Here is a short guide to help you: 

• Conduct a full conference and attendees research

• Create a hit list 

• Add a conference landing page to your website

• Run ad campaigns for heightened visibility

• Employ retargeting

• Send out personalized emails

• Add your event to your custom email signature
• Email after meeting at conference
• Reflect on what could be done better next time