Fair preparation
Inviting customers before the fair
Uğur Yılmaz · Brand & Visual Communications Manager · 3 min read · Last updated:
Short answer
How do you invite customers to your stand?
The invitation starts with a list built six weeks out: existing customers, conversations sitting at quotation stage, and contacts from the last fair that never closed. That list gets three separate contacts — first information, then a proposed appointment, then a reminder during show week. Appointments live in a diary split into time slots, with the person who will meet each guest named in advance. A general announcement email is not an invitation; an invitation is tied to a person and an hour.
Who builds the list
The invitation list belongs to sales, not marketing. The sales team holds the contacts sitting at quotation stage, the ones waiting on a decision, and the people met at last year’s fair whose business never closed. Those are the core of the invitation. Marketing’s job is not to enlarge the list but to give that core a decent message and a proper follow-up.
Split the list three ways. Existing customers first: here the invitation is relationship maintenance, tied to an appointment where the new product is shown. Warm contacts second: for them the fair is the meeting that speeds a decision up. Third comes the target list, companies you have not spoken to but know will attend.
Response from the third group is low, and that is normal; the aim there is not an appointment but a reason to talk. Enlarging the list does not raise the response rate; it makes follow-up impossible. Fifty names built properly produce more appointments than an announcement list of five hundred. Every line should also carry the name of whoever will make the call.
The six-week schedule
Six weeks out, the first contact goes: the fair, the dates, the hall and stand number, and what you will be showing. Its job is to inform, not to ask for a meeting. Three weeks out the second contact proposes a specific hour. Offering a named day and time pulls far better response than "come and see us".
During show week the third contact goes out: a short reminder with the stand number. Write it assuming it will be read on a phone, with hall, stand number and time visible on one screen.
Think about the space you are inviting people into. How many seats the meeting area needs follows from the number of appointments, and it is an input to the drawing; the question comes up at the design stage. Repeat the same three facts in all three contacts: hall, stand number, date. Nobody will hunt for them across separate messages. Who the message comes from matters too: an invitation sent from the sales representative’s own address pulls better than a corporate mailing.
The diary and the no-shows
Keep appointments in one diary and put a named owner against every slot on the stand. Two meetings landing on the same hour burns the stand’s most expensive minutes. Leave two lines under each entry: who took the meeting and what was discussed. Those two lines are the whole of your post-show follow-up.
Keep a separate list of no-shows. Not turning up does not mean disinterest; programmes slip at fairs. The week after the show, that list gets its own message and the conversation moves off the fair floor.
Keeping records has one more benefit: next year’s invitation list writes itself. Relying on memory after the show means building the list from nothing again. Do not keep the diary anywhere visitors can read it; nobody should see who is coming when. On the shift leader’s phone, or on a board on the store side, is enough. Ten minutes at the end of each day to review it and fill tomorrow’s gaps is the most productive meeting of the fair.
How many languages should the invitation use?
In the reader’s language. One English message can carry an international fair, but writing to an existing customer in their own language lifts response noticeably.
Should you offer a gift or prize draw?
Not for a qualified buyer; it lowers the tone of the meeting. Giveaways belong to general footfall, not to booked appointments.