A revolutionary leap forward in lead retrieval, Near Field Communication (NFC) allows exhibitors to capture tradeshow leads literally by touch.
NFC is a form of short-range wireless that supports two-way, “touch-based” data exchange. Whenever NFC chips are present in an attendee’s badge, an exhibitor can read the data encoded on the badge merely by touching it with the device. The NFC badge-read is instantaneous. Unlike its long-range cousin, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), NFC requires an attendee’s badge come within less than an inch of the lead-retrieval device to be read. Provided that device is programmed to do so, the exhibitor also can write data on the attendee’s badge.
Your first time out, capturing leads by touch is an eye-popping experience.
“The user experience, the sheer ease with which you can capture lead information quickly and accurately with the device, is the number-one benefit of NFC,” said Mike Sorgani, vice president of sales, ITN International.
But light-speed data capture isn’t NFC’s only attraction. The technology also brings the booth giveaways into the 21st century. Because NFC supports two-way communication, with just a touch of an attendee’s badge, the exhibitor can grant a reward to a deserving customer.
“The reward might be a digital token for a free Starbucks item, a discount coupon that can be redeemed in a local retail establishment or the meeting planner’s bookstore, or a ticket for admission to an after-show party,” said Sorgani. “No other lead-capture technology in use today allows you to do this.”
High-tech gift-giving alone, however, won’t ensure you’ll boost your exhibit’s results, Sorgani warns.
The secret to better results lies in qualifying the attendees who visit your booth through a questionnaire, another job where NFC lead-retrieval devices excel. That’s because smartphones and tablets typically devote so much screen space, more than half, to their onscreen keyboards. Even the fattest fingers have no trouble filling in attendees’ responses to the questionnaire.
The far greater challenge lies in designing a relevant questionnaire and motivating your sales reps to use it.
“The most difficult task an exhibit manager faces is getting buyoff from the staff working at an event to concentrate on lead-qualification, even though it’s critical to the company’s success,” Sorgani says.
To help exhibit managers meet the challenge, Sorgani’s firm provides assistance with tailoring attendee questionnaires that drill deeply into customers’ product-specific needs and buying plans.
“Having a detailed questionnaire based on your company’s criteria for qualifying customers will definitely put you on the right track,” said Sorgani says.
But getting product-specific in your questionnaire is often the only way to go.
“Recently, we worked with an exhibit manager who used 10 of our lead-retrieval devices, assigning each one to a particular area within his booth,” said Sorgani. “The booth was divided up by 10 product lines, and we installed a product-specific questionnaire on each of the devices. That enabled the company to collect extremely detailed information that was specific to each product in play.”
Sorgani also recommends providing incentives to sales reps to qualify attendees, as the same exhibit manager did.
“He took lead-qualification a step further by incentivizing the booth staff to fill out the questionnaire completely for every attendee,” said Sorgani. “Each night of the show, he awarded free dinners in a local restaurant to the two salespeople who qualified the most attendees that day. It worked like a charm.”
Besides outperforming old school lead-retrieval technologies, which depend on reading bar codes, magnetic stripes or badge ID numbers, NFC-based lead retrieval devices compare favorably in price.
Exhibitors may expect to pay the same, if not less, to rent an NFC-based lead-capture device for the run of a show. And exhibitors who own NFC-equipped smartphones or tablets can use their own devices, if they chose. In those cases, they simply pay a licensing fee for the use of the badge-reading app for the run of the event.
In addition to the ability to read attendees’ badges at the show, exhibitors’ fees cover a lead-qualifying questionnaire and cloud-storage of their leads. For an additional fee, exhibitors can automate email follow-up, provide attendees gifts, or integrate lead-capture with their CRM systems.
Exhibitors also have successfully used the NFC lead-capture devices to conduct prize competitions within their booths. Some have also deployed the devices in kiosks to provide attendees who want to order collateral materials a form of self-service.
And the proof positive of NFC’s acceptance by exhibitors: After Sorgani’s firm replaces one of the old school lead-retrieval technologies with its NFC-based devices at a show, it sees exhibitors’ adoption rate for the new technology jump by 20 percent.
Bob James is vice president of marketing for ITN International, an event analytics company known for the use of NFC (short-range wireless) within the exhibitions industry. With operations in China, France, the UK and the U.S., ITN International provides exhibitors with more than 150,000 innovative lead management solutions based on NFC.
