Wine Event Lead Capture: Automation

Successful Wine Event Lead Capture: Automation

Use a Marketing Platform to Automate:

It all starts Pre-show by choosing a marketing platform that has a CRM as well as an automation function to it. The best marketing tools will enable you to load your contacts, email them and even streamline internal sales processes.  Hopefully you have done lots of work leading up to your wine show and now you’re at the event ready to go. With a little bit of technology you can automate the majority of your lead capture and save yourself, or your marketing manager, countless hours of data entry post show. Not to mention that following up can then happen in just a couple clicks of a button rather than waiting days to get your campaign ready.

Choose Technology Over Paper Forms:

At many events, not just wine industry events, people are still using paper forms where individuals write all of their details down and then place it in a box. Using paper is okay if you have the time and energy to put in all the work. What about the countless hours it will take to manually enter all the details into your CRM, and damn those individuals with chicken scratch for hand writing. The job is endless. If you are determined to use paper, at least offer the use of a tablet

Using a few tablets you can:

• Have current customers check in
• Capture new leads from first time visitors

Not only is it great because you don't have all the manual work but if you sent an email invite to current customers, they can also check in so you see who actually attended! Rewarding attendees is a great way to make them happy and to show you actually care for them.

These days most people are used to using technology and can type in their name and email address and hit send in under 30 seconds. You can have further fields such as wine preference, age, suburb, previously tasted our wine (Y/N), a rating and much more. The number of questions you ask is up to you. We suggest you keep it simple and ask more questions in a follow up (automated of course). The tablet allows you to begin your prospect/customer segmentation if you are able to capture more than just name and email.

The amount of information an individuals is willing to give you can shine some light on how interested in your product they are. If you are worried that people will take too long and that other excited patrons may shy away, separate areas for buyers, tasters, and those who are just entering a prize pool.

Conclusion

New technology is popping up left and right. Making a decision to switch from the old to the new can be difficult. Once you do decide to make the move, you'll see how quickly it pays off. Using CRM and marketing automation technology will save you time and money and pay dividends in the long run. Yes, there is an investment up front and yes there is some work to set the system up and create categories that suit your business. However, all the work is worth it when you are sitting back sipping wine, watching emails get opened and traffic flooding your site...not  falling asleep as you manually enter hundreds of leads into your CRM.

If you're ready to start looking for an automated marketing system for your winery, you can see a Guide to Choosing The Right Automated Marketing System for Your Business.