Vendor emails after conferences

I think everyone that has gone to a business conference has received emails from vendors after the conference.

What is very interesting are the various types of emails you will get. Here are a couple of examples that I have received:

1. Thank you for dropping by our booth and it was great talking to you.
2. Sorry we didn't have the opportunity to talk at the conference.

As you can see both of these emails start out so differently and now to explain both of these emails. The first one is thanking me for dropping by a booth that I actually didn't even stop at. The second email is a lot better because they are identifying that I probably didn't stop by the booth at the conference. Like the first one I didn't stop by the second booth either.

What is nice about the second email was it went on and explained a bit about the service that they provide and attached a brochure that if I was interested I could look at. The other thing about the second email was it was short and to the point and gave me a bit of information. In this case I didn't stop at the booth as it wasn't of interest to our business but if I had of just missed it I would have got some information and could follow up with the company.

The first email thanked me for dropping by and immediately requested a time within the next week when I would be available to discuss things with them. Well, this isn't a good way to handle things because I didn't drop by the booth for a reason and when I see a request of my time that email quickly gets deleted.

The reason both of these vendors were able to email me was that as a vendor they can receive the email addresses of all attendees either they dropped by the booth or not. This is happening at more and more conferences and it isn't something that I really appreciate. I go to the conference and go to the booths that I want to gather information from. Normally as an attendee you also get a list of all the vendors that are going to there so you can always investigate vendors that you didn't stop at.

A lot of conferences are also giving vendors scanners so that they can scan your id badge to follow up if you want that. I don't mind someone scanning my id badge if I have said they could but I do mind the vendors that immediately scan everyone that is even walking by the booth. I have learned that I will turn my id badge over so that they cannot scan the bar code that gives them the information they need.

Now what I have found is a lot of these vendors continually email you about things so we now have email addresses that are used when signing up for conferences and such. These email accounts do not notify us when we get an email but we can still check them when we have the opportunity to do so. It is amazing how many emails you get after attending any conference and you then have to go and unsubscribe from their mailing lists.

The good vendors realize that everyone is getting tons and tons of emails now and if they want to really get your attention they need to respect your time. We did go to a conference not long ago and talked with a couple of vendors about things we were interested in. Both of these vendors did follow up but more just to check in with us and see if we had any additional questions. Both of these vendors will be getting our business because of how they handled themselves.

Remember your email is getting more and more messages now and a lot of them are due to attending various conferences. Understand you are the one in charge of how things continue with any vendors and the unsubscribe button is your friend.