Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Jim,
As you are looking at email I expect these are people who have opted in. Email provides a lot of flexibility in timing and content and allows you to vary the message to individuals or groups of individuals. If you are trying to attract senior decision-making execs you should expect their diary to be pretty full and I would therefore send them an initial "date for your Diary" email between 4 and 6 weeks in advance. I would keep it short just give them the dates, times and location followed by a single paragraph pitch as to why it is essential that they block off the time to visit the show. At this stage it is important to get the show date in their diary, rather than getting them to visit your stand, that comes later.

I would then follow up perhaps 7 to 10 days before the show with additional info, including what you had on offer at the show and why they should visit your stand. If the show is an industry specific one you might give them something like a white paper on a hot topic of particular interest to their industry and at the end a teaser to come to your stand to find out more and get the inside story that would give them a competitive advantage.

For those people that you don't have opt-in emails, oversized postcards are a great attention grabber. Because of the limited real estate on the postcard for your message, you may want to use it to direct them to a specific page on your web site that has all the details of the show and your exhibit. For this group it is probably a one shot message and I would send it approx. 10 days in advance.

As highlighted in other answers, you may want to treat "out of town" people, who have to make travel arrangements, differently to those who can pop-in on their way home from the office, with regard to timing and the strength of proposition as to why they should travel.

Hope this helps
Regards
Pat Divilly
CEO
MarketWare International
www.marketware.biz