May 2006
Why you must invest in first-time attendees
Since 2003, the percentages of new attendees have dropped to the low 30s — even as total attendance was on the rise. Learn how some show producers, like InfoComm, are bucking the trend.

By Maxine Golding


The old adage still rings true: It costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one — no matter what business you’re in. In fact, studies in several industries have shown that the cost of retaining an existing customer is only about 10 percent of the cost of acquiring a new customer.

“Without a doubt it costs more to acquire new attendees,” says Randal A. Lemke, Ph.D., Executive Director, InfoComm International® (www.infocomm.org). “The show has to be new every year, with a new value proposition, to expand beyond those people who have come for 40 years and are predisposed to come back.”

Penton Media Inc. (www.penton.com) is “certainly spending more money and a heck of a lot more time” in attendee acquisition, says Darrell Denny, Executive Vice President. “And the costs could be a lot higher, but we try to be careful not to take for granted people who have already attended.”

As patterns of attendance change, shows are adjusting their marketing cycle. “Our most important strategy is to stay in front of attendee prospects and be present in the thought process when it’s time for them to make the commitment,” says Steve Greenspan, Executive Director of TS2, produced by National Trade Productions (NTP, www.ntpshow.com).

That assumes show promotion has reached them. “First-timers have a much higher likelihood of hearing about a show through word of mouth,” says Skip Cox, CEO, Exhibit Surveys Inc. (ESI, www.exhibitsurveys.com). “But it indicates that fewer first-timers learn about shows through traditional promotion techniques.”

The good news is that across shows and industries, attendance appears to be surging into 2006. Sustaining that momentum, however, promises to be a real struggle. Outside of a core audience, show organizers must resell existing customers — and lure first-time attendees — in an intensely crowded media environment.

Rising challenge, falling numbers
“Increasing first-time attendees” jumped from fourth place to first as show organizers’ No. 1 marketing challenge in the 2005 AttendTrend® survey by Frost Miller Group and Jacobs Jenner & Kent. First-timers eclipsed VIPs/power buyers and international attendees for 500 exhibition organizers polled throughout North America.

By identifying first-timers, cites Wayne H. Jacobs, President of Jacobs Jenner & Kent, show organizers are starting to address this as a priority, rather than just one of their objectives.

“The change makes perfect sense,” adds Bob James, Managing Director, Frost Miller Group (www.frostmiller.com). In the wake of 9/11 and the recession, about 25 percent of attendees across all shows disappeared, he cites, and organizers’ biggest worry was simply reaching attendees. After they gained back a respectable share of attendance, their thinking shifted to international attendees, then power buyers. “After responding to exhibitors’ calls for quality last year,” James says, “organizers are now focusing on growth.”

Unfortunately, the number of first-timers as a percentage of total attendance at shows may be on the decline. ESI found that first-time attendees accounted for 35 to 39 percent of total attendance at shows they analyzed from 1995 through 2002. Since 2003, the percentages of new attendees have dropped to the low 30s — even as total attendance was on the rise. (ESI’s data primarily comes from technology, medical, retail trade, and industrial and manufacturing shows.)

“Because 2004 was a really good year for trade shows across the board, this drop concerns me,” says Cox. A possible factor, he cites, could be competition from private corporate events: the Center for Exhibition Industry Research found that 71 percent of trade show attendees in 2002 also attended at least one private corporate event, and the number of these events has risen since then.

The target
As exhibitors and brands seek to influence all points in the supply chain, show organizers are widening their base and breaking down traditional barriers between segments. At the same time, they’re narrowing their focus to stay relevant with vertical segments. Through opposing actions, organizers are finding new audiences.

A major new target for the 50-year-old industry event InfoComm is elite end-users, such as technology managers within university administration. To get the system sale, “exhibitors want to work with university procurement, rather than professors,” explains Lemke. “If we can put Harvard University in Sony’s booth, Sony is very happy.”

InfoComm isolated 14 vertical markets on which to focus its efforts; at the top are higher education, corporate, government and the military. After targeting the top 100 universities, InfoComm enveloped end-user prospects with specific product, education and networking opportunities. It made a special offer of “three for two” to attend EduComm, a co-located conference for the education market put on with a publishing partner. To date, 77 of the top 100 universities send end-users to InfoComm.

This year, InfoComm is incentivizing companies that bring five attendees with one free conference registration. “Having attendees at the show is more valuable than having their money,” says Lemke. “We push free passes to the exhibit floor and run a contest with exhibitors to see how many attendees they can bring.”

Pre-registration at Penton’s Natural Products Expo West in March 2006 was running well ahead at press time, and last year’s show recorded the largest attendance ever. The attendance growth is not coming from new store openings by specialty retailers, but from natural food products moving into mass channels. “We’ve had to be careful to come up with programs that make it worthwhile for buyers from other channels to come to the show,” Denny explains.

On the other hand, attendance at Natural Products Expo East has not kept pace with exhibitor growth. So Penton relocated the event from Washington, DC to Baltimore — where it could create “a better sense of community,” says Denny, “and be a bigger fish in the pond.” At the same time, it budgeted to hire staff on the East Coast to visit and recruit one-on-one key attendee prospects. It’s an idea he first used years ago on a show in turmoil. “We had as many as five people traveling the country to explain changes we were making to the show and ask people to give us a chance,” he says.

In an unusual strategy, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA, www.sema.org) outsources show management, but retains marketing in-house. “It really has been helpful to have that connection to the pulse of our industry,” says Peter MacGillivray, Vice President of Marketing and Communications, “and enables us to be proactive within the rest of the organization.”

It must be working because attendance at the SEMA show has grown by leaps and bounds: 69,000 in 2001, 86,000 in 2002, 105,000 in 2004, 117,000 in 2005. “We like to believe we’ve become better marketers, although the trade show is definitely a reflection of our industry’s growth,” he explains. Still, with 560 exhibitors added in 2005, SEMA has to be more creative in attracting new attendees. Like InfoComm, it has delineated vertical niches and specific promotions attractive to those segments. 

Any company that exhibits anywhere is a prime attendee prospect for TS2. However, titles of individuals responsible for exhibit management fluctuate from company to company — administrative assistant or owner in one, a part-time responsibility in another. That forces the show to focus and target.

A solution for TS2 and other shows is to purchase more lists. “Show organizers are looking outside because they’ve creamed
their house lists,” says James of Frost Miller Group. But not at list companies, says Susan L. Schwartz, CEM, President, ConvExx (www.convexx.com); publishers and buying groups represent the best sources of pre-qualified lists.

The partners
Show organizers are in agreement on one action to generate new attendees — partnerships. Through alliances with associations, buying groups and companies, shows are bartering for member or customer lists, taking advantage of additional promotional opportunities, and even revenue sharing for each member who attends.

Formal relationships with organizations that align with segments of the InfoComm universe help build the trade show floor and attendance. The Point of Purchase Advertising Institute and the Interactive Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance, to name a few, hold meetings and educational programs at InfoComm. “We increase our outreach exponentially by leveraging trade relationships into more advertising and editorial coverage,” says Taly Walsh, Senior Vice President for Marketing, InfoComm. “That way, we’re not doing everything ourselves.”

Similarly, Natural Products Expo East in 2006 has formed a “sophisticated arrangement” with the eastern chapter of an association in the marketplace, which will be “rewarded financially for efforts they make and results achieved in driving attendance,” says Denny.

SEMA always placed a tremendous amount of advertising in enthusiast, trade and consumer magazines and on Web sites to reach its first-timer entrepreneurial targets. By developing mutually beneficial programs that give the publications more exposure, SEMA has increased the number of ad pages in print and online, but decreased advertising spend by 50 percent.

The SEMA show daily is a good example of how publishing partners gain a stake in the show, make money and raise a real grassroots buzz for the show among their readers. SEMA has divided the daily into 10 sections, just like the show — for example, wheels and tires, mobile, and racing and performance. But instead of producing content and marketing the sections, SEMA licenses the sections to 10 publishers at a very reasonable price. They get eight pages in four editions of the daily to sell advertisers in their segment, and they set their own ad rates. They’re responsible for filling the space and providing the content and ads at noon each day for SEMA to do the production. Some sell ads throughout the year, while others use the ads as added value for advertising programs in their own publications. Meanwhile, SEMA gets three full-page ads in the licensee’s publications.

For most of TS2’s history, its attendee base focused on logistics. Now with the stakes so high for corporate America’s investment in exhibits, TS2 is reaching out to engage more senior marketing executives. Partner Event Marketer magazine contributes curriculum and speakers to TS2, along with promotional opportunities. “Nearly half of last year’s attendees at TS2 have responsibility for events and exhibit programs,” says Greenspan. And this past year, American Marketing Association’s (AMA) chapter in Washington, DC, co-located a meeting at TS2. This made sense to both groups, he says, since nearly half of AMA’s membership ranges from vice president to chief marketing officer.

Preferred partners actively endorse education at TS2 to their exhibitors; this holds special significance for new attendance when 37 of the 94 shows that sent attendees to the last TS2 were among the top 200 shows in the country. Also, TS2 attendees who are members of the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Association and Trade Show Exhibitors Association can earn points toward CEM certification through TS2 participation.

The medium
Credit the Internet for a big part of a pendulum shift back towards print as the crucial vehicle for attendee acquisition.

As the online juggernaut roared into the 21st century, show marketers anticipated spending fewer marketing dollars to connect immediately and directly with their best prospects. Many shifted strategies towards the Internet and away from print. By 2005, though, spam filters effectively put the brake on many e-mail efforts.

Now, savvy marketers are taking a more nuanced approach to using the Internet. TS2, for example, follows HTML-formatted e-mails with plain-text e-mails. While not as sexy, the latter has a much higher rate of reaching targets. Similarly in print, TS2 has had success with plain letters in No. 10 envelopes.

Deluged by spam, Schwartz doesn’t care what anyone tells her about the Internet. “Direct mail still gives people the ability to say, ‘Did you see this?,’ wave a piece of paper and pass it on.”

E-mail works well for short messages about important deadlines, such as hotel bookings. It’s the wrong medium for long, content-heavy messages and “stuff that dances around,” Schwartz says. “A lot of computers don’t accept these, and the e-mail gets stuck as spam. Then we haven’t reached prospects at all.” Instead, ConvExx has begun to intensify its telemarketing. Instead of saying, “We’d like you to come to the show,” the calls conduct actual market research — “Did you see the brochure? What caught your eye?”

Penton is equally committed to telemarketing, and its internal call center is where the rubber meets the road. The Natural Products division is “extremely proactive” with calls, says Denny, “driving the likelihood that after receiving multiple mail, e-mail and phone communications, people will show up, especially if they’re close enough to drive in.”

The shift back to direct mail is not surprising, says James, since it always is rated most effective by show organizers. According to the AttendTrend survey, growing shows are more evenly balancing the frequency of their use of e-mail, print advertising, direct mail, exhibitor-sponsored promotions and Web advertising — all registering three-to-four times usage in the marketing campaign.

InfoComm reflects this pattern. It has “gone with the times over the past five years and put more emphasis on the Web site and online marketing,” says Walsh. Now it’s carrying out a parallel strategy of direct mail, advertising, public relations and online marketing. And it’s customizing its print promotion, creating four different versions for key vertical segments.

Direct mail really comes into play for SEMA with prospects who are on the fence about making the investment to attend. MacGillivray ventures a guess that 50 percent of those who attend simply need a postcard or e-mail nudge to register. It’s the other 50 percent that need very expensive convincing.

The message
While show marketers cannot yet achieve the 1:1 ratio early Internet proponents espoused, their messages clearly are being honed for different audience segments and distribution vehicles.

Sessions. The educational program appears to represent the primary call to action for first-timers. InfoComm is trying to send the message that more learning experiences bring greater value to attendance. The goal: for association members to bring 10 people to the show instead of five. Once first-timers are at the show, it’s the networking events that persuade them to return.

Discounting. Price breaks get their attention. Penton not only offers an early-bird rate, it often subsidizes attendees’ first room night. “By adding that as an incentive,” says Denny, “it’s much less likely the attendee will shop outside the block. We want to drive early registration, which helps us manage the room block, track to budget and the previous event, and know how we’re trending.”

Context. Rather than overt promotion, show organizers are attempting to draw new attendees through “contextual” messages that provide information and education. InfoComm just launched an e-mail service to teach prospects about technology, while informing them of what’s available at the show. This new product announcement service is tied to a Web-based catalog; a monthly e-mail will send links to data sheets to 20,000-plus product users, and keep the association and show front and center. 

Talking about a suite of services helps Penton’s Natural Products portfolio stay in front of attendee prospects in a subliminal way. Messages for specialty retailers on research products, online tools and custom magazines for consumers provide additional opportunities to promote the events.

To put messages before audience segments with strong community that would be receptive to its events, Penton acquired MSD2D, a community-driven Web business. It dovetails very well with the show producer’s information technology business. “It’s much easier to launch events with authenticity, size of lists and community,” says Denny.

Outreach. As they target a new audience segment, show organizers seek outlets to broadly disseminate their message beyond trade show promotion. InfoComm has used the press for several years to educate end-users about the event. “By the time we get to those same people through lists, we’re hoping it’s not the first time they’re hearing the show’s message,” says Walsh.

Co-promotion. When SEMA visits international destinations to market its show, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA) will set up a themed booth alongside and offer incentives for people to register. “While we had a good relationship three years ago, now we’re co-promoting the destination,” says MacGillivray. In a recent meeting, he presented the show to representatives from many of LVCVA’s international offices.

International. Messages must be even more finely honed to lure the first-time international attendee. Working through the U.S. Department of Commerce for the second year, InfoComm just sent out a packet of teasers in six languages to U.S. embassies and Commerce offices in 200 countries. These also are being distributed through the association’s regional representatives, who meet with commercial attaches to talk up the show.

The database
With new attendees so critical to a show’s success, flagging “first-timers” in the database is taking on new urgency. InfoComm’s database recognizes “first-timer” registrants, and this helps the association track against goals.

While SEMA has been strategic about going after new attendees, tracking them has not been on its radar screen. However, starting with the November 2006 show, SEMA will assign a “legacy number” that will stay with an attendee forever (instead of just a year). Like a Social Security number, parts of the legacy number will provide specific information about the attendee. “We’ll be able to analyze shifts in the industry, such as where someone started out,” MacGillivray says.

With 160,000 registrations each year, and one quarter not qualified to attend and ultimately denied registration, “a lot of data is buried,” he adds. As a result, SEMA has hired a data analyst specifically to unearth the opportunities.

Through its database, ConvExx is finding that 60 to 70 percent of attendees at some of its shows are new. That may be good news for its tracking ability, but it also means “we’re not bringing value to those who should be attending year after year,” Schwartz notes.

Still, database management is not perfect. Even with the ability to target a particular buyer by name and all the buying influencers in a single retail operation, Penton’s Natural Products division at times struggles to make sure the information it obtains from outside databases and sources does not conflict.

The cost and ROI
“Marketing used to represent 30 percent of budget, but I bet it’s moved up to 40 percent,” ConvExx’s Schwartz maintains. “If you’re not on top of market changes, you can become a Comdex — someone will eat out from underneath you and you won’t be relevant.”

While some show organizers, like TS2, don’t see a tremendous difference in the costs to market new prospects from previous attendees, others do. Penton estimates marketing to new attendee prospects at four times the cost of re-signing previous attendees. Penton is also careful to go back to non-attendees to understand why they did not come to the show.

About half of shows that are growing increased their marketing budgets last year, according to the AttendTrend survey, suggesting that the investment does bring results. InfoComm is a good example. Attendance at its 2005 show in Las Vegas surged to 26,322 attendees (15 percent increase over 2004) and 725 exhibitors (12 percent increase) in 385,000 net square feet of exhibit space. To keep attendance moving forward, InfoComm just concluded a three-year, $1.3 million outreach program targeted at vertical markets of end-users. And its board has allocated substantial new funds — up to $400,000 annually — to market to technology managers and first-timers. This includes increasing the quantities and mailing of a 16-page brochure, along with advertising.

The days of print marketing alone (and then telemarketing) held a solid advantage — each piece of direct mail could be coded and every call could be sourced. Show producers could track their return on investment and hone in on which marketing efforts brought the best results. Now, more and more registrations arrive over the Internet, leaving show producers stymied as to the marketing source that generated those actions. This is especially problematic if they want to connect first-time attendees with lists they rented or bartered for.

Only two of 10 show organizers responding to the AttendTrend survey track e-mail response in any sophisticated way, cites James. “They’re a little blasé about it, and perhaps that’s because they’re not investing incredible amounts of money.”

But they can’t be blasé about the costs of multiple mailings to many thousands of prospects. Show organizers know that if they target their direct mail better and do some testing, Jacobs says, their ROI will improve. Plus, they’ll be able to use the money they save in other advantageous ways.