TL;DR
A week is enough to fill a trade show calendar. Pull your targets from the exhibitor and speaker lists, email them with two specific time slots and your booth number, follow up once, and confirm the day before.
Find show exhibitors with ManyPIA trade show is the one week a year when your buyers are all in the same building. People who arrive with a calendar of booked meetings get far more out of it than people hoping the right visitor wanders past the booth. If the show is next week, you still have time, but only if you build the target list today.
The plan is short: take your targets from the exhibitor and speaker lists, offer two specific time slots and a place to meet, follow up once, and confirm the day before.
Where to find who's going
Source | Who it gives you | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
Exhibitor list | Every company with a booth, often with a category and booth number | The show's website or event app |
Speaker list | Named people, with their company and session time | The agenda pages |
Sponsors | Companies with budget and senior staff attending | The sponsor page |
Companies announcing they'll attend | Usually sales and marketing teams | Their news pages and company blogs |
Last year's exhibitor list | Regular attendees who may be back | Archived pages, often still online |
If your buyers are exhibitors, you're in luck: the full list is public. If your buyers are attendees, you'll have to rely on speakers, sponsors and companies that say they're going.
Don't buy an "attendee list"
If you've registered as an exhibitor, you've probably had emails offering the show's attendee list, with contacts, for a price. Many show organisers publicly warn exhibitors that these offers don't come from them. At best, the list is a generic database with the show's name attached. At worst, you pay and nothing arrives. Work from the public lists instead.
Pick targets for a one-week sprint
With a week, you can't email everyone. Narrow it down:
Filter the exhibitor list to the categories that buy from you.
Remove companies you already talk to. They get a personal note from their account owner instead.
Rank the rest by fit, and keep the top 50 to 100.
For each, find the person who'll be at the show and owns your area. Booth staff are often sales and marketing, so for exhibitors, the head of sales or marketing is a sensible target.
Verify every email before sending. Show week is a bad week to bounce.
The email that books meetings
Busy people agree to concrete things. "Let's connect at the show" gets ignored. Two time slots and a place get answers.
Subject: [Show name]: 15 minutes on [day]?
Hi [Name],
I saw [Company] is exhibiting at [show] (booth [number]). We work with [type of company] on [what you do, in one line], and [one specific reason it's relevant to them].
We're at booth [your number]. Would [day] at [time] or [day] at [time] work for 15 minutes, at your booth or ours?
Offering to come to their booth matters. Exhibitors can't always leave, and walking over costs you five minutes.
A seven-day schedule
Day | What to do |
|---|---|
1 | Build the list, find contacts, verify emails |
2 | Send the first email to everyone |
4 | One follow-up to anyone who hasn't replied, with two new time slots |
5 to 6 | Put each booking in your calendar with the booth number and a note on why you're meeting |
Day before | Confirm every meeting with a short note and your mobile number |
Show days | Leave gaps between meetings, since nothing at a show runs on time |
The seven-day schedule from first email to show day.
After the show
The meetings you book are only half the value. Follow up within two days, while the conversation is fresh, with whatever you promised: the deck, the pricing, the case study. People who said "maybe after the show" deserve a note too, and the same exhibitor list works again next year.
Doing it with ManyPI
Disclosure: ManyPI is our product.
You can describe the list in one sentence, for example "exhibitors at [show name] in the logistics software category, with the head of sales' email", and the agent reads the show's exhibitor pages and each company's site to build it, noting where each lead came from. Every email is checked before sending. The sequence goes out from your own inbox and stops for each person as soon as they reply, and CRM tasks remind you of each meeting and follow-up. The lead generation page covers the setup.
A two-step pre-show sequence in ManyPI, stopped by the first reply.
If you're the one running the event rather than exhibiting at it, our guide to finding event sponsors when time is short uses the same approach from the other side.
One last thing: book fewer meetings than you think you can handle. Fifteen good conversations beat thirty rushed ones where you arrive late and leave early.
Written by
Ole Mai
Founder / ManyPI