Attendee outreach is outreach that finds the specific attendees a trade show's exhibitors want to meet and gets them registered, instead of waiting for them to find the show. It is how organisers get more attendees, and the right attendees, without buying a list or spending more on ads.
It is the difference between promoting a show and filling it.
Most event marketing broadcasts: ads, email blasts to last year's list, social posts. That reaches the people who already know the show exists. Attendee outreach goes the other way. It starts from the exhibitors' side, asks which attendees they actually want to meet, builds a named list of those people, and invites each one personally.
At Bison Outbound that means a list of roughly 2,500 named decision makers per show, personal email and LinkedIn invitations written around the exhibitors and sessions each attendee would care about, a call to anyone who replies or shows interest, and registration through the organiser's own link so every result lands in their system.
It runs in the final 8 weeks before doors, with 2 weeks of prep before that. Pricing is a $3,000 base for the campaign, then 20% of the ticket price for each new registration. See the full attendee outreach service, or pricing.
A target list of attendees who are not already coming, built from what the show's exhibitors say they want to meet rather than from whoever is easiest to find. A personal invitation to each one, over email and LinkedIn, written around what is on the floor for that specific person. A call to anyone who shows interest. Registration through the organiser's own tracked link. Then reminders in the final fortnight, because a registration that does not turn up is worth nothing.
The distinguishing feature is that it only targets people who have never been. Emailing last year's list again is a different job, and one the organiser can already do.
The show's marketing team. They promote the show to the audience that already knows it exists: the database, social, the newsletter, the trade press. That is necessary work and it is not this.
A paid media agency. Buys clicks and hopes the right people are behind them. Useful at volume, blunt when the exhibitors have asked for forty procurement directors in a specific sector.
A registration platform. Takes a registration once someone has decided. It does not go and find the person who has not.
An outreach agency. Goes after named individuals one at a time. Slower per person, and the only one of the four that can guarantee the people it reaches are the ones your exhibitors named.
Event marketing is broadcast: the same message to anyone who might be interested, measured in impressions and clicks. Attendee outreach is one to one, measured in named people who registered and turned up.
They are not alternatives. Marketing fills the top of the funnel from the audience that already knows the show. Outreach goes outside it, which is where the growth is once a show has been running a few years and the database has stopped growing.
The final eight weeks before doors. Earlier and people genuinely have not decided whether they are going, so a yes means very little. Later and flights, hotels and the diary have already gone.
Two weeks of setup sit in front of that. If exhibitor outreach is running on the same show, booths are sold first and this follows.
For a paid-ticket show, $3,000 for the campaign plus 20% of each ticket bought through the organiser's tracked link. For a free-entry show there is no ticket revenue to take a share of, so it is $100 for each qualified attendee who turns up.
The 2 weeks of setup are included and there is no long contract. Full pricing, or the attendee outreach service in detail.
Registrations are the obvious number and the wrong one to stop at. The three that matter are: how many net-new attendees registered, how many of them actually attended, and whether they match the profile the exhibitors asked for.
A thousand registrations from the wrong job titles is a worse outcome than eighty from the right ones, because the exhibitors are the people who decide whether the show runs again.
Counting registrations and ignoring attendance. Inviting people the exhibitors never asked for, because they were easier to find. Running it on the show's own sending domain and damaging deliverability for everything else. Starting too early, when nobody has decided. And sending one invitation with no follow-up, when most yeses come after the second.
Tell us the show and the dates and we will size a campaign against your floor