5 Reasons Why You Should Capture Your Trade Show Leads with a Lead App and Not with Your CRM App

Companies that already use a CRM decide in favor of the mobile app and against a lead app, because the expensive existing CRM has already been introduced and put into use. The idea is to avoid costs for another app, connectivity requirements to the existing system, and laborious user training. But does it really make sense to capture trade show leads with a CRM app?

Digital contact data capture

A lead app offers several options for contact data capture:

• Access to inventory data
  With just one click, you can access CRM inventory data and use it in the visit report.
• Capturing LinkedIn contact data
  You have the option to search and select your interlocutor via LinkedIn and thus take all available public information and contact data.
• Business card or badge scan
  Alternatively, you can scan business cards or badges.

On the other side, it is not possible to access LinkedIn contacts directly with a CRM app. Business cards often cannot be scanned or provide an insufficient recognition rate.

Digital questionnaire

Not every question is relevant for every customer or prospect. A lead app can be used to configure customized – even multilingual – questionnaires that adapt to the respective trade show and the course of the conversation. The booth staff can access and fill out the respective questionnaire with their mobile device directly on site. The subsequent CRM export transfers all recorded contact data and information from the questionnaire directly into your CRM or marketing automation.

A CRM app is not tailored for use at trade shows, but for managing customer data and communication, and cannot be configured at all or only with an enormous amount of effort. This limits its use significantly.

Offline availability

A lead app can not only be used with WiFi, but also easily offline. A CRM app, however, accesses CRM inventory data and can therefore only be used online. The transfer times from the CRM to the app and from the app to the CRM can be quite long in some cases, which means that your conversation partners at the trade fair stand have to tolerate waiting times. In addition, the WiFi connection at trade fairs can be unstable. With a lead app, you can capture contacts, access CRM inventory data, and create the visit report offline and online without interruption. Afterwards, all captured information is exported to your CRM in a structured manner.

High user acceptance through usability

Acceptance of a CRM system is low among many sales reps. There is therefore a risk that they use the CRM app at trade fairs or enter information incompletely. A lead app supports trade show staff in easily recording all information digitally with a user-friendly and clear interface.

Direct contact and support

Lead app providers often offer direct contact and support for admins and users. This means that questions can quickly be clarified and customization requests can be answered. CRM providers, by contrast, are not designed to provide support for trade fair topics.

Conclusion

If you want to ensure a smooth lead capture process, you should rely on a lead app. Thus, you create a professional appearance and quick follow-up through automated workflows. Your trade show staff will save time during the lead capture process, allowing them to focus on the sales meeting. This increases your chance of closing a sale and leaves a positive impression on the person you are talking to.

With the snapADDY VisitReport lead app, you have even more useful functions available to you:

• Automatic duplicate check
  Before data is exported to your CRM or marketing automation, it is automatically checked whether the lead, contact or account exist. Gaps in existing data records are closed and no duplicates are created! This ensures data quality at the highest level.
• Reporting
  You can evaluate the success of your trade show participation in real time in the snapADDY VisitReport dashboard. This allows you, for example, to identify strong and weak trade show days and adjust resources if necessary.
• Coordination of your trade fair team
  With the integrated "Team Coordination" function, your booth staff is networked with each other and can see which employees are currently available or in meetings. You can also store skills and knowledge for each employee. This makes it easy to assign new interviewees based on language and industry.
• Automated lead follow-up
  Your conversation partner receives a follow-up e-mail with attachments and appointment suggestions directly after leaving your trade fair stand. It could hardly be faster!
• Media library
  The media library is the ideal place to store videos, image files and PDF documents that you can show directly from the app and send them as attachments in thank you emails.

You can find a complete feature overview here.