Everyone at the fair collects cards. Almost nobody writes.
The gap at a trade fair is not the conversations. It is the three days afterwards, when the pile of cards on your desk turns into nothing. Here is the fix, and you can test it with your phone before you go.
Stand rent, travel, three days of your best people. The conversations happen, the cards go in the pocket, and the pile lands on a desk on Monday next to everything that waited while you were away. Two weeks later somebody writes to the four names they still remember. That is where the money from a fair actually goes: not in the booking, in the silence afterwards.
The follow-up problem is a time problem, not a willingness one
Nobody decides not to follow up. What happens is that a card is a name and a company and nothing else, and writing a message worth reading means finding out what that company does, what they are working on now, and why a conversation in a hallway should turn into a meeting. That is fifteen minutes per card done properly. Forty cards is a working week you do not have, in the week you are furthest behind.
So the message that does go out is the one that can be written in thirty seconds: "Great to meet you at the fair!" It says the one thing the recipient already knows, and it is why fair follow-up converts so badly that people conclude fairs do not work.
What good actually looks like
A message that lands the same evening, referring to what that company genuinely does rather than to the fact you met. Not because same-day is a growth hack, but because that is the only window in which they still remember which of the forty conversations was yours.
The work in that is the research, and research is the part a machine can do while you are still on the stand floor.
Photograph the badge
This is the whole workflow: take a picture of the name badge or the business card and send it to Selda in WhatsApp. Selda reads the name and the company, looks the company up, and writes the message from what it finds. You read it and decide whether it goes. Nothing sends without you, and there is no list to import, no sequence to build and no setup to do before the event.
Forty cards is then forty messages waiting for you to read on the train home, each one about the company it is going to.
Test it before you go
Every event guide on our site carries a code and a QR for that event. Send the code to Selda on WhatsApp, and you will get the event's own details and a link back. Photograph any badge or card you have lying around and see what comes out. It is free, there is no card, and nothing can leave your workspace until you switch it on.
Start from the event guides and pick the fair you are actually going to. The follow-up is the part everyone loses; it is also the cheapest part to fix.
Want a hand with your own outreach?
Tell Selda who you want to reach. It finds them, writes to each one, and books the meetings, from your own inbox, with your approval. Start free, or book time with Justus.
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