Over a year of organizing lead generation events for Amihan Global Strategies (B2B company), inviting new contacts has always been a challenge. We haven’t established relationships yet so we are likely to be ignored. However, there are few things I learned to increase my invite success rate.
Assuming you already sent email invites to your new contacts, here are some tips I found effective in my follow-ups if you haven’t heard from them days after:
- Check via email if they received the invite. Sometimes they’ve read it but forgot to respond or your email got flooded down in their inbox. Following up by responding in the same thread puts the invite back to your lead’s top inbox. Example: “Hi Ms. Dela Cruz, How are you? Putting this thread up in your inbox in case you missed it. Hope to hear from you!” or “Hi Mr. Dela Cruz, I wanted to check if you received my previous email and if you can make it? Hope to hear from you!”
- Check via call or SMS. If you’re fortunate to have access to their mobile number, great! I prefer to send an SMS follow-up because I feel its not so distracting especially if the person is in a meeting. If i only have the landline, I would call with the same objective as #1 – to check if they received the invite.
- Extend invite to a colleague or two. If they haven’t responded still, send another email regarding extending invite to colleagues. Depending on the capacity of your event, giving your lead an option to bring a colleague incentivizes them to attend the event. Sometimes they’re more comfortable to have company versus going to an event alone. Credits to my colleague Aree for this idea.
Overall, the intention of the follow-ups is really to keep you in your recipient’s radar. Hope these tips would work for you as much as they worked for us!
Do you have follow-up tips and tricks that worked well for you? Do share in the comments below!
