Intro

I’ve talked to countless B2B SaaS companies that pour tons of effort into planning great events, only to struggle with translating those efforts into real pipeline generation. Running a successful event isn’t just about having a great booth or messaging… It’s about having a clear strategy to maximize conversations, book meetings, and drive opportunities.

There can be an overwhelming amount to think about. Can we actually pull the right people into our booth? Are they in our ICP? Is our messaging compelling enough to make them stop? Will our swag be exciting enough? Will they even remember us when they leave? Will we even have internet on the show floor? Will someone be there to receive shipments? Do prospects know where our booth is? Do we have the right staff working it? Can they deliver a killer demo? Will prospects leave actually understanding what we do? Do we know what notes to take? Where do we log them? How do we categorize them in our CRM? What’s our follow-up strategy? Are we just collecting business cards and hoping for the best or do we have a tool? Are we actually driving pipeline, or are we just running an expensive networking event?

If you feel exhausted just reading that, it’s understandable. But when you strip it down to the basics, it all comes down to three things:

• Get more conversations at your booth
• Book more post-event meetings
• Don’t let your prospects fall through the cracks

In this post, we are going to cover how we approach this before the event, on the show floor, post event follow-up and re-engagement. 

Pre-Event: Booking Meetings at your Booth

Driving meetings to your booth starts before you ever step onto the show floor. A structured pre-event strategy ensures maximized booked meetings and reduces last-minute scrambling. Pairing this strategy with RevenueHero makes it even simpler.

Step 1: Set Up an “Event Calendar” for Automated Bookings

First, create an Event Calendar to manage your meetings efficiently. Decide upfront:

• Can reps handle double bookings, or should meetings be 1:1?
• How should rep availability be split across time slots? 
• What routing rules will assign the right booth staff to each meeting?
• Will reps have other customer meetings they need to account for?
• Once the meeting calendar is full, do we have staff to take walk-up demos?

Once these questions are answered, connect your Event Calendar to RevenueHero’s powerful meeting booking tool and set up your routing rules accordingly.

Step 2: Align Your Sales Team with a Pre-Event Kickoff

A Sales Event Kickoff Call (scheduled 2-3 weeks before the event) aligns everyone on strategy and expectations. Record the session for anyone who can’t attend live. In this call, cover:

• Event Details (date, location, booth number)
• Staffing (who’s attending and their roles)
• Travel & Logistics (hotel recommendations, ticketing process)
• Event Goals (MQLs, pipeline targets, key accounts to engage)
• Outreach Strategy & Prospect Lists (who we are reaching out to and why, see next step)

Step 3: Provide Outreach Lists to Sales

The key to pre-booking meetings is eliminating guesswork for your sales team. They are always busy, so giving them the exact playbook makes this step easier.  Provide targeted lists, such as:

• Previous attendees from this event
• Current Attendee lists (if available from the event organizer)
• Local prospects who have shown intent signals
• Closed-lost prospects in the local area
• ICP Companies with HQs near the event location

You will usually need to pair with an enrichment provider and an email validation tool to make sure your lists are vetted and ready for outreach.

Step 4: Outreach That Drives Meetings

For cold outreach, we have found for events LinkedIn works best; but for previously engaged prospects, email is more effective. Then, give them a compelling reason to stop by. Suggested touchpoints:

1. Intro: “Will you be at [event name]?”
2. Swag Offer: “Swing by to grab this awesome backpack!” or “We’re raffling off a Lego set, want in?”
3. Final Check-In: Last call to confirm interest.

🚨 Every outreach should include a direct meeting booking link. 🚨
This allows prospects to select a time that works for them, and with RevenueHero’s booking link, they can reschedule on the fly. That added flexibility increases the likelihood they’ll show up, rather than ghosting your booth.

On The Show Floor: Get That Next Meeting Booked

Elect Your Pipeline Czar:

One of the most important roles on the show floor is someone I like to call your Pipeline Czar: the gatekeeper of your pipeline. This person ensures that:

• You are drawing as many prospects as possible into the booth
• Demos stay focused and relevant
• Your team is taking notes on EVERY conversation
• No strong-fit prospect leaves without booking a follow-up meeting

Think of them as Gandalf at the booth entrance: “You shall not pass… without scheduling your next meeting!”

What Your Pipeline Czar Should Be Watching For:

• Are we using a strong hook to pull people into the booth?
• Is our team sticking to the concise “event demo” and not getting stuck showing everything under the hood?
• Are reps taking notes on key details from each conversation?
• Is the prospect about to walk away without booking their next meeting?

If a prospect is slipping away, the Pipeline Czar steps in:
🚨 “Oh, don’t leave before we book your next chat with our team! If you schedule now, I’ve got some secret VIP swag for you..”

A landing page on an Ipad or computer connected to your meeting booking tool makes this step super simple. 

End of Event: Organizing Notes & Follow-Up

Beyond just booking meetings, your Pipeline Czar owns the prospect list post-event to ensure all notes are logged in your CRM within 24 hours. Speed to lead is critical. The notes file should categorize:

• Good demo vs. not a great fit
• Recommended follow-up action
• Who should handle follow-up (specific rep vs. round robin)
• Prospect type (new lead, customer, partner, etc.)

Having clean, structured notes makes follow-up significantly easier, helps with re-engagement, and builds a smarter outreach list for next year’s event. 

Post Event: Immediate Follow-Up

The event may be over, but the real work starts now. Follow-up is where pipeline is won or lost, and getting it right means balancing personalization with persistence.

Sales Outreach: Follow Up Like a Human

My recommended follow-up structure: 

• Send the first outreach from your own email (not a sequence tool with all the unsubscribe links and footers, this needs to come from YOU, these prospects are worth the extra time to go custom).
• Reference your notes, mention the event demo and their specific pain points in every touch you can.
• Follow up on LinkedIn with a shortened, conversational version of your email.
• If no response, bump the email to the top of their inbox a few days later.
• Still no reply? Offer some swag they may have missed at the event as a final nudge.

Only after 3-4 personalized, human-first touches should you consider adding them to a sequence. And even then, you should still reference the notes where you can. You also want to include your direct meeting booking link in every touchpoint. 

Can you imagine how much money you would spend on LinkedIn ads to try to get this number of demos with immediate feedback all at once? (Hint: probably more than your whole year’s budget.) Don’t let your event demos go to waste! The slow manual follow-up is worth the effort. 

3-Week Post-Mortem: Learn & Optimize

Don’t let your learnings from the event live in a silo. Schedule a postmortem meeting three weeks after the event to allow time for initial pipeline movement and sales feedback. Key discussion points:

• What worked?
• What didn’t work?
• Was this the right audience?
• What should we change next time?
• Should we attend this show again next year?

This is also a great moment to show early results, how many booth visits turned into meetings turned into pipeline. Keeping visibility on outcomes helps to maintain momentum. RevenueHero can make pulling meeting metrics and reporting on this really simple!

Re-Engagement: Remember Us?

After the event, your prospects are getting flooded with follow-up emails from every other tech company they talked to on the show floor. It’s no surprise that many will feel overwhelmed (and some won’t respond at all). That’s why a strong re-engagement strategy is critical.

Follow-Up Strategy:

Structure your outreach to follow up immediately and stay top of mind when the noise dies down:

• Immediate follow-up 
• 3-4 weeks after the event 
• Every 3 months after that 

This approach ensures you’re reaching out when competitors have stopped, increasing your chances of turning event conversations into pipeline.

Why Good Notes Matter:

Remember when your Pipeline Czar was being super annoying about making sure you take good notes? Personalization is everything. If you can recall their exact pain points from the event in a follow-up months later, your response rate skyrockets. Reference your notes, tailor the message, and make it feel like a continuation… not just another outbound email.  

Your CTA should always be to hop on a call—and with direct booking links, you make it as easy as possible for them to schedule.

Turn Your Event Prospect List into Continuous Pipeline

Your pile of event prospects is gold, don’t let it sit untouched. A quarterly follow-up engine ensures you’re continuously re-engaging past event conversations. I recommend reaching out to every single one of your previous booth conversations that didn’t turn into pipeline every 3 months.

💡Pro Tip: Create ad audiences of your previous event prospects to really uplevel your re-engagement strategy.

Conclusion: Events are a Pipeline Machine

If you take one thing away from this guide, it’s this: Don’t let event leads slip through the cracks. They should be one of your largest pipeline generators! Build a structured follow-up strategy, personalize your outreach, and make it seamless for prospects to book their next conversation.

With the right approach and the right tools, like RevenueHero’s direct booking links, your events will become more than just a collection of business cards. They’ll be predictable, repeatable revenue drivers.

Make your next event a ‘booth’-iful success.. one meeting at a time! Ok, that was a terrible way to end this post…