[EXHIBITOR EDITION] FREE Invites, Big-Time ROI: What You Need to Know

Mary Johnson, a veteran marketer at Amcor, discusses how her team leverages PACK EXPO’s Customer Invite Program (CIP) and a multi-channel strategy to drive booth traffic, track engagement, and energize sales teams. She emphasizes the importance of early outreach, fresh booth experiences, and PMMI’s exhibitor tools to connect with your audience.

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Transcript

Sean Riley: You are listening to UnPACKed with PMMI, where we share the latest packaging and processing industry insights, research and innovations to help you advance your business.

 Hi, and welcome to UnPACKed with PMMI. I am your host, Sean Riley. On today's episode, we speak with Mary Johnson, a veteran marketer at Amcor on the importance of incorporating personal invitations into your trade show marketing strategy for PACK EXPO. Johnson discusses how her team leverages PACK EXPO's Customer Invite Program to the degree that Amcor consistently leads all exhibitors in the number of customer comp code registrations as part of its multichannel strategy to drive booth traffic, track engagement, and energize sales teams. She emphasizes the importance of early outreach, fresh booth experiences and PMMI's exhibitor tools to connect with your audience. Let's have a listen. So with all the fancy introductions out of the way, welcome to the podcast Mary.

Mary Johnson: Thank you so much, Sean. I'm really happy to be here.

Sean Riley: Oh, the pleasure is all ours. Before we dive into PACK EXPO's Customer Invite Program, would you mind sharing a little bit about your background and especially your experiences with exhibiting at and marketing for PACK EXPO events?

Mary Johnson: Sure. So I've been with Amcor for nearly 10 years and my scope throughout all that time includes leading our trade show program and actually my entire career has been in the B2B marketing space, and experiential marketing or trade shows has always been a focus and something I really believe in. Sixth and seventh day booth builds can be absolutely grueling, but they're also really rewarding. I love the months of strategy and execution that it takes to build something great each year that connects with our customers and where they're at in their own journey, and also something that energizes and enabled our commercial teams to engage better.

Sean Riley: That's awesome. I know Amcor does it in a variety of ways, but could you share with our listeners how Amcor uses PACK EXPO's Customer Invite Program tools to promote their comp code and booth location?

Mary Johnson: Sure. I really can't think of a time that we didn't use the Customer Invite Program, and to be honest, our sales team starts asking for the comp code for the next PACK EXPO just about as soon as we finish the one before. So we start communicating with our audience about four months before the show, and we use the comp code in a way that measures our outreach because PMMI is really generous in allowing us to track it in the exhibitor portal. So our approach is really both owned, earned and rented actually. We use our marketing automation systems as well as our social channels and our sales enablement programs. So it's a multichannel program. From a marketing perspective, the comp code becomes a measurable call to action, but in order to get the audience's attention, it's really important that we're starting to tee up what our visitors will see and experience in the booth. I think it stands out that PMMI takes a partnership approach with this. Instead of trying to bring in revenue by charging attendees, they make it accessible and affordable to the attendee, and that improves our exhibitor reach and success.

Sean Riley: Fantastic. So for driving booth traffic, are there specific strategies that have worked best for encouraging potential buyers to visit your booth?

Mary Johnson: I'm a bit biased because I think we do a really good job of keeping our booth messaging tailored to our customer's needs and creating that experience that looks and feels fresh and premium. But we have a lot of competition on the floor and many exhibitors do just as great of a job. So getting out early and often long before attendees get to Chicago or Las Vegas is key. It gives us time to build a narrative and we try to get them excited about what they see when they'll visit us. It's more about consistency and commitment. You've got to keep the drum beat going.

Sean Riley: Okay. So you stated that you've been doing this for a while. Can you recall any standout campaigns or unique approaches that you guys took?

Mary Johnson: One thing that really comes to mind every time we talk about the invite code is PACK EXPO Las Vegas in 2021. It was the first show for the industry coming out of the pandemic, and there was a lot of, will they, won't they chatter going on. Some exhibitors pulled out even just a week before the event, but for months we've been following quantitative metrics like the overall attendee registrations year over year. PMMI was providing that weekly and also the unique comp code usage. So what we saw in the amount of people using that code gave us the confidence to maintain our full commitment to the show. And sure enough, it was one of the best shows we'd ever had to date. The audience was excited to be back out in front and our teams were thrilled to be in front of customers. So we still talk about that and how the invite program was key in reassuring our business that we were doing the right things.

Sean Riley: Yeah, I remember it well, and I remember what a successful show it was. Let's talk about measuring the effect of this. How does Amcor evaluate the success of your invitation efforts?

Mary Johnson: So we're looking at things like the comp code use, the myShowApp use. We're looking at the booth visits online. I think the Customer Invite Program was probably the most effective tool for measuring. The three together paint that accurate picture of what we can expect from attendee engagement before the show, and it helps us to make sure we have the right staff on the floor.

Sean Riley: One of the program's key features is the ability to track who uses your code to register. Do you use this data to schedule meetings or for post-registration outlook? And how is your sales team involved in the process?

Mary Johnson: Yeah, so we do use it. Mostly we use it before the event.

Sean Riley: Okay.

Mary Johnson: We share it with our sales team to follow up on the confirmation of the outreach they've been delivering. It's helpful for them to know that the customer they invited has actually registered and then they can start to plan for show engagements, schedule meetings, et cetera. After the show, it's a little bit different. We often will compare who used our code compared to who stopped in the booth. We do some in-booth lead retrieval and scanning metrics, but most of our after show outreach is based on the people who have been in our space.

Sean Riley: Do you personalize the messaging to those who register with your code?

Mary Johnson: So our sales team will in their individual outreach, but we do not prior to the show. All of our outreach after the show is personalized.

Sean Riley: Okay. So you guys are a pretty substantial business, but what tips would you offer to some smaller companies out there that have more limited marketing resources? Anything you could give as advice for them to do?

Mary Johnson: Yeah. PMMI stands out as a leader in a lot of ways, but exhibitor education is one of the big ones. If you're new to the show, new to trade shows in general or just feeling like you need to sharpen your approach, attend the webinars, introduce yourself to PMMI contacts and spend some time in the exhibitor portal. All of these can help you to learn how to use the tools that are available and they will get you better results.

Sean Riley: So you mentioned it, there's tons of exhibitors. There's over 2,000 plus exhibitors at the show. It is hard to stand out. PACK EXPO runs a robust attendee marketing campaign and offers a lot of tools, but it's still up to each exhibitor to drive traffic to their booth. So are there any other pre-show promotion strategies that Amcor does that have worked for you?

Mary Johnson: Yeah, so that's such a great point. PMMI brings the qualified audience, but it's up to the exhibitor to delight them. For us, that means keeping the conversation going before, during, and after the event. We do a lot of pre-show advertising, some email nurturing, some social media display advertising. We also do some work during the show itself, in the show guides, in the daily show magazines, things like that. The packaging industry audience is serious about what they want to learn because they have serious challenges in their business. They're looking for innovation, they're looking for efficiency, sustainability, and of course they're trying to grow. So if you invest in showing them that you understand what matters to them, you'll make it easy for them to get a badge and then they're going to come to you.

Sean Riley: To wrap up, any last minute tips on anything we might've missed that helps you get on an attendee's schedule to make sure they stop by your booth?

Mary Johnson: I would say the one thing that is really important to us from pulling people out of the aisle is that every year what we show looks fresh, it looks new, it's timely, it's relevant to what's facing the industry at the time. We don't come back to show year over year with the same booth. We always change things up. We're trying to understand where our audience needs to be supported, and then that's the type of messaging and event that we create.

Sean Riley: Perfect. That's a great button to wrap up our conversation. I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come on here to help other exhibitors with some tips on exhibiting at the PACK EXPO shows. So thanks again.

Mary Johnson: Thanks, Sean. It was my pleasure.

Sean Riley: Thanks for listening to this episode of UnPACKed with PMMI. If you liked what you heard, be sure to follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That way you won't miss any of the industry insights coming your way. While you're there, we'd really appreciate a rating or review. Want more? Visit pmmi.org/podcasts for all of our past episodes and additional resources. Thanks again for tuning in. I'll see you next time.