One of the most common questions that we receive from all attendees is, “Do you have list that I can buy/see/mail to?” The answer continues to be unequivocably no. The question of an attendee list has increased in prominence with many attendees receiving various types of prospecting emails. These emails have gone to both just attendees and exhibitors, and they come from a range of companies – from those just attending, ones exhibiting looking to drive more traffic, and those not attending who are purely prospecting.
A line from a company just attending reads, “I saw that your company is exhibiting at LeadsCon next week. If you are attending the conference, I’d like to get a couple minutes of your time to introduce my firm.” Whereas, one from an exhibitor looking for more business starts by saying, “I noticed that someone in your company will be attending the LeadsCon Conference next week in Las Vegas. I want to see if there’s a fit for our companies to work together.” My least favorite would be the following, from Interactive Prospect Targeting Ltd that solicits, “I see that your company will be at LeadsCon in Las Vegas in March. Sadly I can’t attend the event. However, as my company is one of the UK’s largest and longest established online lead generation companies, I feel we should probably be in touch with each other.”
I see this emails as both good and bad. I’m glad that the conference has hit the level of scale where people want to actively make the most of it, but these emails potentially cause more harm than good. LeadsCon aims high; we don’t have, much to several people’s chagrin, and expo only pass. And, while we price the show fairly, we also don’t try to price it so that it would exclude those with a genuine interest in the topic. It’s a fine line because we value the high caliber of attendee the show attracts.
Ultimately, this post is to both address a common question but also to start a dialog about the best ways to solve it. The goal of any show is bringing people together. We want people to meet, but we also want to respect their privacy and avoid even more spammy situations than the one above. We’ve considered using services like EventVue, Ning, and LinkedIn Groups among others. Not that each of those is exclusionary, but the downside is that each can result in more work for the users instead of less.
We welcome your thoughts.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Oh, I love and hate this topic. On the one hand, it’s interesting to get into the psychology of people who feel comfortable wasting a stranger’s time with unsolicited boilerplate solicitations. But it’s also a real bummer to see the effect on the community, who participate and come to your conference because they’re looking for something with more substance.
CrowdVine’s a Ning for Conferences, and here’s what we see.
About 1 in 10,000 of our users fits this category. That ratio seems pretty low to me. It could be because we force people to put profiles up, which makes the contact more personal. I’m sure it’s lowered whenever we do a non-commercial or association event.
There are three options we’ve tried in the past:
1. Force most conversation to be public. This has the result of shaming the spammer as their behavior becomes blatantly obvious. But who wants to shame a paying customer? (Especially in this economy).
2. Give users control over their notification settings. People who are sensitive to unwanted email do turn down their notifications and still manage to get some valuable networking.
3. Flag similar messages for review. This has been the most effective for us. All of the problem folks have sent boilerplate messages. Attendees actually seem to appreciate personalized messages through the network.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I like Tony’s 2nd solution, above.
As an attendee this year, I am keen to get the most out of the conference by connecting with people ahead of time and scheduling meetings (inbound & outbound). But I also hate spam as much as anyone.
If the conference organizers kept my email private but allowed people to contact me if I consented ahead of time, that would work for me.
See you all next week!
John
Founder, LearnHub.com
October 14th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I don’t see a problem with attendee lists being made public. Email address are a safe bit of information to give out. It allows pertinent exchange of information while protecting the privacy of the attendee.