Conference & Tradeshow Playbook

Before any outreach begins, a Salesforce campaign is created and named for the specific event. This becomes the single source of truth — every lead, every touchpoint, every piece of revenue generated will be attributed here. Without this foundation, none of the downstream attribution is possible.

All-in costs are loaded into the campaign before anything else moves. This is the denominator in every ROI calculation that follows. Registration/attendance fees, booth rental, sponsorship packages, travel, shipping — everything that went into attending the event lives here from day one.

Event details are added to complete the campaign record — name, dates, venue, website URL. This metadata makes it easy to identify the campaign in reports and ensures leadership can instantly orient when reviewing the year-end conference dashboard. Once this is done, the full playbook can begin.

Purchase or negotiate the appropriate membership or sponsorship tier that unlocks the attendee list. This is the foundational data asset the entire pre-conference engine runs on — without it, you're cold outreach. With it, you're precision outreach.

Before anything touches Salesforce, the raw list gets a manual review. Known competitors, adjacent-but-irrelevant industries, and obvious non-buyers are removed. This protects deliverability and ensures the sales team only sees qualified names from day one.

Account Management track: existing clients attending are flagged so AM can proactively reach out — a high-value retention touchpoint.

Sales track: every potential new customer is identified and flagged, with decision-makers earmarked for SVP-level outreach.

All net-new prospects are uploaded into Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) and added to the conference campaign created in Step 00. This activates engagement tracking — every behavior is recorded from the first email open.

Content is tailored to whatever is most resonant at the time — industry pain points, recent legislative changes, or a compelling data angle. Every email references the conference. Sequenced over 30 days, with cadence spaced to avoid fatigue, and each touch carries a soft CTA to meet at the show.

Organic posts build credibility with the broader audience. The sponsored post targets a LinkedIn matched audience built from company and industry data from the scrubbed attendee list — reaching the right people even before they receive email.

Built directly in Salesforce Account Engagement. Content is always relevant — industry data, legislative news, or a pain point the product addresses. The primary CTA is booking a meeting at the conference. The page visit itself triggers the scoring engine.

A custom lead scoring model in Account Engagement assigns weighted point values to every trackable behavior: opening an email, visiting the landing page, clicking a link, returning to the page. When a prospect crosses the threshold, they automatically surface on the Hot Prospect list.

The scored list is reviewed with the sales team. Decision-makers who crossed the threshold get assigned directly to the SVP. All others are distributed to reps for pre-conference InMail outreach. A LinkedIn matched audience is simultaneously created from the hot list for sponsored targeting.

Large conferences: A booth vendor handles fabrication, shipping, setup, teardown, and storage of the 20×10 display with integrated TV screens and interactive kiosk stations.

Smaller conferences: A logistics company holds pull-up banners and tabletop displays. Jeff arrives a day early to set up personally or coordinates on-site setup. All swag ordered, inventoried, and staged before doors open.

Jeff controls what runs on every screen. Kiosk stations feature an interactive savings formula where visitors plug in their own numbers and see live output — a high-engagement conversation starter. Other displays run product video and brand content. All content is configured before the show opens each day.

Channel 1 — Badge Scanning: iCapture or the native conference app. Fast, frictionless.

Channel 2 — Salesforce Mobile: Configured via Mobile Scan Builder to process business cards, QR codes, and NFC badges anywhere in the venue.

Channel 3 — Kiosk Forms: Web-to-lead forms hosted on tablets in kiosk mode. All three sync directly into Salesforce — no reconciliation needed post-event.

General branded swag drives foot traffic and brand impressions. A select set of premium giveaways are reserved as a value exchange — prospects provide an email address to claim the item. This captures contacts who visited but weren't scanned through primary channels.

Prospects already in the campaign from Phase 1 who then get scanned at the conference have crossed two engagement thresholds. Combined with prior email opens or page visits, the scoring model automatically elevates them to hot-prospect status. The sales team on the floor is already working these people live.

Every operational element runs through one person. Booth scheduling ensures sales coverage at all times. Swag is inventoried and replenished. Screen content is managed and updated. Vendor and logistics coordination is handled on-site. Leadership check-ins happen informally as needed. The sales team stays focused on conversations — everything else is handled.

The campaign score tells the full story. Leads are segmented into three tracks: zero score — removed to protect deliverability; engaged with no booth visit — interacted with content; and booth visitors — scanned or submitted a form at the event.

Marketing creative and communications handle copywriting and design — key themes from the conference, anything notable the team observed, plus our own insights and product perspective. Assets delivered to Jeff, who builds them into a Pardot email and deploys. Sent to all non-zero scored contacts.

If a contact never opened an email, never visited the landing page, and wasn't scanned at the booth, they've shown zero intent. Continuing to email them risks spam flags that damage deliverability for everyone else. They are cleanly removed — not blacklisted — and future conferences provide a fresh opportunity.

These contacts showed real interest — opened emails, visited the landing page — but never made it to the booth. They receive the conference recap email and are then enrolled in an ongoing Account Engagement nurture sequence. Goal: sustained engagement that keeps the brand top-of-mind until they're ready to raise their hand.

Path A: Not yet sales-ready — added to the AE nurture sequence alongside content-engaged contacts.

Path B: Genuine prospect — converted from campaign contact to a lead or contact in Salesforce, assigned to a rep, and moved into the sales pipeline. Sales-driven; marketing provides the infrastructure, reps make the call.

With Einstein Activity Capture enabled, when a rep sends a personal email, makes a call, or books a meeting with a conference contact, that activity is automatically captured and logged to the Salesforce campaign. Once a prospect converts to an opportunity, pipeline activity reflects back to the conference ROI campaign — clean attribution all the way through.

Once leads convert to opportunities, Einstein Opportunity Scoring analyzes behavioral signals, engagement history, firmographic data, and historical win patterns to assign a conversion-likelihood score. The SVP and reps can prioritize ruthlessly — spending the most time on deals most likely to close, not just the loudest or most recent ones.

Not built in isolation — this was a cross-functional effort involving a third-party Salesforce partner, internal stakeholders across three business units, and Jeff leading from the marketing and operations side. Custom field mapping, Account Engagement integration, and a unified data architecture were all required before any conference-playbook automation could exist.

Badge scans from iCapture, form submissions from kiosk tablets, and Salesforce Mobile captures all trigger the same Pardot automation rule on arrival. Contacts are added to the conference campaign with correct field values populated automatically. The sales team never touches a spreadsheet.

Pardot's Engagement Studio is powerful enough that custom development wasn't needed — knowing how to use the platform correctly was. Nurture flows are built with timed sends, behavioral branches, and automatic routing based on engagement thresholds. The skill is in architecting the logic correctly from the start.

Built using native Salesforce reporting. Each conference gets its own dashboard showing leads added, hot prospects, pipeline generated, and ROI vs. total cost. All event dashboards roll up into a BU view, and all BU views roll into a company-wide conference report. Used by leadership at year-end to decide which conferences get budget the following year.

Einstein Activity Capture logs rep emails, calls, and meetings back to the campaign automatically. When a prospect converts to a lead, then to a contact, then to an opportunity, every stage of that journey is attributed to the originating conference campaign. Closed-won revenue flows back to the ROI dashboard. The loop is complete.