I went to the Search Marketing Expo (SMX East) in New York City a couple of weeks ago and had a lot of fun! It was a three-day conference with over 50 sessions of SEO, SEM and social media marketing tactics to attract and delight visitors and leads.
Over the course of the conference, I learned a ton of cutting-edge tactics from hand-selected speakers with real-world applications and examples.
Upon checking into SMX on the first day, the receptionist printed a name tag for me with a personalized bar code on it. The barcode was used for two different applications during the expo.
When the expo hall opened, I walked around and talked to the different vendors/exhibitors that were present. After conversing with each vendor representative, they scanned my name tag with a compact 1D laser bar code scanner (Motorola CS3000) and then scanned a barcode on a sheet of paper that correlated my information to a specific categorize that I would be interested in (such as “send more info”, “requested free demo”, “free trial”, etc.).
Along with the track sessions and expo hall, there were also two theaters with ongoing 20-minute presentations that ran all day. This is where I observed the second application of the personalized bar code that was printed on my name tag. For each presentation that I attended, a staff scanned my name tag as a way of taking attendance. This information could then be used for further data analysis.
There were also free raffle tickets that were given to each attendee during each presentation. T
his was a manual process, though. After the staff scanned an attendee’s name tag, the staff would also manually rip half a ticket from a roll of raffle tickets for the attendee while dropping the other half into a container, which struck me as surprising. They could’ve easily used a software to generate a winner from the attendees list after each presentation. If they wanted to keep the “human touch” with physical raffle tickets, maybe next time they should consider automating the raffle tickets by linking the bar code scanner to a receipt or label printer, such as the Zebra S4M printer (like Castle Fun Center did).
All in all, it was a great conference and I learned a lot of search engine and social media techniques and tactics. Time to bring back what I learned to increase relevant content and improve customer satisfaction at L-Tron Corp!
