Social Media B2B

Any time you go to a B2B trade show or a networking event you come home with a pile of business cards. You need to stop thinking about these as pieces of cardboard and start thinking of them as business leads. Not sales leads, but business leads. As you build relationships both online and offline, your connections are your business leads. This informal referral network is how you find vendors and it is how others find you.

Once you understand the value of those business leads, you need to make it a priority to capture that information in a usable form. That would be electronic. There are some people who are good about entering the contact information into their contact manager, but I don’t know any of them. Even if you just bring home a handful of cards, it still takes time to retype the information into your computer or smart phone.

I have created a new, all electronic solution to this problem with the help of my email provider, Blue Sky Factory. They just released an iphone app that lets you check your email marketing campaign stats while on the go. The functionality of the app that I am using to track these business leads is the ability to add email addresses to my email contact list from my iphone. This is the first version of the app, and the only field that is available for a new contact is email. I have already requested that they provide users the ability to choose which fields from the list appear on the phone, just like they are already doing with public pages. So for the time being, if I need to make additional notes, like the kind you would write on the back of a business card, another iphone app, Evernote, would be where I make those.

Rather than trade business cards, I just ask some one for their email address. After I add their address to the app on my iphone, they receive an auto response email within about 15 minutes. This html-designed email features all my contact information, as well as a link to download a vcard. And the subject line of the email references the conference or event we attended together, so it is easy for them to remember where they met me. The email includes a request to reply to me with an email or vcard of their own and the reply keeps the name of the event in the subject line, as a reference for me. If the person does not respond, you have their email address, so you can just contact them again asking for their contact information.

At this point, many of the iphone owners are wondering why I just don’t use Bump or another contact transfer program to put my new contacts’ email and contact information directly into my phone, which updates to my contact manager. While that might be easier to get someone’s contact information, the amount of information that you can share in this manner is limited. My approach also focuses on adding these new business leads to my email software first, and when they respond, I can copy and paste the information from their email into my contact manager. If they reply with a vcard, the process is simple. The auto response email also includes an unsubscribe link, so contacts can choose to be removed from my mailing list. Another reason for using this approach is that it is phone neutral. Most people in the B2B and corporate world still carry Blackberries, so committing to a iphone specific application for sharing contact information does not make sense.

Here is my custom email with different parts indicated by numbers. This can certainly be branded more heavily to match the look of your corporate web site. Below it are the explanations of each item.

Parts of this custom email:
1. My full name
2. Date of email (not possible in iphone/vcard contact form)
3. Name of event (not possible in iphone/vcard contact form)
4. My photo, which could also include a company logo
5. Link to download a vcard for easy import into Outlook
6. Complete contact information
7. List of additional sites (not possible in iphone/vcard contact form)
8. List of social profiles (not possible in iphone/vcard contact form)
9. Site link for additional profiles or information (not possible in iphone/vcard contact form)

So if your email service provider does not have an iphone app, or an easy way to add emails to the your contact list from your mobile device, you can still take advantage of this idea by collecting email addresses in a file on your smart phone. The next time you have access to your email software, add the names to the proper list, and the auto response email will be sent at that time, rather than shortly after meeting the person. You loose a little bit of the coolness factor, but the result is still the same.

Here’s one final note about CRM systems, which do have mobile apps for a variety of devices. While you may be able to enter your new contacts’ information directly into your phone, you cannot easily share your contact information with them electronically.

What are some creative ways you have overcome the shoebox full of business cards?

Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.