Site Inspection: But What is There to Click After the Show?

Sure, it’s easy to offer a spiffy Web site promoting a conference.

Take the Direct Marketing Association’s site plugging this October’s DMA 07 (http://www.dmao7.org), which in plain and simple terms offers content for the show. The home page opens with a short video telling views why they should haul hiney to Chicago for the event. Then, hotel and registration info, as well as a link to either print out or request a brochure are easily accessible.

But what about after the event? When people search the Web looking for info on your organization and the conferences you offer, how do you hook them in, if your next shindig is almost a year away?

London’s International Direct Marketing Fair (http://www.idmf.co.uk), sponsored by Reed Exhibitions, does a nice job of recapping the spring 2007 show, while inviting marketers to the April 29-May 1, 2008 event.

Visitors can view a video about the 2007 show, and take a virtual tour of the show’s exhibit floor, via photos that one can rotate 360-degrees for a full view. The effect is neat, albeit a little vertigo inducing. (If I ever pass out drunk on the floor of the Earls Court exhibition center, I now know what I’ll be looking up at when I come to.)

There’s also links detailing some of the 2007 educational offerings, more traditional photos and easy links for updates and information on the 2008 event.

The site for last month’s Clean Show (http://www.cleanshow.com) isn’t as forward looking.

The Clean Show, a.k.a. the World Educational Congress for Laundry and Drycleaning, is an event I visited in another lifetime when I wrote for a publication covering the institutional laundry industry. I was curious to see what the show now looked like, over 15 years since I had attended.

The home page tells me that registration has been extended to May 25, 2007…but offers no information about the next event. Admittedly, that’s two years away, but still, one likes to plan.

I scroll around, looking for some sort of recap about the June show, and finally find some meager links in the press area. There’s a few pictures from the event, but little news about what transpired. Press releases from before the show are still up, touting things like an antiquities area, where visitors could see antique laundry equipment. Gee, that sounds interesting—and like something that could be a nifty microsite.

Still wondering when the next show is, I Google Clean Show 2009 out of curiosity and finally find on the Web site of the magazine American Coin-Op that the event is slated for June 18-21, 2009. I’d say iron out all your scheduling conflicts now, but it will all come out in the wash.