If you think getting married is all about the man getting down on one knee to his lady, and live happily ever after, you may be right, but there’s more work to it than that.

If you are like the majority of people living on planet earth, you’ll know that it actually takes quite a long time to plan out and get everything as close to perfect as possible for a wedding.

“Oh boy… does this mean you got to pull out the yellow book and give all the wedding planners, artists, photographer, and many others to help you get the wedding together?”

Actually, no, it’s quite easier nowadays because there’s something special that happens every year. That special something is called a Bridal Expo.

If you are a photographer or a photo booth business owner, you have got to make sure that you take advantage of this event because of the huge potential benefit of building clients… and making you more money, which makes your business a success.

The key to attending this event is to collect an email list for yourself, how else are you going to get clients? If they don’t come to you, well then, you’ll go to them.

Some bridal shows will sell you a bulk of email list so that you don’t need to collect them yourself. This sounds easy and a good deal to not pass up on, right?

It may be a good offer, but be careful with emails that you did not collect yourself because there needs to be an approval or permission in order to email people about your business.

Before you get excited and plan your next trip to one of these bridal expos, let’s make sure you know what to expect and understand about the bridal expo email list.

Paying For The Email List

Let’s start out with what the Bridal Expo will offer you.

Like we mentioned previously, you can actually buy a bulked list of emails collected from the people who are going to be attending the event.

Great! No need to ask people for their emails when it’s all paid and done for.
It’s no doubt quite a good thing since you’ll just attend the expo and just have some fun chit chatting with future clients.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the bulk list you paid for may have a lot of emails that don’t exist because they were either misspelled or fakes.

This happened to me at my first expo that I participated in back in 2012. I had no idea what to expect from this. I didn’t even know that you get a list at the end of the event (about a week later).

Not knowing anything about expos other that you were there to show off your product. I came prepared with my iPad and asked almost everyone who stop by the booth to give me their information. I asked for their name, email, phone and the date of their event.

Although it’s was not completely a bad idea, you can still get a few legit emails that can be potential clients but do know that it will be a lower percentage rather than going to these expos and collecting the emails yourself.

After the event I manually entered all the emails that I got into Constant Contact and did a email blast to say it was great meeting them and that I am available for any questions that they may have about the photo booth.

A week later when I received the list fromt the actual expo. I did the same thing and found that the bounce rate was much higher. Simply because of misspelled and wrong emails.

Expos that acquire their email list through Eventbrite tend to have better success because they have to confirm their information within their system.

It also really depends on the expos that you go to, some may offer better email lists than others, so it’s pretty much a gamble at that point.

Even though there are some negative aspects to the paid email list, I would definitely ask how they expo organizer acquires their emails if you are going to buy their list.

Collecting Emails At The Expo Yourself

A great way to take advantage of your bridal expo experience is to build a relationship with future clients. This works a lot better than just buying the whole list yourself because, well, there’s the whole connection and trust that people get from communicating in person than just reading an email from someone they have never met in their entire life.

Collecting the emails yourself is quite easy. You go to the event, set up your exhibit and introduce yourself and what you will be offering to the soon to be wedded lovers.

A lot of people may bring laptops with their website on to gather emails. Although that’s a great idea, there’s something else much simpler and more efficient to use, and it’s all done on your iPad!

The app that’s highly recommended to gather emails and other social information is called OnSpot Social.

If I only knew about this app back then, it would definitely saved me a ton of time!

What’s so great about this app is that it allows you to look professional, quickly set up your business, powerful link between different business in different locations, and you can put all data (emails) to aweber, mailchimp, etc.

Quick Setup: You can easily set up images, background, and your business logo for whatever service you will be providing. Since we are a photo booth base business, it’s a great app to make us look unique and well presentable when introducing our services to future clients.

Powerful Link Between Different Businesses: This is a crucial part for photo booth owners who own more than one photo booths in many different locations. Anywhere that business is located, it will be linked to one ipad.

Link To Email Services: A link to email services that helps you organize and create campaigns such as Aweber or Mailchimp is the main reason why we went to the expo in the first place. This feature that OnSpot gives will make it easier for you to import all the emails you have collected at the expo. By doing this you’ll probably have a better bulk list of legit and trusted clients.

Ending Thoughts:

So, should you choose to not pay the Bridal Expo for the bulk lists of emails since you can do it yourself? Maybe, if you feel like it to be honest.

Most expos provide you with their attendee email list anyway which I think is a great start. As for me I like the more personal approach and asking them for their event information so I can send them reminders every month to keep our service in mind.

What I would recommend is to do both, that way you can maximize the potential of building new customers and bring your photo booth business to the next level.

Have fun at the expo and try to get to know people. Invest your time in finding who these people are and what benefits you can give to them for their wedding plan.