We're doing a trade show in Mexico City in June, so some of the vendors who sell supplies for the show are starting to send out email blasts to the registered exhibitors, such as ourselves. One of the necessary items to run a smooth trade show is a lead retrieval system, otherwise known as a badge scanner. These systems scan people's visitor badges and put the information into a computer file (spreadsheet) for you so you don't have to sort through 300 business cards and manually enter the information in the computer yourself. It's a necessary piece of equipment at every show unless you're some sort of sadist.

This particular lead retrieval supplier that has been sending out email blasts has been great. It's a Spanish vendor who must not have wanted to go through the expense of hiring an actual translator and instead opted to do the translations themselves. It's close enough to understand, but some of the subtle nuances of the language are lost and the typos are fantastic. The fact that they use cartoons in their email is also great. Their first email I got about two weeks ago:

In case you can't make it out, the left side contains the unhappy customers, because they are waiting too long for her to write down their information. She asks them "Excuse me May I have some information please?" and as she busily takes their info the unhappy guy says "I hope she hurry up because we have to visisit a lot of stand" On the right side are the happy customers because they didn't have to wait long at all. The guy asks them "May I read your badge please?" and as he scans their information the happy guy says "Do you see how fast it that machine" Good stuff! And the customer was impressed! Too bad you're not selling badge scanning machines!

Yesterday I received another email from them with a new cartoon. Happy times were here again!

In this particular cartoon, once again the unhappy people are on the left. However this time it is not the end customer we focus on, but the exhibitors - one who didn't get a badge scanner and one who did. The guy on the left, who looks like Beetle Bailey says "Oh, oh! This is full I don't know we will order this well we will see" I'm not exactly sure what the heck he is saying, but he's not happy about people dropping in their business cards. On the right side is the happy exhibitor, who says "This show was very succesfull, thanks to our reader equipment, because now all the leads are our clients"

I love the implication here, that because you were able to get their info in the computer instead of from a business card, that people would become clients at a conversion rate of 100% (or more, who knows?). I gotta get me one of them confounded machines what read them badges!