I think a nice blend of these two seemingly disparate strategies can be effective. What I see missing from most people's networking strategy is an effective follow up process. I have three goals when networking

1) Meet some nice people and see if there is anyway I can immediately add any kind of value for them (I like Josh's attitude here about being prepared and having a gameplan) through my network

2) When asked, briefly give them a synopsis of my business (email marketing) with specific examples about how we've helped businesses just like theirs.

3) Ask PERMISSION to stay in touch with them via email occasionally.

Follow-Up:

After the event I send personal email notes to the people that I met, then I add them to my thoughtful email marketing campaign so that I can entertain and educate them over time on our value. When they are ready, they will likely contact me. With this method every networking event is an investment with tangible results that keep adding up.

For most of us we have a choice of two strategies - either provide such an amazing valuable product or service that you probably aren't participating in Biznik events, or drip on these seeds until they sprout. You need an effective follow up tool to do this effortlessly. There was an excellent blog from marketing genius Seth Godin on this topic here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/11/breakthroughs-and-drips.html

I agree with Richard in the lack of follow up. It's amazing to me that people spend all that money, effort and time to get leads and then let them die after nearly zero effort. Why is that? I have a theory:

The problem, in many cases is that there are too many leads. This leads to an overwhelming feeling and cherry picking the "good" leads and follow up with only those (and not that thoroughly).

In reality - you never know where your next deal is coming from so you should follow up with EVERYONE, and not just once, but thoroughly and regularly. I think it was Zig Ziglar who said "Follow up till they buy or die" and I agree with that - especially when you have a tool that scales.

At Email Broadcast we typically will have a whole series of messages that we want trade show recipients to receive packaged and ready to go before the show starts. That way, when everyone is exhausted the emails go out like clockwork - and the phone starts ringing. When a trade show attendee gets three COMPELLING emails from you, and zero from anyone else - who's he/she going to call first?

Salespeople still need to make personal contact with as many people as possible, but Email Broadcasting makes a great safety net to make sure everyone gets the core message after the show, and has a compelling call to action like - Last Chance on Trade Show Special!

There was a wealth of information shared and I was blown away by the value you guys offered in this workshop. I think you could easily charge for this event, but thanks for offering it for free! I've already been looking at your website and downloading your excellent forms.

Good stuff Kathy.

Very useful article Danek. Having worked in several industries I definitely agree that speaking the lexicon gets you immediate credibility.

One and all, thanks again for your comments. I'm happy to provide my expertise on the 9 years experience we have on what it takes to do email marketing right.

Robert - this article was limited in scope on 'how to grow you email list' but I appreciate your enthusiasm. I'll be writing more articles on other aspects of email marketing.

Kate - generally it's not the only question I ask. Permission is a vital part of successful email marketing, so if I haven't expressly mentioned it when I met someone, I will in a personal follow up email.

Thanks all for the comments. This was not an exhaustive list by any means. I was limited by the word count of Biznik and by wanting to provide some explanation on each point. There are lots of other methods of building your list, some of which have been mentioned here by others.

Great meeting concept that I've been looking to execute - glad you beat me to it. Anxious to learn firsthand how to run an event from two Biznik masters.

Judy,

Nicely done. One exercise that we use with our new email newsletter clients is to brainstorm with them on content ideas till they have about 100 written down. The most important rule of brainstorming that we enforce, is that no ideas are ruled out. This gets the juices flowing and ideas just come flooding out.

Having a list makes it so much easier to write under deadline when you can select from 100 ideas rather than scanning an empty mind that's under pressure.

I liked your point on taking a stand - bravo. Ken Mahar