A scan is not a conversation, and everybody in the hall knows it.

Say the awkward thing first

Exhibitions run on lead capture. The stand is sold on the promise of leads, the scanner is how leads are counted, and the post-show report is a number of scans. The Gantry does not do any of that, has no lead export, and is not going to add one.

So if what you need is a better scanner or a slicker exhibitor lead portal, stop reading and buy one. There are good products for that job and this is not one of them.

What is worth staying for: the scan number is the metric everybody has quietly stopped believing. An exhibitor with 240 scans and no meetings had a bad show, and they know it by the following Tuesday when the sequence they sent gets a 1% reply rate. The show that can demonstrate conversations rather than scans has something to sell that its competitors do not.

The two halves of an exhibition

Visitor to exhibitor, arranged in advance

An exhibitor given sight of who is coming, 14 days out, can ask a small number of them for a conversation, by name, with the reason stated up front. Four arranged conversations beats ninety scans and every exhibitor who has done both knows which one produced the business.

The cap matters more here than anywhere. 2 nudges per person, one per person per event. An exhibitor cannot carpet the visitor list, which is exactly what makes a visitor willing to be on it at all. An exhibition where visitors dread the pre-show inbox is one they stop registering for.

Visitor to visitor, which nobody serves

A large proportion of why people walk a trade floor is the other people walking it: peers, suppliers, the person who has already solved the thing you are trying to solve. Exhibition technology almost entirely ignores this, because visitors are not who pays.

It is also the half with no cost attached. Visitors use The Gantry free, see 30% of a room on the free tier, and get all of it when you grant delegate access, which costs you nothing. Giving visitors a reason to register early and turn up with a plan is a gate-count problem solved with no budget.

What a profile carries

Not a job title and a company. What that person is working on right now and the topics they will happily be asked about, next to their role, their sector and their town. On a floor of six hundred people that is the difference between a useful hour and a sore pair of feet.

What you can report afterwards

Verified attendance from QR check-in rather than a turnstile estimate, how many approaches were made and what proportion were accepted, relationships formed, unique reach, and how many of this year's visitors were at last year's show.

Returning visitors is the number that is hardest to get anywhere else and the easiest to sell a stand on. Because attendee accounts persist across events rather than ending with the show, it is simply visible.

All aggregate. No visitor email addresses and no message contents reach an organiser or an exhibitor, which is the trade that makes visitors willing to be visible in the first place.

Where it fits badly

A consumer show. A show whose entire exhibitor proposition is volume of scans. A show where visitors do not register by name. In all three cases the thing The Gantry is good at is not the thing being bought.

Common questions

Does The Gantry do exhibitor lead capture?

No, and it will not. There is no badge scanning for exhibitors, no lead export and no contact list you can download. If lead capture is what you need to sell to exhibitors, buy a product built for it. The Gantry is for the conversations either side of the stand.

So what does it give exhibitors?

Visibility of who is coming before the doors open, and the ability to ask a small number of them for a conversation, by name, with the reason stated. An exhibitor who arrives with four arranged conversations has had a better show than one who scanned ninety badges.

Can we use it for visitors as well as exhibitors?

Yes, and that is usually the stronger half. Visitor-to-visitor networking is almost entirely unserved at exhibitions, and it is a large part of why people attend.

What does it cost per visitor?

Nothing. There is no per-visitor charge, no banding and no listing fee, so the economics do not change if 900 people turn up instead of 600.

Related: why connections and not leads, and the other kinds of room we work with.