You spent money and a whole day on a booth, talked to dozens of genuinely interested people, made a few sales — and unless you captured a way to reach them, they are gone the moment they leave. In-person events are one of the best list-building chances there is, and one of the most wasted.
The fix is having a fast, obvious way to join your list right there at the table.
Make signing up a five-second act
At an event, you have seconds and one hand free. The sign-up has to be instant, or the line moves on. A QR code on a sign that opens your sign-up form is the cleanest option — people scan with their own phone and type their own email.
- A big QR code on your table sign, linked to your sign-up page.
- A tablet or phone open to the form for people without a camera handy.
- A tiny paper list as backup, transcribed carefully later.
- Your bio link on every card and receipt they take home.
Give them a reason on the spot
"Join my mailing list" at a busy market gets shrugs. Offer something they want now: a discount on today's purchase, entry into a draw, a free resource, or early word on the next event. The trade has to feel worth pulling out a phone for.
A discount that applies to the purchase they are already making converts especially well — they save money and you get the email.
Tell them what they are joining
People who sign up at an event and then get a surprise sales blast unsubscribe fast, or worse, mark you as spam. In the moment, say plainly what they will get and how often. Setting the expectation at the table keeps them on the list later.
A quick "I send one email a month with new drops and a discount" is enough.
Follow up while they still remember you
Send a welcome email within a day or two, while the event is fresh — remind them where you met, deliver whatever you promised, and set the tone. Wait three weeks and they will forget they ever signed up.
You can put your event sign-up behind a QR code that points to a form at onesol.io, then welcome every new subscriber from the same account.
Set Up a One-Tap Way to Capture Details
The bottleneck at an event isn't willingness, it's friction. A paper sheet means squinting at handwriting later and losing a third of the addresses to bad penmanship; typing an email into a stranger's phone feels invasive and slow. The clean solution is a QR code that opens a short OneSol form, printed large on a table tent or a card people can scan from a metre away.
Keep the form itself to a single field — email, maybe a first name. Every extra box you add lowers the number of people who finish while a queue builds behind them. You can enrich the record later; in the moment, an email address you actually captured beats a full profile you didn't. Test the QR code on two different phones before the event so you're not discovering a broken link in front of a crowd.
Have a fallback for the person whose camera won't cooperate: a short, memorable link they can type, or your own phone open to the form so they tap it in directly. The goal is that going from 'I'd love your newsletter' to 'done' takes under ten seconds, because attention at a stall is measured in seconds, not minutes.
Give a Reason to Sign Up in the Moment
'Join my mailing list' is a favour you're asking; 'scan this and I'll send you the glaze recipe I used on these pieces' is a trade. People sign up for a specific, immediate thing far more readily than for a vague future one. Decide your one-line offer before you go and print it on the same card as the QR code, so you're not improvising it forty times an hour.
The offer should be genuinely tied to why they stopped at your table. A baker at a market might offer the sourdough timings; a musician at a gig might offer an unreleased demo. What matters is that it's useful and that it's delivered automatically — set your OneSol form to send the promised thing the instant someone joins, so the very first impression of your list is that it keeps its word.
Say the offer out loud too; don't rely on people reading the card. A simple spoken line — 'if you scan that I'll email you the recipe, no spam' — does more than any signage, and the 'no spam' reassurance genuinely lifts sign-ups because it names the worry they already have before they can raise it.
Follow Up Within Two Days While They Remember You
A list gathered at an event goes cold faster than you'd think. Someone who happily scanned on Saturday won't recognise your name by the following Friday, and an email from an unfamiliar sender two weeks later gets marked as spam — which quietly damages your deliverability for everyone else on the list. Send the first proper email within a day or two, while the stall, the conversation and your face are still fresh.
That first email should remind them exactly where they met you, deliver the thing you promised if it wasn't automatic, and set expectations for what comes next and how often. Keep it short and human; this is the email that decides whether they stay. Don't launch straight into a hard sell — you're confirming they made a good decision, not cashing it in on day one.
- Remind them where you met ('thanks for stopping by the pottery stall')
- Deliver the promised recipe, demo or discount
- Say what the newsletter is and how often it lands
- Give a one-tap unsubscribe, so they trust the rest