How to run a giveaway at your trade show booth
Skip the fishbowl of business cards. Put a QR code on your booth, draw a winner live in front of a crowd, and export the list afterward.
The fishbowl works, a little. You put a bowl on the table, people drop in business cards, and at four o'clock you pull one out. Three people are still standing there. On the flight home you type sixty cards into a spreadsheet and half of them are unreadable.
Here is the version that does more work for you.
Put the QR code where people already stand
Print it on your booth sign, or on a card by the demo. People scan it with their own phone, type their name and email, and they are in. No app, no account, nothing to download, and entering is free.
Announce a time
This is the part most booths skip, and it is the part that actually works. “We're drawing at 2:30” gives people a reason to come back. Say it when they enter. Put it on the sign. A drawing with no time is a bowl. A drawing at 2:30 is an event.
Draw it live, on the screen you already have
Open Showtime on your booth monitor and the QR goes up full size, with the entry count climbing as people scan. At 2:30 you press Draw, the names spin, and the winner comes up in front of whoever is standing there.
That crowd is the point. A raffle drawn in private is a transaction. A raffle drawn in front of people is a moment, and the people watching remember your booth.
Then you have the list
After the draw, your entrants appear in your host panel and you can export them as a CSV.
Be clear on what that means before the show, because it is the thing people get wrong. Names are free. Email addresses are part of a paid plan, and there is a single-event pass if you do not want a subscription for one trade show. Sort that out before you travel, not on the show floor.
Two more things worth knowing. Entrant email addresses are deleted ninety days after the raffle ends, and the entry itself stays without the address so the result is still verifiable later. And nobody who enters pays anything, ever, which is what keeps this a giveaway rather than something with a lot more paperwork.
A short checklist for the show
- QR at eye height, not flat on a table
- Prize visible, or a photo of it
- A drawing time, said out loud and printed
- Screen on and Showtime open before the floor opens
- Your plan sorted before you travel
The fishbowl gets you cards. This gets you a crowd at 2:30 and a list that is already typed.