Event Telemarketing: Driving Retailer Registrations for a Major UK Wholesale Trade Show

Our client is a top UK brand engagement and event management agency that organised a major trade event for a national wholesale retail group. They teamed up with Blueberry for the final push to promote their 2026 trade show. The event was designed to bring together UK independent retailers, suppliers, and partners. Its goals were to boost registrations and attendance before the Manchester event, reconnect with past attendees, and find new opportunities for outreach.

With limited time before the event, we had to move quickly. The campaign faced a challenging dataset, with nearly half of the target records lacking usable phone numbers. Despite working from a limited and partially uncontactable contact base, the campaign still generated strong engagement and registrations across the available contact base.

A Practical, Retailer-Focused Event Outreach Campaign

Blueberry delivered a targeted B2B event telemarketing campaign focused on direct conversations with retail decision-makers. The aim was to introduce retailers to the event, communicate the key reasons to attend and create enough urgency to encourage registration during the call itself where possible. Follow-up emails and registration links were also shared with engaged contacts throughout the campaign. The outreach also helped identify opportunities to improve the quality and accuracy of the available contact data, highlighting how much stronger engagement could be with more complete customer information from the outset.

With just a three-week window between campaign launch and the event itself, Blueberry mobilised quickly to launch targeted retailer outreach. Conversations focused on the aspects of the event most likely to drive attendance, including exclusive supplier deals, networking opportunities and the gala dinner experience.

Follow-up reporting helped us to continuously refine messaging and highlight engagement barriers throughout the campaign. Despite tight timescales, data quality challenges and the late move of the event to Manchester creating additional travel concerns for some retailers, engagement with the trade show remained positive throughout the campaign.

Helping Retailers Commit to Attendance

Conversations focused on the practical realities of running a retail business, helping retailers assess whether attending the trade show was realistically feasible for them. Following the campaign, 108 delegate registrations across 62 stores were identified within Blueberry-targeted accounts. The activity also helped improve the quality of the client’s retailer contact data, identifying updated decision-makers, ownership changes and more accurate business information for future event outreach.

Long-Term Commercial Value

Alongside helping drive turnout for the 2026 trade show, the campaign left the client with valuable retailer insight, better contact data and a warmer pipeline for future outreach. The campaign also helped identify gaps in their existing dataset, improve visibility around retailer contactability and provide practical recommendations around future event targeting, outreach timing and data planning.

Looking to increase registrations and attendance for your next trade event or industry showcase? Get in touch with Blueberry to discuss how targeted retailer outreach can support your event activity. Call +44 (0)113 487 7013 or email info@blueberryms.co.uk

© 2026 Angela Kunawicz & Blueberry Marketing Solutions. All rights reserved.

.