Lead capture for small trade-show exhibitors
Lead capture for small trade-show exhibitors is a SaaS idea for small companies that exhibit at three or more trade shows a year, priced to test at $49 per show, or $29 a month. Business cards end up in a bag, notes on paper, and follow-ups go out a week later, if at all. With it, booth staff scan a badge or business card, add a quick note, and every lead gets a follow-up email the same day.
. A starting point we wrote, not market research: run the 7-day test before you build.
What problem does it solve?
Business cards end up in a bag, notes on paper, and follow-ups go out a week later, if at all. Rented scanners from the show are expensive and export messy data.
Why now: Phone cameras and AI can read most cards and badges, so small exhibitors can skip rented scanners.
What do they use today?
Most small exhibitors keep a stack of cards and a notebook at the stand, then type names into a spreadsheet back at the office. Some hire the show’s scanner and get a file afterwards.
How does it work?
At the booth a team member scans a visitor’s card or badge with their phone and adds a quick note and a rating. The same day, a follow-up email template goes out to that visitor, and everyone on the booth team can see the lead. After the show, the manager exports the list to a spreadsheet or a CRM.
What goes in the first version?
- Scan a card or badge into a lead
- A quick note and a rating per lead
- Follow-up email templates sent the same day
- Leads shared across the booth staff
- Export to a spreadsheet or a CRM
Who pays, and how much?
- Who pays
- Small companies that exhibit at three or more trade shows a year
- Price to test
- $49 per show, or $29 a month
Use rises and falls with the show calendar, so a price per show lets an exhibitor pay only for the shows it attends. The monthly option suits companies that exhibit often and prefer one steady line.
How to test it in 7 days
- 1Ask five exhibitors at a local trade show how they capture leads.
- 2Message small exhibitors on LinkedIn about their last show’s follow-up.
- 3Offer free use at one show in return for feedback.
Where to find the first customers
- Trade-show exhibitor lists
- Event marketer groups on LinkedIn
- Trade associations that run shows
What are the risks?
- Usage spikes around shows, so pricing must fit that.
- Some shows include lead scanning in their own event app.
How to build it on shipanysaas
4 of the parts it needs are already in the kit, the phone app with the All-in plan. Get the kit, open it in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and paste the starting prompt.
- Already in the kit
- Teams and roles
- Billing
- Emails
- Phone app with All-in
- You build
- Card and badge scanning
- Lead notes and ratings
- Same-day follow-up emails
See the starting prompt
You are in a fresh copy of the shipanysaas starter kit, a pnpm and Turborepo monorepo: the Next.js web app is in apps/web and the Supabase database, with its migrations, in apps/web/supabase; with the All-in plan, the Expo phone app is in apps/native. Help me build the first version of Lead capture for small trade-show exhibitors. Read AGENTS.md first, then the AGENTS.md in every folder you work in: the kit's rules there win over your defaults. When a skill in .agents/skills (also in .claude/skills and .cursor/skills) matches a task, use it. ## The product - What it does: Booth staff scan a badge or business card, add a quick note, and every lead gets a follow-up email the same day. - Who pays: Small companies that exhibit at three or more trade shows a year - Their problem: Business cards end up in a bag, notes on paper, and follow-ups go out a week later, if at all. Rented scanners from the show are expensive and export messy data. - Price to test: $49 per show, or $29 a month (a plan in apps/web/config/billing.config.ts) ## Build only this first version 1. Scan a card or badge into a lead 2. A quick note and a rating per lead 3. Follow-up email templates sent the same day 4. Leads shared across the booth staff 5. Export to a spreadsheet or a CRM ## Already in the kit: reuse it, never rebuild it - Teams and roles: team accounts with members, roles and invitations - Billing: Stripe or Lemon Squeezy subscriptions, per seat or usage-based, and one-off payments - Emails: transactional email through Resend or Nodemailer - Phone app: an iPhone, iPad and Android app on the same backend (All-in plan) ## New code it needs - Card and badge scanning - Lead notes and ratings - Same-day follow-up emails ## How to work 1. Plan first: list the database tables (with row-level security, so each team only sees its own rows), the pages and the server actions for the first feature. Then stop and wait for my OK. 2. Build one feature at a time with the kit's own UI and form components, with a migration for every schema change and user-facing text in the translation files. 3. After each feature, run the verification steps in AGENTS.md, fix what they find, and tell me what you built and what comes next. ## Rules - Ask me before you add a dependency, delete a file, or change sign-in, billing or the admin panel. - Leave the parts of the kit this product doesn't use as they are. - If apps/native is not in your copy (the Starter plan), build the web app only. Done when every first-version feature works for a signed-in team and the AGENTS.md checks pass.
Guides for the parts it uses
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