How to capture conference contacts into your CRM with Telegram

A conference is the one day you meet more people than you can remember. This guide sets up Shmor on Telegram before the event, then gives a routine for capturing each person in under a minute, so everyone is in your CRM, with a note and a follow-up task, before you leave the venue.

It works with ShmorCRM (the micro-CRM built into Shmor), Attio or HubSpot. The steps are the same for all three.

Before the event: set up once

1. Sign in to Shmor with your email. Your account and free trial start the first time you sign in, and new accounts start on ShmorCRM, so there is nothing to connect. If you want contacts to go straight into Attio or HubSpot, connect it now: see connecting Attio or connecting HubSpot.
2. Link Telegram. On the Channels page, click Link Telegram, then Open Telegram and press Start in the bot. The bot replies that your account is linked. The link works once and expires after 15 minutes, so make a new one if you wait too long.¹
3. Add the words voice notes get wrong. In Settings, under Words to listen for in voice notes, add the event name, sponsor and company names, and any unusual surnames you expect. Shmor passes them to the transcription so they come out right.
4. Set your default follow-up. Also in Settings, Default follow-up is the number of days Shmor uses when you do not give a date (3 unless you change it, from 1 to 60). Tick Move follow-ups that land on a weekend to the Monday if you do not work weekends.
5. Pin the chat. Pin the Shmor chat at the top of Telegram so it is one tap away.

At the event: one message per person

After each conversation that matters, send Shmor what you have, before you walk into the next one. One person per message.

They hand you a business card

Take a photo of the card, flat and in good light, and add a caption with the context: what you talked about and when to follow up. Shmor reads the name, title, company, email and phone from the card, and the rest from your caption.

You only have their badge

Photograph the badge. Badges usually show a name and a company, which is enough for Shmor to create the person and the company. Add the context in the caption as before.

They are in the event app or on LinkedIn

Screenshot their profile and send the screenshot. It works like a card photo, and is often clearer. If you have added your own Apollo key, you can send their LinkedIn link instead: see LinkedIn lookups with Apollo.

There is nothing to photograph

Record a voice note: their name, company, what they do, what you discussed and the next step. Say unusual names slowly. A voice note of up to 2 minutes uses one capture.

Write the context as who, why, next

The caption is the part you cannot recover later. A useful pattern:

• Who: "Head of operations at a logistics firm."
• Why: "Asked about a pilot for their onboarding team."
• Next: "Send the case study on Friday."

Shmor turns that into the note on the person and a follow-up task due on Friday. If you do not say when, it uses your default.

Read the reply, then move on

Shmor reacts to your message, then replies with a card: New contact saved or Existing contact updated, where you met, and the follow-up date. If it could not work something out, the card asks, with buttons:

• How did you meet? Tap Networking event, Conference, Intro, Inbound, Online or Other.
• Follow up? Tap your default, 1 week, 2 weeks or No follow-up. After a timeframe, Shmor asks what the follow-up is about; reply with a few words, or "-" for a plain follow-up.

You do not have to answer straight away. To add or correct anything later, reply to the card: "her email is sam@example.com" or "met at the Manchester fintech breakfast". Shmor updates the same person.

Between sessions: clear what is pending

Send pending (or /pending) to the bot. It lists up to 10 contacts that still need something, each with its buttons, so a coffee queue is enough to clear them.

On the way home: one review

• Open your CRM and check every person from the day has a follow-up task, or a deliberate "no follow-up".
• In ShmorCRM, the Tasks tab lists every follow-up as open, overdue or done. In Attio or HubSpot, the tasks are on each person or contact.
• Send the same-day follow-ups, such as the deck you promised.

What lands in your CRM

For each capture, Shmor finds or creates the company (by web domain, then by name) and the person (by email, then LinkedIn URL, then name and company), so the same person met twice is updated, not duplicated. It sets Met via and Met at only if they are empty, so the first meeting is kept, adds a note and creates the follow-up task.

A note on personal data

Keeping the details of people you meet is personal data processing. In the UK, legitimate interests is a common lawful basis for business contacts you have a genuine reason to follow up with.² Personal follow-ups are one thing; adding people to marketing emails has its own rules under PECR.³