AMCP pivots to virtual event in three weeks with 16x return on ad spend

Under normal circumstances, it is best to have around three months of promotion for an event. However, 2020 was anything but normal. With only three weeks to promote their virtual event, the marketers at AMCP were under an enormous amount of pressure to meet their registration goal.

“Once we got confirmation that we were going to go virtual, we knew we needed help to get those registration numbers up, because we were already behind, so we really looked to Feathr,” said Abigail Fredenburg, AMCP’s director of integrated marketing & communications.

Fredenburg immediately reached out to Feathr's Implementation Services to explain the situation and enlist help launching retargeting campaigns as quickly as possible. “We met on Thursday and the campaigns rolled out on Friday,” she said. “We felt as if we were a priority.”

For Julie MacDonald, AMCP’s creative director, the shared sense of urgency was especially helpful. “I sent them the creative and they were able to look at it and respond with feedback...so we could make adjustments. I appreciated that they were very quick to get back to us which makes you feel like: okay, they’ve got our back,” she said.  

In addition to working with Feathr’s Implementation Services, AMCP had an agency running social media campaigns for the event. “I was very happy to see that the Feathr team was willing to jump on the phone with our agency to make sure that all efforts were complimenting each other,” said Fredenburg. As director of integrated marketing and communications, it was important for Fredenburg to ensure that their multi-channel campaigns, “were coordinated — and not competing but amplifying each other,” she stated. 

Feathr’s unique understanding of the association space was another added benefit. Having helped dozens of associations pivot to virtual events, their campaign manager was able “to inform us and guide us on what messaging is working out there, what creative is working out there... She gave us very valuable insights that we couldn’t have gotten if we just went to some other agency that wasn’t working within our industry or that has other clients like big brands,” Fredenburg said.

In just three weeks, the 2,052 dollars spent across six retargeting campaigns led to 34,830 dollars in revenue and a 16x return on ad spend from Feathr Ads. With all efforts combined, “We nearly doubled our registration goal and we did that in the last few weeks,” said Fredenburg.

The real value is in the data

For AMCP, running programmatic retargeting ads goes beyond the conversions. Fredenburg sees each campaign as an opportunity to learn more about their audience: who they are, where they are, and which messages resonate and lead to action.

“Marketing communications is a soft science, but it’s all informed by data,” said Fredenburg. “We can't just do what we do and guess what our audience is going to react to. What Feathr is allowing us to do is to understand our audience and their behavior so we can come up with the creative that supports what is actually going to get someone to click on our ad and then register for our event,” she said. 

 “So that, I think, is the most valuable thing we get from Feathr. It’s the data that we continue to build on... to refine our strategy, refine our messaging, and refine our creative,” she added.

Ad from a cart abandonment campaign targeting those who visited the registration page but failed to sign up for the event.