How MDDS segments their audience to boost engagement

The Metro Denver Dental Society (MDDS) is a not-for-profit component society of the American Dental Association dedicated to providing the most up-to-date industry information to their over 2,000 members.

In 2020, like many other not-for-profit associations, they felt they needed to adjust the way they engaged with their member base, moving much of their advertising spend away from print and toward digital channels.

Putting more money in digital

Cara Stan, director of marketing & membership at MDDS, said, “We shifted most of our budget to digital. For print, with the amount of touchpoints it takes to convert and the cost it just began to make less sense for us.” 

Sending two or three postcards could often cost more than the entire digital budget. And she was getting about six touchpoints with digital — two or three times the touchpoints at a lower cost. 

But on top of the savings, she was also collecting valuable insights. Unlike with the postcards, she was getting data back instantaneously. She said, “I love the analytics that are provided. I know what worked and what didn’t.” And this allows her to focus on getting even bigger wins.

Optimizing through segmentation

Investing more in digital was step one for Cara and her team. She still wanted to optimize those channels, especially email, and boost engagement with MDDS’s extensive member base.

Talking about her past email campaigns, Cara said, “We were just sending out an attendee email every couple of weeks. It had current attendees and prospective attendees together, and so our open rates were ok, but now with segmenting the email open rates are over 50%.”

Segmentation is the very definition of “less is more.” Instead of sending one message to everyone, MDDS was able to send highly relevant messages — and so more valuable for their audience — to specific groups, resulting in increased engagement and higher conversions.

Cara says, “With our Feathr campaigns, we segment by warm and cold leads… For people who have been before, it’s like ‘you already know we’re great, just come back, and this is why you should come back.’ And for the cold audience it’s like ‘this is why we’re great.’”

Not just a platform

With Feathr’s digital marketing tools and analytics, MDDS was able to better understand and then cultivate their audience. And with Feathr’s onboarding and customer support, it took hardly any time to get off the ground.

Cara says, “The Feathr system is super easy to use. The onboarding and training that was provided was better than most I’ve gone through. And the customer service that you receive compared to what you would find on a larger platform — that’s been really helpful.” 

With the right platform and the right partners, MDDS was able to better serve their community by meeting them where they were: online.

This is why Cara and the MDDS team are continuing to expand their investment in digital and especially in Feathr. Cara says, “Most of our digital dollars are spent with Feathr.”