Business

Associations Need a Partner That Knows What’s Coming Around the Corner

How MHI increased their event marketing conversion rate—and their revenue.

If you didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about supply chain management before the pandemic hit, you certainly do now. As we all know, delays in shipping products like microchips, backyard swing sets, and even toilet paper have huge impacts on our quality of life, not to mention our finances.

That’s why Carol Miller is so passionate about her work at MHI, the premier material handling and logistics association in the United States. As MHI’s vice president of marketing and communications, Miller is responsible for getting the word out about all of the association’s offerings, including industry insights, educational opportunities, and its industry-standard ProMat and MODEX trade shows. “Our mission as an association is to deliver member value every day,” says Miller. “So everything that we do, all of our programming, goes through that prism of being the authoritative resource for the material handling industry.”

A 28-year veteran at MHI, Miller says that the association had long relied on Google Ads for its digital marketing needs. But four years ago, her team decided that it wanted to get more surgical in its tactics for reaching event attendees. “We wanted to do more with retargeting, lookalike modeling, email mapping and geo-fencing,” she explains, which is why they turned to the association digital marketing platform Feathr. “Feathr offered a digital platform that allowed MHI to improve our digital marketing efforts, and it specialized in that event space where we live.”

The conversion rate on MHI’s marketing efforts shot up, says Miller, and she credits that success to a combination of tech and people power. “The more that our team works with Feathr, the more it has become an extension of that team,” she says. “Feathr understands our events and our industry better every year, and has helped us to be better marketers.” Feathr helps Miller’s team monitor campaigns so that it can shift money to better performers and re-think the creative on others. “It’s really on the leading edge of what’s going on with digital marketing. We try to keep up with the ever-changing landscape internally, but having a partner that makes it their business to know how to adapt and make continuous improvements is extremely helpful.”

All of this is vital to the success of MHI—getting feet on the ground for in-person events and eyeballs on screens for virtual ones translates to engagement and revenue. But the bigger picture is never far from Miller’s mind. “Manufacturing and supply chain professionals really need solutions now more than ever as they strive to be more resilient in response to the disruption of the pandemic and the growth of e-commerce. The dramatic growth of online orders put a big strain on many of our attendees,” she explains. “So using Feathr’s tools to improve market access for our members and exhibitors by creating unrivaled events where these solution providers and manufacturing and supply chain professionals can can come together, is very rewarding and it benefits our entire industry.”


Feathr has thought of everything to help get associations up and running with digital advertising. Their dedicated flock of experts advise on unique revenue-generating campaigns and provide graphic design and implementation services to ensure successful marketing campaigns. Partnering with Feathr will ensure your association’s success for years to come.