Pressure Sensitive Tape Council

Targeted Marketing to Increase Profits

Background

The Pressure Sensitive Tape Council (PSTC) came to Kellen Company as a new client in 2009. Their management executive was planning retirement and diligently sought a qualified management team for this well-established organization. This new and expanded management support brought positive change to procedures and events, including their annual technical seminar. Kellen provided ideas for improved strategies that increased efficiency and event attendance.

Strategy

The approach to the 2010 seminar was a joint effort between Kellen’s marketing and meetings teams to re-brand the event, refine and hone in on the target markets, transition from print to electronic promotional material and build key alliances with trade publications.

Tactics

We undertook a major overhaul of the PSTC member and non-member data to refine the electronic and physical mailings as well as made promotions more accurate, professional-looking and effective.  Furthermore, we redesigned the PTSC website to better promote, navigate and post event and association information.  Short-cut links also made event promotions easier to promote and find, including special sections at the site for exhibitors.  We developed customized communications that were tailored to attendee groups:  members, past attendees, exhibitors, potential attendees, industry professionals, etc.  We moved from primarily print promotions (booklets, postcards, letters) to 80% electronic promotions with one or possibly two postcard mailings.  We also built relationships with industry publications for further promotions and exposure.  We bartered official sponsorship of PSTC event, booth space at the exhibit event and direct links to publications’ websites.   Publications also emailed the event info to their contact list, published our event in their print and online periodicals, ran our ads, did editorials about PSTC and published the technical paper winners.

Results

We increased income at the 2010 seminar by 82% over the previous year, while increasing expenses by only 11%.  Attendance was up 58% and exhibitors increased 19%.  Net revenues in 2010 were 1244% higher than 2009.