Joining up social, email and events to grow engagement for an industry association

The brief

POPAI UK & Ireland is a progressive industry association promoting best practice in retail display and dedicated to improving the total shopper experience.

Their channels were working in isolation. Social media was not yet pulling its weight as a route to new members, the weekly member newsletter needed more cut-through, and their virtual exhibition needed dedicated momentum to fill the stands, seminars and workshops.

They asked me to take the lead across all three, so every channel served the same goals: keep members engaged, bring the industry together and turn non-members into enquiries.

What I did

• Social media built around a planned content calendar across LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, aligned to POPAI's research, events and insight, with room for timely, ad hoc news.
• Regular planning sessions with the POPAI team, so content kept pace with a fast moving events and insight programme.
• POPAIweekly reshaped into an editorial digest members want to open: curated news, events and insight, a cleaner layout and clearer calls to action.
• A sequenced email campaign plan for POPAIexpo, their virtual exhibition, built to drive visitor sign ups and registrations for every seminar and workshop across the event.

The result

• Engagement grew quickly once the channels worked together. LinkedIn engagement rose 150% in the first month, then 64% and 78% in the months that followed.
• Social became a dependable source of website visitors and new membership enquiries, while POPAIweekly opens rose 25%, click throughs doubled and unsubscribes fell.
• Registrations for POPAIexpo, and for each seminar and workshop, peaked after every campaign send.