An In-Depth Look at 2017 Learnies Winner: American Industrial Hygiene Association
In 2017, Learnapalooza, the first ever conference focused solely on association member education and training programs, took place in Washington D.C. The first of its kind, this event brought together the association community’s best experts to examine trends, discuss topics, and share tips on everything from content to pricing and LMS selection.
With the launch of Learnapalooza, came the first annual Learnies awards brought together associations, professional societies, and nonprofits’ best learning tools and success stories as part of 2017 Learnapalooza. Association TRENDS was blown away by the entries received. Organizations are pioneering brand-new ways of learning and transforming the world along the way. American Industrial Hygiene Association was one of our Learnies winners. We took a deeper look at their educational achievement and created a case study based on their challenge, their action, and their amazing results.
Name of organization: American Industrial Hygiene Association
Challenge: The amount of staff time, volunteer effort, and money that goes into producing an association annual conference is tremendous. Sometimes it feels a shame that it’s a one-time thing that serves a fraction of your membership. Associations need to make sure they’re realizing the event’s full potential by capturing and repurposing that content.
Looking to do just that, AIHA started the AIHce REPLAY series in 2015 to rebroadcast select sessions from our annual conference. These rebroadcasts included video of the speaker and the slide presentation. The differentiator for the REPLAY sessions was that the presenter was available in the chat to answer questions from the REPLAY participants. The REPLAY sessions were promoted as a way to catch sessions attendees may have missed at the conference or re-experience their favorite session. Participation the first year was low, but the feedback we received was that participants found it a valuable learning opportunity. We knew there was potential.
Action: In 2016 we reset goals for the program to build the AIHce conference brand and use these REPLAY sessions to drive conference attendance. We timed these rebroadcasts around registration opening and created a symbiotic relationship to drive growth and revenue.
Our marketing team was a great partner in planning the messaging and promotion. In addition to positioning the recordings as a way to relive the 2016 conference, we make a targeted effort to, once the REPLAY series was over, drive participants to register for the upcoming conference.
The coordination was complex! The follow-up phase alone had several email versions depending on if the person participated in the REPLAY session, if they were already registered for our conference, or if we were pushing them to register.
Outcome: We were thrilled with the results. REPLAY attendance doubled and revenue tripled with the new timing. The drive converted one person that registered for AIHce to register for REPLAY, and ultimately 26% of REPLAY participants registered for the conference.
Congratulations again to the American Industrial Hygiene Association on their awesome work.
Do you have a success story, innovative education program, or best use of multi-purpose learning content you’d like to share? Registration is open for the 2018 Learnies. Enter today and show us what you’ve got. We can’t wait to hear about it!
