Nutrition is important overall, but especially more so during a pandemic when medical and healthcare facilities are filled with patients and varying special dietary needs. Just like the increased demand for frontline workers, so it is for those in the “back of house” too.
The Association of Nutrition and Foodservice Professionals (ANFP) has over 15,000 members who work in long-term care and serve as foodservice managers for those facilities (skilled nursing, assisted living, hospice, etc). For 60 years, ANFP has provided continuing education and certification programs to help its members become Certified Dietary Managers, Certified Food Protection Professionals (CDM, CFPPs) – offering training completion in quality nutritional care and specialized tasks for a variety of non-commercial, foodservice settings.
The association used other online advertising channels in the past to promote its educational and certification offerings, but tracking ad performance was cumbersome and multi-sourced. This challenge kept coming up in meetings with senior management - which led ANFP to adopt Feathr as a more transparent, one-stop solution.
More recently, the onset of the pandemic has caused the demand for CDM, CFPPs to hit an all-time high, making it more important than ever for ANFP to be able to effectively promote its certification program through ad campaigns.
With dietary manager jobs and a need for trained professionals at an all time high; the ANFP promoted their certification program, via Feathr Ads, for practitioners to complete their training.
Feathr Ads provided a single platform for ANFP to house and organize their ad campaigns for membership and CE/Certification drives. This retargeting tool lets you track your website visitors and then follow them with digital ads across the web – reminding them of your brand and specific offerings to drive qualified traffic back to your site.
ANFP Marketing Manager, Emily Harris, MBA, CAE said that almost immediately after implementing Feathr, reporting and ROI became more accurate and accessible. “Certification numbers are the best - but we’ve seen great numbers from our study material, with visible ROI from website visitors who purchase them for training,” says Harris.
Due to the recent increased need for CMD, CFPPs, ANFP quickly changed their ad targeting to fit the current climate for COVID-19. With a three-week run and campaign spend of $100, they got 21 conversions for the ANFP marketplace, where visitors purchased study material for CDM Credentialing Exam. When asked about the ease of quickly adapting campaigns, Harris, one of a three-person marketing team, said, “It was very simple. We actually changed an ad campaign while it was running — and we also changed all our campaigns moving forward”.
ANFP used Feathr Ads to retarget anyone who viewed their continuing education or certification web pages.
Ads for their CDM, CFPP certification study material followed them across the web.
Encouraged by the performance of their first year, where they utilized Feathr Ads for certification drives, Harris and team realized the potential Feathr’s platform had for other departments, beyond certification. They are currently running ad campaigns to drive membership and they have plans to create an awareness campaign for the association’s magazine - to market a subscription to industry professionals who are not current members of ANFP. She is excited to compare past performance with new ads.
2020 is also a milestone for ANFP, the association is celebrating 60 years. Like many, ANFP planned to celebrate at their two regional meetings and annual conference this year. Though their in-person events were canceled, they still promoted the 60th anniversary to members using Feathr Ad campaigns. The ANFP annual conference went virtual and they are planning an upcoming virtual event in the fall.
Harris is very optimistic and said, “Feathr can be utilized for anything, it’s just so convenient to have. So if we do plan to have a live event and it gets canceled - we can tweak our advertising. It’s great to have it for that purpose.”
This banner ad is from ANFP’s retargeting campaign.
It reminded previous website visitors about ANFP's certification study material and followed them across the web.