The Professional Liability Underwriting Society is the only association created exclusively by and for the professional liability insurance industry. Their active members include a broad range of liability professionals, including underwriters, brokers, risk managers, and lawyers.
In 2022, PLUS moved to an entirely free model for their memberships to better serve their community, especially younger professionals just setting off on their careers.
As a result, memberships have tripled, and today, Amy Wenstrom, their director of marketing and communications, and Josephine Terry, marketing coordinator, have an even broader group to engage, cultivate, and activate.
Historically, one of the key opportunities for their members comes in the form of PLUS’s Symposia series — four unique symposiums that focus on specializations within the field, including directors and officers (D&O), cyber, transactional risk, and employment practices liability.
Flying solo with Feathr
After signing on with Feather, Josephine worked closely with her customer success manager, Madeline, to get up to speed. She says, “Madeline helped me walk through the process of setting up an ad and how to implement the conversion tracking, so she was a huge asset to my learning process.”
But in no time Josephine was flying solo, running geofencing and retargeting campaigns within the platform, using graphics she designed herself. She says, “Feathr is very user-friendly and it’s quite easy to learn and do paid ads successfully.”
One of the key values for Josephine and the PLUS team was Feathr’s ability to track their audiences and give them key insights into their behaviors. Understanding their audience is step one for their team in building highly effective marketing campaigns.
Josephine says, “It allows us to find those people really easily. I specifically love the conversion tracking and being able to see how many clicks you get or how many views you have and ultimately how many people convert.”
Serving only the most relevant ads
Having all the information in one place has given Amy and Josephine a clear picture of how to successfully cultivate and activate their diverse audience base.
And because they already have a large group of engaged members, they’ve decided to invest heavily in retargeting campaigns. Josephine says, “We’ve been leaning toward retargeting campaigns. We’re targeting people who previously visited our site and found it valuable because they’re already warm leads — they’re already interested.”
Their strategy focused on sending only the most relevant ads to their target groups. Instead of following up with anyone and everyone who visited their website or was on an email list, they served ads specifically to the members within an area of expertise.
Josephine says, “Because the event had four tiers to it, we ran paid ads to target each of them. That helps with the cost. It was more efficient to speak to the people who were interested in cyber vs. D&O.”
And instead of guessing about how much to spend, they used built-in tools within Feathr to estimate the most effective budgets for their campaigns. Amy says, “When you were planning the campaigns, Feathr would give you a recommendation of how much to spend. That makes our job a little easier, so we don’t have to put a guess out there.”
By segmenting their audiences based on behaviors they tracked within Feathr and by using AI-informed ad spends, they were able to increase the relevance of the ads they served, increasing conversions while simultaneously decreasing costs.
Better insights with omnichannel
For Josephine and Amy, the process doesn’t stop just because an event wrapped. As a team of two, there’s always some new way they can streamline the process.
Amy says, “Something we’ve noticed in analyzing the results is that some of the people converting on Feathr campaigns are not actively engaged in our emails.”
By moving toward an omnichannel strategy, orchestrating multiple channels to tell the same compelling story, they’ve been able to better meet their community where they are. Instead of placing all their eggs in the email basket, they’re able to understand audience preferences and engage more meaningfully with each of their segments.
And each of their individual campaigns have benefited from this integrated approach. Their ads perform better when supported by email, but also their email performs better with a well-placed nudge from an ad.
Top-notch results on a low budget
Feathr has helped PLUS reach its audience, broaden its reach, and target the right people. It has provided the team with valuable insights into how their marketing efforts are performing, allowing them to understand what works and what doesn't.
By listening to their community through Feathr and by serving their audiences with only the most relevant messaging, PLUS was able to sell $160k in tickets to their symposia while spending an incredibly low amount on ads — only $2,000.
Josephine says, “Feathr definitely sets you up for success with how the campaigns are implemented and the recommended budget and the account management — it wants you to succeed!”
