The Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) is the broadest-based, not-for-profit trade association serving the industrial metals industry. With over 100 years of knowledge and thought leadership, MSCI provides its North American members with meaningful industry insights and how the industry will evolve through research, education, advocacy and events.

The Economic Summit, one of MSCI’s many annual events, is a 3-day conference in September that brings together world-renowned industry experts sharing forecasts on their most important end-user markets. Typically, this event would take place locally in Schaumburg, IL with in-person sessions and networking reception. But as we know, 2020 hasn’t been a typical year.

Understanding the importance of this event and the invaluable content it provides, MSCI quickly adapted this conference to deliver its content completely virtually.

As MSCI’s full-service marketing partner, we worked with them to adapt and adjust the event messaging to focus on the advantages of going virtual—no overlapping sessions, no time-wasting clutter, just hard-hitting insights on where the industry is headed. To carry out this messaging, we utilized both paid and organic outreach to gain awareness around the event.

We began by distributing a compelling, weekly email campaign highlighting unique aspects of the event, from session content to keynote speakers, to drive visits to the landing page and gain event sponsorships. We were then able to supply sponsoring companies with social content to share with their individual networks to promote the Economic Summit. We also utilized digital advertising and email communications through top trade publications to gain more awareness in the industry. Finally, we ramped up our digital advertising efforts to reach both MSCI members, non-members and similar audiences through Google display and LinkedIn ads. Throughout the campaign, we monitored and adjusted creative messaging and increased budgets to encourage registrations in the weeks leading up to the summit.

The ongoing marketing generated a great deal of interest and motivation to register for this important conference, as well as an impressive attendance by both members and non-members for MSCI’s first fully virtual conference.