Headquartered in Montvale, N.J., The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA®) is one of the largest and most respected associations focused exclusively on advancing the management accounting profession. One of the ways they do that is by providing CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) certification, an internationally recognized and highly respected professional credential that helps accountants progress to the highest levels in the field.
Objective
As part of its overall goal to encourage more individuals to register for the certification exam, IMA sought to increase the number of signups for its email list, which provides information on how to qualify and prepare for the challenging exam.
Strategy
To help them achieve this, IMA and The Gate, their agency of record for advertising, leveraged LinkedIn’s custom targeting tools to help continually evaluate engagement and refine targeted segments. The company worked closely with LinkedIn experts via regular meetings and updates throughout the process, which helped them structure their strategy and deploy all of the LinkedIn tools that were appropriate for their needs.
LinkedIn was really helpful with the job title targeting, the industry targeting, field of study—all those things help us make sure we’re honing in on the right audience. —Thomas Verderber, Supervisor of Business Analytics,The Gate.
We’ve put together the following infographic to show how the association was able to boost email signups by 513%.
Leveraging Receptive Audiences on LinkedIn
Getting your message to the right audience is key. But if you want to reach business professionals, reaching them when they’re ready to do business is critical. The success of IMA’s campaign showed that LinkedIn members are in the right frame of mind to engage with messages and educational information around career advancement.
Further, it exemplified the power of LinkedIn to help companies optimize and refine audience targeting, as IMA’s campaign data revealed fewer clicks and signups from accounting professionals further along in their careers.
People who are maybe in that upper bracket, upper-tier in their career, might not be looking to enhance it or might not feel like they need to. LinkedIn actually helped confirm our theory where we were seeing that anyone above a manager level wasn’t really clicking as much. —Thomas Verderber, Supervisor of Business Analytics,The Gate.
Navigating the B2B buying cycle can be complex, so reaching the right stakeholder group is key. Learn more about how IMA optimized targeting efforts by checking out the full infographic.
