Customer Story: HBA of Midland Home & Outdoor Living Expo Implements EventHub Software
Type of Event: Home show (trade show for consumers seeking home project services and expertise)
Attendance: 4000
Number of booths: 80 (2023)
Venue: Indoor Baseball Diamond (Dow Diamond)
Affiliations: National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)
Overview: The HBA of Midland County (Michigan, USA) throws an annual home show for consumers seeking to bring their home project dreams to life. The event consists of more than 4,000 attendees visiting their expo of more than 100 booths filled with industry experts and service providers. The association implemented EventHub as their home show software to great success in 2023.
Key Takeaways TL/DR
- EventHub Management tool-suite time savings of well over 100 hours managing exhibitors
- Interactive expo floor plan for easy booth assignments and optimizing layout
- Marketplace leads led to 25 additional booth sales, 11 of whom converted to new members
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The Challenge: New HBA Executive Officer Producing a Large Expo
Katie Abbate, Executive Officer (EO) for HBA of Midland, was in her first year on the job and was tasked with the difficult challenge producing a large home show benefiting her association members, in conjunction with typically year-round association management, while also learning on the fly. Previously, PDF applications were sent out in January and then submissions, payments, and contracts were chased for months after. Katie determined the right home show software could make a huge difference to accelerate that timeline, maximize her effectiveness, and save bandwidth. That’s when Darrell Jacobs from her marketing agency Alpha Media recommended she take a look at EventHub. He had met some of the EventHub team at a previous MFEA (Michigan Festivals and Events Association) conference and the platform capabilities stuck with him.
Katie realized she needed a trade show software that not only streamlined her show management and expo mapping needs, but that was easy for members to use when registering. Additionally, she had aims to use the home show to grow membership and sought to sell out of available expo space to maximize fundraising for the association. Finally, it needed to be budget-friendly enough for her board to approve.
EventHub Software Implementation for Home Show
Management
Katie deployed EventHub’s management tool-suite to field digital applications, collect paperwork, receive payments, and communicate logistics. The efficiencies allowed the show to go live with registration a month earlier in December, and to be sold out and the bulk of pre-production exhibitor requirements wrapped by February! “Literally with this, they go in, they do it all… it (EventHub) was like a one-stop-shop,” highlights Katie.
Interactive Floor Plan
EventHub’s interactive expo floor plan was a major highlight. Katie used the floor plan feature to map out and optimize her layout and make changes in real-time. This was particularly helpful when she was nearly sold out of expo space to see where she should add additional booths. It was also easy to make exhibitor space assignments. She then shared the public view of the expo floor plan with attendees, which provided exhibitors with a digital show presence. Importantly, it also allowed attendees to better navigate the show to efficiently more services providers while onsite. Less time hunting walking back and forth for a specific need means more time to browse and engage on additional projects and needs!
In terms of ease of use, Katie found that her concerns were quickly alleviated. She mentioned, “Even some people I was worried about (figuring out the software), they loved it!” Several provided feedback about liking the professionalism and slickness of the program. “It’s so easy, I could lead (registrants with a question) through everything verbally.”
EventHub Marketplace
The marketplace performance with increasing booth sales was a pleasant surprise for the org. In addition to management tools, EventHub expo registration pages live within a marketplace shopped by more than 60,000 potential exhibitors and sponsors. Katie reported finding no less than 25 non-member exhibitors with the help of EventHub’s marketplace. 11 of these converted to year-round association members after the show!
Platform Cost
When it came to budget and board approval, Katie found the price to be very affordable. She explains, “We sat down and, from a financial standpoint, the cost is so minimal versus the man hours it takes away from what I have to do.” “All I had to do was talk to them about the amount of time it saved that I could be putting into other things like new member recruitment — it saved us a lot of money.”
Platform capabilities, combined with Katie’s professional leadership, enabled her to have had such an easy time relative to previous shows. “The committee was like, ‘You’re way to comfortable Katie, why are you not sweating?!” She answers, “I think everything’s going fine, am I supposed to be sweating? I guess it’s because pretty much everything is done!”
Results and Conclusion
In total, Katie raised well over $120,000 from the show which featured 110 exhibitors. The sell-out success had enabled her to plan a price increase for next year and to aim towards increasing her exhibitor count to upwards of 150 booths “The site really helped with marketing our sponsorship as well. People saw the sponsor logos on our registration page and said, I want that!”
From the 25 exhibitors she found through EventHub’s marketplace, 11 converted to year-round association members.
Concludes Katie: “The association had always struggled with getting people to pay and turn in documents. The only two contracts I was missing the day of our show were from two exhibitors – the only two people who refused to use EventHub. That is huge.”
CLICK HERE to request a demo via Zoom walk-through on how EventHub can help your trade show, festival, or expo. For additional customer success stories, visit our Testimonials section.
Featured Customer
Katie Abbate, Executive Office, HBA of Midland
