WHAT IS THE MPI EXCHANGE TOOL AND WHO CAN USE IT?
The MPI Exchange tool encompasses all of our events that fall under the MPI Exchange, our planner and supplier landscape. All of the MPI Exchange events create opportunities for planners and suppliers to meet face to face, network and do business, but they differ in structure and purpose. For example, hosted buyer is appointment based, Plan Your Meetings is speed dating, Thought Leadership is very high level and not a business transaction, etc. With the amount of business opportunities that the MPI Exchange offers, we needed to develop a tool that would allow the user to easily find the events relative to their specific business needs and we wanted the tool to be available for use for both members and non-members.

WHY WAS THE MPI EXCHANGE TOOL DEVELOPED?
The MPI Exchange Tool is similar to what the MPI Academy is to education in that it helps provide you with a path customized to fit your specific needs. The MPI Exchange itself has been around since the 2016 World Education Congress in Atlantic City, N.J. Since then, we’ve developed more sophisticated programs and more types of interaction based on feedback from our community—it’s rolled into other events. We realized no longer did we offer just hosted buyer, that we needed to be able to communicate to our planners and suppliers all of the opportunities we have and the different formats. The MPI Exchange tool acts as your interactive roadmap helping you navigate the path to lead you to business that’s specific to your needs.

HOW DOES THE MPI EXCHANGE TOOL HELP USERS FIND THE RIGHT BUSINESS?
Because each event is different, it can be hard for people to understand all the nuances—but with this tool, you are given the best options for your needs and you can click through program details. These users could be a planner trying to understand what events they qualify for and where they can find suppliers that have the services they need or for suppliers it allows them to focus on determining which events give them ROI because they’re meeting the type of planner you’re looking for. By funneling the users through a series of questions, the tool yields results that say, “These are the events that match your criteria based on the information you provided.” And there’s always a call-to-action for these, whether it’s “Apply Now” or, if applications aren’t open, you can ask to receive more information when available. It allows us to educate our community and be the stewards of our members that we’re supposed to be.

With budgets being what they are and planners having less time, this also allows users to have a yearlong look at the types of events we’re going to have so they can plan accordingly. This is up all year long and it’s open to everyone. It simplifies all that messaging you’d typically receive from us via email—this gives you a full-year snapshot and its fluid, so as we add events, they’ll pop up. And it’ll evolve into an even more in-depth tool as we move forward.

This tool really eases the confusion and noise in the market- place as to what type of opportunities you can participate in.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPING THIS TOOL?
We knew there was a need in the community, but we didn’t want to pretend like we knew everything—we couldn’t do it without our community’s feedback. So, what was really neat was getting our community involved to make sure it eased their pain points—I mean, who knows meeting planning more than our community?

We reached out to a diverse selection of planners and suppliers that have participated in these programs and events and did one-on-one usability testing. We didn’t tell them the reason for the tool upfront, we wanted to see how they maneuvered through the online tool to get their first-time user feedback and experience and to see how intuitive the tool would be. After the interviews, we made changes and followed the advice and recommendations from our user group. This process was invaluable and we’ll continue to do usability testing again when we move into Phase 2, which will probably roll out in 2020.

HOW SUCCESSFUL HAS THE TOOL BEEN SO FAR?
We’re really encouraged by the number of people who have al- ready used this tool. It had a soft launch in October 2018, around IMEX America. Even with that soft launch and very limited pro- motion—one email and some social media posts—as of February 12, almost 3,500 people have used the tool. That means the tool is being used with very little push.

MPI Exchange Focus Group

We couldn’t have launched such a successful tool without help from our user focus group. We’d like to give a special thanks to the following people for providing us their time and valuable feedback: Stewart Agoos, Meeting Professionals International; Mary Altemus, Paragon Events; Tez Bois, Patina Restaurant Group; Shawn Boone, Asheville CVB; Reagan Diaz, Meeting Professionals International; Denise Donnahoo, DISH Network; Kathy Reak, Colorado Springs CVB; Michelle Robinson, Nestle Purina Petcare Company; Brian Sturtevant, PSAV