When marketing a large medical congress, you’re speaking to thousands of healthcare professionals – many of them global experts – who are balancing high-pressure roles, limited time and constant information overload.
So how do you cut through, drive registrations and inspire submissions all while staying credible, valuable and concise?
You have to think about influencing behaviour at scale; encouraging healthcare professionals to share research, connect with peers and engage with ideas that can shape their careers and impact patient outcomes. Behind every registration campaign is a strategic balance of segmentation, messaging discipline and creative execution.
We spoke to TMC project leads Cecily, Account Manager, and Mal, Marketing Manager, to learn more about their processes and key learnings from working within this industry.
Cecily plays a central role in overseeing the delivery of each project, managing timelines, coordinating internal teams, and acting as the key point of contact for clients. From early-stage planning through to execution, she ensures communications are aligned, projects stay on track, and client expectations are met at every stage.
Working closely alongside her, Mal leads on the development of the communications themselves, translating strategy into impactful messaging and content across the relevant channels. With a focus on creating clear, engaging and audience-led communications, she ensures each campaign not only aligns with the overarching strategy but resonates with the intended audience.
Together, their collaboration brings both structure and creativity to the process, balancing strategic oversight with effective delivery.
What’s the key consideration when writing congress content?
Mal: With Congress being such massive events, with so many things going on, it’s important to identify the key themes of communications. Each piece of communication really needs to bring value to the reader, otherwise they won’t open it.
We can’t repeat messaging over and over again; it’s really important to identify the themes and make sure that each of those pieces of comms sort of sticks to a theme.
Going deeper into it, the subject line is probably the most important piece of it, because it needs to entice the reader to open the email without giving too much away, and then in the email itself, it’s so important to keep it short, considering who the audience are. They are really time poor and busy, and they don’t have time to read massive emails, so keeping it short sweet to the point and benefit led as well because obviously, as a medical society, people coming to the Congress benefits the society.
We want them to be there, but it’s flipping it on its head, and really talking to the audience to share what benefit does it bring to them? Why is them being there valuable for them? What are they going to get out of it?
Cecily: Another thing is that when we’re writing comms, it’s important to always think about what is the purpose of the email that we’re sending or the social media posts that we’re writing, because a lot of stuff you see on social media is just fluff. With emails as well, you want to make sure that you are getting a message across to those people and giving them clear, concise information that’s going to encourage them to attend an event or to take action or submit science, and not just telling them lots of information for no reason.
The biggest challenge is avoiding overwhelm.
With so much happening around a large-scale event, clear themes are essential, and every piece of content needs to serve a defined purpose – otherwise you risk overwhelming the messaging.
Value should always be the most important aspect. If the message doesn’t benefit the audience, it simply won’t get opened or engaged with. Ultimately, you’re not just selling attendance to the congress; you’re positioning it as an opportunity for career progression, networking, visibility, recognition, and meaningful impact.
How do you understand your campaign audience?
Mal: It’s about segmenting them in a way, because the audience is so large, and we have a variety of people in there. We’ve got key opinion leaders, we’ve got experts, we’ve got people that are just starting out, we’ve got students.
You’ve got an audience which is quite local, and the messaging would differ to them, and you’ve got an audience that, for example, is traveling from across the world.
So it’s about separating them and understanding them individually, because they all react to different things, and we have seen that through data over and over again, experienced professionals would react to different things to those who are training and studying.
It’s really about having a broad approach and approaching each of those segments separately and in an individual way to make it work.
Segmentation drives channel strategy and allows the messaging to really dial in to what each of the audiences wants. Whilst senior professionals may gravitate towards more traditional formats, such as email, we found that junior audiences engage more actively across social platforms.
Thus, the strategy isn’t about choosing one channel, but rather ensuring the right message appears in the right place, in the right format, for each segment.
What do the congress communication projects mean to you personally?
Mal: We’re actually making a difference in the world. Bringing professionals together goes beyond just hitting the targets, because they come to Congress and the information that they get there, they carry with them throughout their career. It’s impacting their careers, it’s impacting the patient’s lives. Just think about that impact that we’re having beyond those Congress walls; it’s really rewarding.
Cecily: It’s interesting how each year is so different. Obviously, the phases are the same, the audiences are the same, and the messages, the calls to action are the same, but the actual writing and the creatives that we do are always different.
Each year, it’s having that creative input that maybe you don’t get with other projects. With congresses, it’s having another element of creativity and ways that we can grab attention, especially for people that have attended the Congress before. It’s telling them why they should come back, or if they have been to a similar Congress, but we’re trying to encourage them to come to the one that we’re promoting. It’s why they should come to ours rather than another.
Having those individual touch points is quite important for us.
Mal: Also, going to the Congress itself and seeing the people that we spoke to, talking to them, seeing how excited they are, and seeing them interact with the artwork that we’ve created, seeing them picking up the bags that we’ve designed, and the T shirts or whatever it is, leaflets, magazines, newspapers, magnets. It’s just so lovely to actually get to go and see how people are interacting and step into their actual world and have a word with them.
Cecily: Yeah, and for us as well, doing that has given us another level of understanding. I think especially the first time around, some of the things we understood, but we couldn’t really appreciate the gravity of the number of people we were contacting, or the scale of the big sessions that we were promoting. Having gone and seen those, we now have another level of understanding when writing comms what exactly we’re talking about and who we’re talking to.
In a space where audiences are time-poor and inboxes are crowded, leading with value and prioritising clarity in messaging creates the difference between being seen and being ignored. It is important that all communications bring impact.
With over 20 years of experience, TMC partners with leading medical societies to elevate their impact. From growing and retaining membership to engaging healthcare professionals, we help you connect with industry partners, deliver unforgettable events, share scientific knowledge, and expand your global reach.
Ready to take the next steps? Contact our team to book an introductory call by emailing hello@wearetmc.com.
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