Abstract Rotating drums are encountered in numerous industrial applications, including blenders, rotary calciners, impregnators, coaters, granulators, and cement mixers. In all of these devices, the rotation of the drum is used to engender mixing of the granular material in the radial direction. Axial mixing, because of its significantly lower rate, can also have an impact on the process performance, especially when control of residence time is important. Typically, the particle dynamics in rotating drums are quantified as a function of process conditions, such as rotation speed, fill level, and cylinder size. Particle properties are also important, but previous studies have largely been limited to the effects of particle size. In this work, the quantification of the axial particle dynamics has been expanded to include the effect of bulk flow properties by studying a number of cohesive powders. Fick's second law was found to describe the axial dispersion behavior of cohesive particles. Therefore, changes in behavior can be characterized using the axial dispersion coefficient. The effect of material flow properties was found to be statistically significant; the flowability of the material (as measured using bulk flow properties) correlated significantly to the axial dispersion coefficient. Partial least squares was used to determine that 95% of the variation observed in the axial dispersion coefficient measurement can be explained using particle size, compressibility, and shear cell measurements.