Alumni Relations: Best Practices for Fostering Lasting Connections
Students spend only a short time at higher education institutions, making alumni relationships a powerful tool. They act as word-of-mouth advocates to drive admissions, mentors to current students, and lifelong financial donors. A strong alumni engagement strategy benefits current students, alumni, and institutions.
The Importance of Alumni Engagement
Alumni engagement is the process of building lasting relationships between a higher education institution and its alumni. Institutions hoping to thrive in the coming years should prioritize alumni engagement because the effort put forth here truly takes an investment, where the upfront cost pays off in a variety of ways for both the institution and its students. The benefits are clearly significant.
Benefits for Current Students
Facilitating connections between alumni and current students can help them feel like they belong and improve student retention at institutions. According to the third edition of the Salesforce Connected Student Report, only 12% of students feel they totally belong at their college or university.
Engaged alumni can offer mentorship opportunities and improved job placement rates for current students. They can also guide students on life after university, providing invaluable insights and support.
Benefits for Alumni
Extending career services to alumni facilitates lifelong learning and increases the chances of them returning to higher education for additional learning and upskilling. Almost half of students surveyed in the Connected Student Report feel their coursework is relevant for only five years after graduation.
Read also: Legacy of Fordham University
Alumni also benefit from networking opportunities, professional development support, and a continued sense of connection to their alma mater.
Benefits for Institutions
Funding from alumni is crucial for the financial health of colleges and universities. Alumni who still feel engaged and valued by their alma mater are more likely to lend financial support. According to a recent survey by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (or CASE), in 2022, total contributions to colleges and universities in the United States increased 12.5% to a total of $59.5 billion. Furthermore, institutions with strong alumni engagement programs see up to 40% higher donor participation rates than those without structured engagement strategies.
Alumni can also act as brand ambassadors, promoting the school and helping to attract and retain new students, faculty, and staff.
Strategies for Effective Alumni Engagement
To cultivate strong alumni relationships, institutions should implement comprehensive and data-driven strategies that cater to the diverse needs and interests of their alumni.
Building Relationships from Day One
The relationship between alumni and institutions begins well before graduation. Institutions interact with students at multiple points across the student lifecycle. The key to alumni engagement is relationship building. By fostering lifelong partnerships with graduates, college and university leaders will have an infinite number of opportunities to advance their programs.
Read also: Baylor's Notable Alumni
Institutions can deploy and scale a personalized recruitment experience by combining data, cloud-based tools, and smart technology. Colleges and universities receive massive amounts of information from prospective students-information that can clarify what campus resources, events, and programs would be the most valuable to helping specific students reach their educational goals successfully. Information such as whether applicants are looking to enroll full-time or part-time, the type of degree or certification they are interested in, and extracurricular clubs and activities they currently participate in can be gleaned.
After enrollment, institutional leaders can take the same data used to establish an initial relationship to suggest class schedules, resources, support groups, and other extracurricular clubs and festivities that will facilitate students' transition into campus life. For example, a history student who played baseball in high school can benefit from learning about local museum resources, being connecting to the history club, and receiving the intramural baseball schedule.
Personalization and Segmentation
The alumni body is hugely diverse, and institutions should segment these groups so messages are targeted to the right people. Institutions should create personas to identify the specific motivators, communication preferences, and demographics of their alumni audience. Not every audience responds the same way to a specific marketing message. Your content should align with your personas.
All content should feel relevant and personalized, which creates challenges if alumni are all treated the same. Providing access to an exclusive platform accomplishes this by building community with their fellow alumni and connecting to events just for them.
Communication and Outreach
Consistent communication is critical to keeping graduates engaged. Institutions should regularly communicate with alumni about upcoming events, news, and opportunities.
Read also: Columbia University Legacy
Consider starting an “alumni of the week” series where an exciting alumni project is highlighted. This could be a novel they’ve written recently or a small business they run. Showcasing the work of alumni is a great way to make them feel appreciated, and it will also give current students tangible goals to aspire to.
Institutions could create “well-being” newsletters for alumni to show support for their mental and physical health.
Newsletters and invitations can be an excellent first step. That could be enough to reach some grads that quarter.
Events and Engagement Opportunities
When planning event schedules for the year, institutions should include a mix of in-person and online events. Offering a combination of events will make sure more alumni are included.
Wherever possible, invite alumni to meet prospective students as well as current students. There are countless ways to do this including seminars, competition panels, speeches, retreats, mentoring or student body events.
Leveraging Technology
Institutions can use an advancement CRM, such as Salesforce's Alum 360, to improve alumni engagement. Salesforce's advancement CRM allows institutions to keep track of alumni data on one convenient platform. Having up-to-date data ready to go will help institutions to understand alumni and build stronger connections.
Institutions can use social media to promote the work and achievements of their alumni. Social media has its place as a public facing communication tool, but institutions need to curate tailored experiences for alumni. Digital platforms also help with curating groups of alumni who share an affinity to help make connections.
Consider utilizing a third-party platform (like SocialToaster) to help manage and share your surveys.
A P2P texting tool is an excellent way to do that. Share alumni news and university updates, and encourage current students to engage with alumni. When they sign up, send a confirmation text asking for details such as name, year of graduation (predicted), what kind of messages they would like to receive, and preferred mode of communication.
Giving Back and Recognition
Alumni engagement programs should proactively solicit feedback from alumni on a regular basis, ideally doing a survey at least once a year. These inputs will help to measure the effectiveness of existing approaches so these programs incrementally improve. Creating a dynamic process with alumni engagement ensures it continuously evolves and improves over time.
When alumni choose to invest in institutions, they want to see what their money is going toward. Furthermore, institutions can get current students involved by interviewing them on how the new building, equipment, or program has enhanced their experience.
Celebrating alumni's achievements and successes is a powerful way to keep them engaged and connected. Your school can highlight alumni accomplishments through social media, newsletters, and other communication channels.
Career and Professional Development
Many alumni would appreciate professional development support from their college or university long after they graduate.
Using predictive analytics, campus staff can track changing and emerging industry trends and identify potential learning opportunities for graduates based on past course history, field of work, and experience level. By harnessing data, institutional staff can recommend certifications or advanced degree programs that would enhance career success for alumni.
Volunteer Opportunities
International alumni can also coach and mentor students and recent graduates on navigating the labor market and advise faculty on new competencies and skills needed in their professional sector.
There are two models. One is to work hand in hand with an NGO charity partner that can basically deploy the volunteers in a particular way. The other model devolves more of the coordination down to local alumni groups.
Surveys and Feedback
Surveys are a powerful tool for engaging with your alumni and should be a part of every school’s alumni engagement efforts. Whether it’s a yearly survey or a quarterly touch base, surveys provide your alumni with an opportunity to give feedback on your alumni engagement efforts.
Continually assessing alumni needs and interests can help your school stay relevant and responsive to their changing needs.
Collaboration and Internal Communication
Alumni Relations departments need to collaborate with colleagues from Marketing, Fundraising, Advancement, and so on. This is a collaborative team sport.
The university’s leadership must support alumni relations. Leadership needs to ingrain this value in the structure of the university and spread this message to the faculties, the central offices, the directors, the academics, and the students.
Transparency and Inclusivity
One of the things that we’re very cognizant of is how can we make everything we do… transparent but also available to alumni around the globe.
Design events to accommodate a diverse audience (e.g., donors Vs. networking people, locals Vs. international students, affluent Vs.
Overcoming Challenges in Alumni Engagement
Maintaining an engaged alumni community can be challenging. Alumni are notoriously difficult to engage. However, with the right strategies and tools, institutions can overcome these challenges and foster lasting connections with their graduates.
Addressing Dissatisfaction
Students may be dissatisfied with their courses, networking opportunities, or career prospects they got from you. Institutions should address these concerns and work to improve the student experience.
Avoiding Overwhelm
Don’t try everything in the first year.
Vary the ways that you communicate with alumni from feeling overwhelmed and make each message more engaging. Multimedia can also help engage alumni with different learning styles.
Measuring Engagement
Institutions often look at data on the percentage engaged by each mode-for example, percentage of alumni who attend an event based on the total of all alumni invited. That’s important, but it is also the top level of the surface because it doesn’t tell us much. You need historical data to make comparisons or correlations and ask questions that will help you give meaning to your data.
SIS Data and provide comprehensive insights into alumni interactions. programs interest alumni most. are interacting with the institution's content.
Focusing on Action
The third important aspect to remember is always to prompt action.
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